Osama bin Laden's al-Quaida committed an atrocious crime against humanity
on September 11, 2001. In addition to slaughtering thousands in New York
City and Washington, DC , this organization of theocratic fascists is
campaigning for the  destruction of  Western "infidel" civilization
generally, with special emphasis on Americans and Jews. To do so, it is
trying to rally and mobilize the one-fourth of humanity that makes up the
Islamic world for the reactionary "jihad" or holy war it has declared.

The horrendous attack of Sept. 11 has thus thrown out a challenge to
everyone--to the U.S. ruling class, to the American public, and to the
international community.

It has also thrown down a challenge to the American left. For if we are to
present ourselves as an alternative to the current leadership and
policymakers of our country, then it is incumbent upon us to define how we
would do things differently, not only strategically, but also in the face
of the immediate present danger. In doing so, we must also be willing to
take responsibility for the consequences of our ideas, proposals and actions.

The terrorism confronting us is not simply aimed at political or military
targets; it's also aimed at our society and economic life in the broadest
sense. Thousands of families are struggling to survive after burying their
loved ones. Hundreds of thousands are now unemployed, civil liberties are
being constricted, public health and public safety facilities are being
challenged, even the postal system is compromised. All this, in turn, has
an even wider impact on the global economy and other urgent matters of
international peace and security.

Coalition Effort

The Bush administration quickly moved to build a broad coalition of
countries against terrorism with an emphasis on al-Quaida and those helping
it. The president sent U.S. special forces into Afghanistan, formed an
alliance with the anti-Taliban forces based among the Tajik and Uzbek
nationalities, and launched a powerful air war against the Taliban's
military forces and infrastructure. Also, U.S. security agencies have
linked up with their counterparts in other countries, and have arrested
dozens of suspected members of al-Quaida cells in the United Kingdom,
Germany, France and Spain. In the U.S. several hundred foreign nationals
are being held, with a smaller number under high suspicion of being linked
to Bin Laden's network.

At the same time, the Bush White House talks about getting back to normal,
getting on with our lives. But the fact of the matter is that we can't get
back to where things were before Sept. 11. It's not just buildings and
human bodies that were destroyed that day; a deep wound has been cut into
our social fabric. The global conflict, despite the retreat of the Taliban
from Afghan cities, is far from over; and most Americans expect more terror
attacks to come.

Two Americas

What perspective can help make sense of this global emergency? What should
be our response, as an American left, to the crisis now confronting us?

The reality is that two Americas find themselves in a basic conflict with
al-Quaida and the forces it leads.

One is the America of Empire. It seeks security for its sources of energy,
stability for its markets, reliable and expanding returns of its
investments, fear and respect of its military power, and hegemony for its
politics and culture.

The other is the America of Popular Democracy. It seeks peace and
prosperity for itself and everyone else, freedom from the restrictions of
racial, sexist and class privilege, democratic participation in political
life, freedom of speech and tolerance of differences in creeds and styles
of life, freedom of religion and freedom from the violence and intimidation
of religious zealots.

Al-Quaida makes no distinctions between these two Americas; it has declared
its holy war on both of them. The Bush White House, for its part, is
delivering the American Empire's "first war of the 21st century" response-a
response which, despite its immediate gains on the ground, is inherently
compromised by hypocrisy, narrow economic interests, policy divisions and
several self-defeating tactics. It is now widely known that successive U.S.
administrations helped to form and nourish bin Laden's forces in the Afghan
resistance to the Soviets, gave early support to the Taliban as a counter
to Iran's influence, helped Unocal plot with various regional factions over
access to the region's oil and gas resources, and fought within the U.S.
establishment's own ranks to discredit earlier efforts to destroy
al-Quaida.  With this background, even when Bush says all the right things
on the current crisis, his message is considerably compromised, especially
in the Islamic world.

Our task is to define and put out an alternative. We need to take a clear
stand for the destruction of al-Quaida's terrorist network, but within that
struggle, to project a progressive voice and vision, a strategy and
tactics, for the other America, in order to defeat the threat posed to us
by reactionaries at home and abroad.

This is not a simple task. Nothing quite like this has ever happened
before-the forces and contradictions involved are highly complex and the
scale is enormous, covering the entire globe.

Getting Clear on What Happened

But the first thing we need to do our work is clarity, starting with
clarity about what happened to us on Sept. 11.

The White House and the media immediately described the hijackings and
attacks as acts of war, and that the required U.S. response was to wage war
in return.

This was their first mistake. It wasn't because the attack wasn't horrible
enough to be labeled an act of war. Rather, it was wrong because it ceded
to the terrorists exactly what they were trying to do: provoke a holy war
between the U.S. and militant Islam, a war the al-Quaida network hopes will
soon draw in all of the "infidel" West and Muslim civilization generally.

A better approach for our America is to name the Sept 11 events as a crime
against humanity, a crime that has evoked a national and international
security emergency. Because of its scope, all necessary forces-police,
civil authority, national guard, intelligence and military, here and
abroad-should be mobilized to deal with it. But the insistence on the
criminal character of the perpetrators is required, not only to deny them a
political victory, but also to frame further action and response within the
duties, limitations and constraints of law, national and international.

The British military historian Sir Michael Howard, in a recent speech now
being widely circulated at top levels of Western governments, explains the
importance of the matter this way:

"To use, or rather to misuse the term 'war' is not simply a matter of
legality, or pedantic semantics. It has deeper and more dangerous
consequences. To declare that one is 'at war' is immediately to create a
war psychosis that may be totally counter-productive for the objective that
we seek. It will arouse an immediate expectation, and demand, for
spectacular military action against some easily identifiable adversary,
preferably a hostile state; action leading to decisive results.
"The use of force is no longer seen as a last resort, to be avoided if
humanly possible, but as the first, and the sooner it is used the better.
The press demands immediate stories of derring-do, filling their pages with
pictures of weapons, ingenious graphics, and contributions from service
officers long, and probably deservedly, retired. Any suggestion that the
best strategy is not to use military force at all, but more subtle if less
heroic means of destroying the adversary are dismissed as 'appeasement' by
ministers whose knowledge of history is about on a par with their skill at
political management."
The fact that this conflict is not yet a war in any traditional sense came
up immediately when Congress was queried about a declaration of war, and
many replied, "Against Whom?" The perpetrator doesn't have a state, or an
army, or a definite people, or even a fixed territory or location.
Al-Quaida is more like a network of drug cartels or a politicized mafia
with a large bankroll and terrible weapons than any comparison that might
be made with a third world country or even a third world national
liberation movement.
 

It fact Congress, in its declaration, called the crisis an emergency.  But
part of the problem of being an imperialist superpower is that it breeds an
unrealistic arrogance in the national psyche, especially at the level of
leadership. If something terrible happens to us, it has to have the most
extreme label.  It won't do to call it a crime, even a crime against
humanity. That's too wimpish; it makes us too much of a victim, and we're
not victims, we're the tough guys.  Attack us and you've declared war and
you'll get even tougher war from us in return.

Getting Clear on the Terrorists

Calling Sept. 11 a monstrous crime, however, doesn't belittle al-Quaida's
dangerousness, strength, skill or political acumen. It has plenty of all
these. It has obtained support of various kinds from a number of states,
while being careful not to be dependent on any of them for anything. (Even
with the Taliban, it is not certain in this symbiotic relationship who
controls whom, or who has the ability to "turn over" whom.) It is united
around a feudal-theocratic-fascistic ideology anchored in thousands of cult
training schools. These schools, located in centers of Muslim populations
around the world, supply a steady stream of recruits.

What about al-Quaida's fighters and cadres? Depending on which sources you
read, Bin Laden in Afghanistan has an inner circle of 500 personal guards,
surrounded by another circle of 2000 terrorists-in-training, surrounded by
an outer circle of 5000-10,000 fighters more loyal to him than the Taliban.
Now place these forces in the context of globalization: secret cells and
allies in 60 or so countries, access to weapons and technology, enormous
transnational wealth, and millions of active fundamentalist Muslim
sympathizers on every continent.

This gives us some clarity about al-Quaida. It is neither a handful of
fanatics nor a front for Iraq or some other country. This criminal "network
of networks," nonetheless, is the present, immediate danger to the safety
and security of American people. It is also a serious threat to other
Western countries and to world peace and security generally. It is a
serious danger not only because of its global reach and demonstrated use of
terror, but also because of it now claims possession of nuclear weapons.
Bin Laden has for several years openly expressed the desire to acquire and
use weapons of mass destruction, including biological warfare and
ground-delivered "suitcase" nuclear devices.

Key Question Can't Be Ignored

How to stop and defeat this danger is the principal question on the minds
of the American people. It can't be ignored or set aside by any progressive
force working for peace that wants to be taken seriously. We may not yet
have all or even a substantial part of the answers to the questions
involved, but we must do our best to deal with it. Refusal to include a
focus against al-Quaida's terrorism as a critical part of the struggle for
peace dooms the movement, at best, to irrelevancy and failure.

We are already in a difficult situation. Thanks to the White House and the
media, the Empire's rhetoric of war has started the anti-terrorism campaign
off on the wrong foot, at the wrong pace and with all the attendant
unrealistic expectations. After only a few weeks, the media lamented the
lack of more spectacular victories and decisive engagements. The hard
right's politicians and pundits clamored for massive troop deployments,
harsher bombing with less concern for casualties among the Afghan people,
and wider attacks on Iraq and Iran. Some are even raising the specter of
tactical nuclear weapons to shatter hideouts embedded in Afghanistan's
mountain ranges. Now, with the Taliban retreat to the mountains and success
of the Northern Alliance and other anti-Taliban forces in the cities, new
confusion reigns on how to reshape Afghanistan and pursue bin Laden at the
same time.

This discord is reflected at the top. No secret has been made of the
division in the Bush administration between Secretary of State Colin Powell
and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. Powell has maintained a
"narrow the target" focus on al-Quaida and has worked to build a broad
coalition of support, including many countries with large Islamic
populations. Other terrorisms will be dealt with later on a case-by-case
basis.  For the Wolfowitz faction, taking on al-Quaida is just a stepping
stone to strike at Iraq, Iran and Syria, and the sooner, the better.

The Main Danger at Home

Clarity on these divisions is also important to us. The hard right and its
policies are the most dangerous threat to peace and the most self-defeating
response to terrorism in our country. Its opinion journals and think tanks,
like the National Review, the Weekly Standard and the New Republic, are in
open polemics against Colin Powell and his coalition-building efforts. This
faction does not yet have the upper hand in the Bush administration, and it
is extremely important for the left and the progressive forces generally to
prevent it from gaining ascendancy.

Why is it to our advantage, as the democratic alternative to Empire, to
focus on the hard right and the extremes it encourages, rather than, say,
imperialism generally?  What is our advantage in stressing the moderating
constraints of criminal justice, even when we know apprehending the
criminals and destroying their operations will require decisive and
appropriate military force, which we should support, at the right time and
place?

The reason is that the military defeat of the present immediate danger,
al-Quaida, also requires concurrent victories against it on the political,
cultural and economic fronts. These victories will require the broadest
alliances-the vast majority of the American people, the peoples and
governments of other countries, the UN, and elements of our own government
and military.

New Thinking on Warfare

There is, in fact, an important discussion going in the U.S. military on
the concept of "netwar." Spurred by RAND Corporation analysts John Arquilla
and David Ronfelt, the non-traditional terrorist and drug cartel threats to
peace and security require equally non-traditional responses.  Arquilla
introduces his views in a recent interview with the Foreign Policy Association:
"What we are seeing is a kind of dark league of networked non-state actors
who have a great deal of capability to do harm. They capitalize upon a
trend that is about a century long now, beginning with the rise of high
explosives that has seen the increasing destructive and disruptive power of
small groups. So some years ago, David (Ronfelt) and I came up with the
notion that networks would fight in a particular way against hierarchical
states, and other large institutional actors, and so we called that
"netwar." The idea being that these networks didn't need a territory of
their own, so that they distribute themselves across a global grid, could
strike at will, could mass when they choose, and would hold the initiative,
would remain shadowy, perhaps we wouldn't ever know exactly who they were,
and that they could cause a great deal of increasing harm over the years.
We caught this glimpse of netwar some years ago, and now I am afraid to say
we are living in this period. The terror war is indeed the first full-blown
netwar."

Arquilla describes al-Quaida, in information theory terms, as a "network of
networks" chained together as a global "hybrid peer-to-peer network."  Most
computer networkers will know exactly what he means. But to put it briefly,
it means each widely distributed cell or node can communicate directly with
any other cell, yet at the same time gain access to and share centrally
stored resources. There is also a high degree of redundancy, meaning that
taking out one or even several nodes or resources doesn't necessarily bring
down the whole network.
 

Network and Netwars:  The Future of Terror, Crime and Militancy, by John Arquilla and David Ronfelt (editors), RAND, 2001. Summary: The fight for the future is not between the armies of leading states, nor are its weapons those of traditional armed forces. Rather, the combatants come from bomb-making terrorist groups like Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda, or drug smuggling cartels like those in Colombia and Mexico. On the positive side are civil-society activists fighting for the environment, democracy and human rights. What all have in common is that they operate in small, dispersed units that can deploy anywhere, anytime to penetrate and disrupt. They all feature network forms of organization, doctrine, strategy, and technology attuned to the information age. And, from the Intifadah to the drug war, they are proving very hard to beat.  Press Release.  Summary. Text.

Arquilla and Ronfelt argue that "it takes a network to defeat a network,"
meaning that traditional military hierarchies are not very effective. The
December 2001 Wired Magazine sums up their theory in five points:

Decentralize Intelligence. This means information needs to be shared and
open, although without compromising sources. National and bureaucratic
firewalls won't do. Case in point: A Middle Eastern man was detailed in
Minnesota on the tip of a flight school that had become suspicions because
he paid cash and only wanted to learn to steer 747s, not takeoff and
land.  He was in jail on Sept. 11.  But he was also at the same time being
sought by French intelligence, who knew he was an extremely dangerous
member of an Algerian terrorist group linked to al-Quaida.  The U.S. and
the French did not know about each others efforts on this matter until way
after the fact.

Learn to Swarm. This is where small, dispersed forces quickly concentrate
for attack, rather than the slower maneuvers of larger force
structures.  The Sept 11 hijackings are an example, as were the embassy
bombings in Africa. The negative example on the other side is what the
Soviets did in Afghanistan, bringing in large forces that could be bled to
death.

Attack the Core.  Although a peer-to-peer network, al-Quaida has core
resources in training centers, money and leadership. Disrupt these, and the
overall network is knocked down several levels. The local nodes are then
easier to pick off.

Rethink Technology.  Al-Quaida demonstrated the damage that could be done
by fanatically combining boxcutters, know-how and the internet. Star
Wars-type missile and anti-missile systems are a sink hole for resources
and relics of a different era. It may be more cost-effective to spend more
billions on the Peace Corps.

Manage the Story.  Terrorist groups all have a narrative, a story they tell
about themselves to unite internally, bring in recruits and expand their
supporters. Not only does their story need to be discredited and disrupted
with accurate information, an honest counter-story needs to be projected by
the anti-terrorists.

"I think that we have a terrible event that occurred a month ago," said
Arquilla to the FPA, "but it is also one that should galvanize us to build
a global network to confront terror. We have this opportunity to do so
before terrorists can strike with, say, nuclear weapons. I think that is
the real stakes in this conflict…I would suggest that as much as religious
belief is a basis for cohesion in al-Quaida, so we can build an
international network, and indeed a national network within our own
country, that can fight nimbly against al-Quaida, and it can be held
together by this overarching mission statement, which is 'We must defeat
terror, before it acquires weapons of mass destruction.' I don't know how
much time we have to wage that war, but I have a real sense of urgency
about it. It seems to me that the real glue in a network is the belief and
the loyalties of its members. Al-Quaida achieves this through religion and
kinship ties. I believe global civil society and our various allies around
the world can achieve a similar level of cohesion."

The nonmilitary, civil society methods of obtaining victories against
terrorism and wider war-political mobilization, public discussion and
education, participation in homeland defense, investigation and exposure,
legal indictments and economic sanctions-are tedious and will try our
patience and courage. There will be considerable contention and debate on
how to proceed among the various class and social forces. Sometimes we will
win and sometimes we will lose to other elements in the broad alliances we
will find ourselves in. But these political and democratic methods are
essential groundwork if our final victory is to affirm the values we want
to defend in the first place.

Bin Laden's terrorism opposes our democratic values. It is basically a
political and psychological weapon to manipulate, twist and control mass
consciousness of both friends and enemies. The control of symbols and
meanings are extremely important to its craft. With ruthlessness and
stealth, it creates violent, irrational spectacles that shatter the
ordinary rational patterns of life, spectacles that evoke fear in the enemy
camp and courage among friends and allies-the more violent, intimidating
and daring the spectacle, the greater the fear, disruption and admiration
to be evoked.

Terrorism is also judo-like in its inclusion of the enemy's immediate
reaction to the initial deed in its broader plan of changing public
perception of the enemy among its potential friends. Terrorists often hope,
for instance, to provoke an indiscriminant, violent response from the
authorities so as to further expose the repressive, class character of the
state in the minds of those they hope to win over, neutralize or agitate
into greater confusion and division.

Osama bin Laden is playing this political game with considerable skill. In
less than 20 years, he has transformed himself from an oil-rich Saudi
playboy into an anti-Western hero in the eyes of millions of Islamic youth
around the world. The only way to defeat him and unravel his organization
is to turn that equation around. His "freedom fighter" status must be
changed to "criminal and mass murderer" through a protracted and
resourceful public opinion battle, especially among his sympathizers.  Some
of the friends of al-Quaida know where the terrorist "heros" are hiding, in
the Afghanistan mountains as well as in their safe houses in other
countries. But if the hero status is stripped away and the more sinister
nature revealed, even former friends can be convinced to give them up and
help bring them to justice.

Terrorism and anti-terrorism, then, is all about "winning hearts and
minds."  As Howard puts it, "Without hearts and minds one cannot obtain
intelligence, and without intelligence terrorists can never be defeated."
Every military and economic action has to be measured with this
yardstick.  An air war can destroy its military targets, but it can still
be turned into overall defeat with unacceptable civilian casualties. In the
end, al-Quaida's forces have to be seized or destroyed on the ground. But
it is next to impossible to do so amidst a civilian population that has
been enraged and alienated by indiscriminate attacks destroying their lives
and livelihood.

Critical Battles Ahead

It is also important to be clear about where the front lines are in this
conflict.  Strategically, they reach far beyond Afghanistan.  The most
important political battle exists all along the fault line revealed by the
hundreds of thousands of Islamic youth that turned out in the streets in
demonstrations supporting bin Laden,  the Taliban and "jihad" against the
West.  The fact that the mullahs were rallying the poorest of the poor
against the richest of the rich did not make the political thrust of these
events any less reactionary.

What these demonstrations reveal is the depth of the problem: Corrupt and
anti-democratic regimes persist throughout the Islamic world in a context
where the medievalist, fascistic opposition to their rule is often far
stronger than any democratic, progressive alternative.

One thing is certain.  Strategically, the America of Empire is part of the
problem, not part of the solution. To secure oil for bankrupt energy
policies, it has spent billions after billions, decade after decade, to
bankroll militarism in both Israel and the Arab oil-producing countries.
Playing power politics in regional conflicts, it has manipulated Iraq
against Iran, then Iran against Iraq-all the while indifferent to a million
dead on the battlefield and mutual ruin of the peoples concerned. In the
name of the Cold War, it went to every length to destroy a progressive
Islamic left and nurture a traditionalist Islamic right.  Globalization and
technology, which hold the promise of overcoming North-South inequality,
have expanded in the face of deep unemployment and harsh living conditions
throughout the Islamic world.

"In a globalized world with instant communications, it is impossible to
have excessive opulence alongside grinding poverty without something,
sometime, somewhere, exploding," said William Van Dusen Wishard, a former
official in the Commerce Department and president of WorldTrends Research.

Our America, on the other hand, can be part of the solution.  With all the
resources of civil society, of a broad movement against terror and war, we
can severely limit, in the short run, the harm the American Empire could do
by ignoring civilian casualties and suffering, expanding the war to Iraq or
Iran, one-sidedly encouraging Israel against Palestine, or aggravating
divisions between India and Pakistan. As an American left, we would do best
to build a broad consensus, here and abroad, around the following points:

* No Wider War. Opposition to the hard right's efforts to subvert the
global coalition against terrorism by invading Iraq and Iran. Change can be
brought about in these countries by other means.

* Oppose the attack on civil liberties, especially Bush's new military
tribunals. Oppose torture of prisoners and other detainees. Respect for the
U.S. Bill of Rights at home and the UN Declaration on Human Rights abroad.

* Support an UN transitional government in Afghanistan that support basic
human rights and would be representative of all Afghan
nationalities.  Support the development of oil and gas pipeline resources
that would primarily benefit the peoples of the region, rather than the
energy companies.

* End the food, medical and other nonmilitary sanctions against Iraq. These
do little to weaken Hussein and cause great suffering to the people of Iraq.

* Support Palestinian Statehood and oppose Israel's ongoing seizure of
Palestinian land through its "settlement" policies.

* Work to secure and then eliminate all weapons of mass destruction,
especially nuclear and bacteriological weapons.

* Work for a Green Energy and Transportation Policy. Shift tax subsidies
from nonrenewable carbon-based energy  to wind, solar, geothermal and other
renewable resources. Shift tax subsidies from air travel to high-speed
intra-city rail systems.

In the long run, we can do even more.  Since we are not constrained by a
lust for profit or hegemony, we can take on the global plunderers who think
global equality is a race to the bottom and everything human is a
commodity.  But this doesn't mean making alliances with the anti-modernist
attack of the mullahs on globalization. There is a positive, progressive
high road through globalization and beyond that can bring the benefits on
modern science, technology and culture to the vast majority of humanity.

But we can't do so by ignoring the present danger.  It is said that the
mistakes and tragedies of war are caused by generals who try to fight
today's conflicts with the battle plans of the previous war.  Today the
same danger faces the peace movement; it must not make itself a prisoner to
old ideas formed when the only enemy was at home and the just cause was on
the other side.

Carl Davidson ( cdavidson@igc.org ) is the editor of the cyberMarxist
journal, cy.Rev available at www.cyrev.net. He is also a national committee
member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism,
although this article does not necessarily reflect the views of CCDS. In
the 1960s and 1970s, he was a national leader of the student and peace
movements.

------------
 

  INTERNATIONAL STRIKE AGAINST WAR, DECEMBER 5

  The call for an international strike of pupils and students against
  war for December 5 spreads internationally. Some collectives created
  to prepare it ; others are in creation now. There are contacts in 18
  French towns, and also in Algeria, Belgium, Brazil, Czech republic,
  Germany, Great-Britain, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, New-Zealand,
  Portugal and USA.

  The international call has been translated in English, German and
  French, and we wait for others languages. If you are interested in the
  preparation of December 5 strike against war, you can send us an email
  to nonalaguerrelille@altern.org

  Nicolas
  (Collective No War ! Lille, France)

  ------------------------

Here is an anti-war statement:

  No war, nor border !

  Call to an International Strike of Pupils and students
  Wednesday, the 5th of December

  The 11th of september 2001, a handful of people made an incredible
  violent act, killing thousand of ordinary peoples.

  To this vile and inhuman act, reply another vile and inhuman act.

  To the religious terrorism, reply the State terrorism.

  In order to ease itself's conscience, the american authorities gave to
  this war a humanist justification : they tell they want to punish a single
  terrorist and overthrow the Taliban dictatorship, but it is a whole
  population they are bombing.

  In the same time, they send some food, in the case that dead people
  would be still hungry .

  But we have to find the the real reason for this war elsewhere. As in
  Iraq or in Kosovo, behind the humanitarian pretext are hidding
  economic motivations. One more time, United States want to extend
  their financial influence and to control new territories. There is no
  "clean war".

  · We consider that war is not a suitable solution for the terrorism
  problem ; we refuse the "eye for eye" law

  · We refuse to watch passively the massacre of innocent ordinary
  people. We refused those States, which decide by themselves on the
  future of the mankind.

  · We claim to be antimilitarist.

  · We refuse any war, and we consider that nothing can justify this
  absurdity of war

  To watch passively a war, means to accept it. And to accept the war
  means to contribute to.

  ANOTHER WORD IS ESSENTIAL !!!

  Collective of Pupils against (Lille, France)
  Contact : nonalaguerrelille@altern.org