Sept. 12, 2001 editorial

Nothing that appears in this or any other column can dent the visceral shock every civilized person felt after watching television images of the World Trade Center collapsing. Yesterday's terrorist attack against the United States was the sort of unthinkable crime that takes place in science fiction movies. To watch it unfold over morning coffee was surreal.

About 40,000 people worked in the World Trade Center. Tens of thousands were in the complex when it was hit by passenger aircraft transformed by hijackers into guided missiles. Most of the victims were not soldiers, police or government officials. They were secretaries, paralegals, stock-brokers, journalists and janitors — the sort of people who bring their lunch to work in tupperwear and join office baby pools. The sadness and tragedy that surrounds this pointless massacre is impossible to describe with words, and we will not hazard an attempt.

Yet, somewhere, people are rejoicing. The terrorists who masterminded the attack made a deliberate attempt to murder innocent human lives on as wide a scale as possible. And since they succeeded at this evil task, they are no doubt delighted. In the Middle East, enemies of Western civilization cheered on the flow of blood. After the deadly bombing of a family restaurant in Jerusalem last month, young militants in the West Bank and Gaza rushed into the streets and celebrated. Yesterday's tragedies, which slaughtered innocents on a scale tw or three orders of magnitude higher, naturally produced larger celebrations. It is hard to believe anyone with loved ones of their own would applaud such bloodshed. But, there they were, dancing and waving -- eager allies of a cowardly war on the West's civilians. The strike against the United States will be regarded by terrorists — and, no doubt, many of their appologists — as a military triumph. Yet if the West put the same value on human life as its enemies and chose to reply in kind, the enthusiasts celebrating in Ramallah, East Jerusalem, Baghdad and other Arab cities would be incinerated several times over as they performed their jigs. Now, as always, the exultation of terrorists and their supporters is predicated on the unspoken fact that their foe is morally superior in its methods.

The last time an aircraft crashed into a New York City skyscraper was 56 years ago. In 1945, at the end of World War II, a U.S. Army Air Corps B-25 bomber hit the 78th and 79th floors of the Empire State Building, then shrouded in fog. That B-25 now seems like a centuries-old relic. It was designed for an age when wars were fought against armies, not against office receptionists and airline passengers. As former CIA Director R. James Woolsey said a few years back: "Following the Cold War, the U.S. is like the knight who has slain the dragon, only to find himself among numerous poisonous snakes." Yesterday, the United States was bitten hard. And the poison seeped into the veins of thousands of innocent Americans.

The advantage of fighting a dragon is that you always know where the fire is going to come from. But, in the case of yesterday's attacks, there is no dragon heart or eye to stab at. The 1993 attack on the World Trade Center was planned, in part, in Brooklyn. Attacks on Israel are planned in refugee camps and West Bank apartments deliberately sanwiched between family residences. The attack on the USS Cole last year was plotted in Yemen. Usama Bin Laden, who was behind the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya and who almost certainly had a hand in yesterday's attacks, lives in Afghanistan. If yesterday's action may be interpreted as a declaration of war — a terrorist's Pearl Harbour — then where is a modern day Jimmy Doolittle supposed to drop his bombs? Civilized nations do not blow up apartments and refugee camps. Afghanistan and the Palestinian Authority are both nominally at peace with the United States — and both entities receive hundreds of millions of dollars in Western aid every year. Yesterday's attack raises a familiar problem: How does a civilized nation prevail against an enemy that sees the human body as a piece of explodable ammunition to be flung at perceived enemies?

September 11 possibly marks the greatest single-day tragedy the United States has suffered since its Civil War. During the U.S. army's almost decade-long involvement in Vietnam, about 60,000 United States personnel were killed. Yesterday, in the space of less than two hours, terrorists slaughtered a solid fraction of that. Over the coming days and weeks, commentators will come forth with arguments regarding why this disaster happened and what means Western governments should take to shut down terrorist operations. They are right to do so, of course. But for today, it is a more than daunting task merely to come to terms with the disaster. Naturally, our government is doing everything it can to help the United States in this time of crisis. As for ordinary Canadians, all they can do is offer their prayers.