By Henry J. Stern
August 4, 2006
This week has been difficult for New Yorkers to endure. With war proceeding
in Lebanon, violence spreading in Iraq and a massive heat wave bringing on
the threat of a power failure at home, most people are uncomfortable and
many are afraid. There is also a lack of confidence in public officials,
based on their loss of credibility. Some of what they say we know to
be untrue.
Friends and Enemies
On the radio many years ago when I was a child, comedians pretended to be
enemies, when they were in fact friends and colleagues. In boxing,
ordinary fights were billed as grudge matches, with one rival or another
supposedly thirsting for the other’s blood. Trash talk later became
a way to incite public interest in paid entertainment. In fact, the
fighters were usually either apathetic toward each other, or felt that they
were companions of sorts in a grueling experience.
Years ago when I ran for the City Council a generation ago, my opponents
and I felt quite friendly before debates or joint appearances. We might
be critical in public, as the occasion required, but to a large extent, we
identified with each other.
Today, in politics, the players act as if they were friendly but in reality
usually do not like each other one bit. I know this from years of listening
to them in private. Everyone knows it is a good business to appear
calm and unflappable, not to bear grudges or express hostility, to appear,
to the extent possible, as above the fray. The angry man is the loser
by today's media standards, unless the anger coincides with the rage that
many viewers feel about the world in general and politics in particular.
Apes and Swine
When the illusion of tranquility and good will is shattered, even briefly,
by the rant of a drunken Mel Gibson, many people wonder how many other Christians
share his hostile views. We know some Muslims who have expressed contempt
for Jews (as sons of apes and pigs). We thought this had begun with
some latter-day hatemonger, but it appears that the words may have been written
into the Koran.
Sura
5:60- “There are those whom Allah has cast aside and on whom His wrath
has fallen, and of whom He has made some as apes and swine.”
Does that mean us? It’s hard to be certain, but the language does not
appear complimentary. And if one listens to the Arab radio and television
stations broadcasting in the Middle East or the schools established and operated
with United Nations funds, it is made clear exactly who is intended to be
the subject of the verse.
When the chief executive of a member state of the United States proclaims
publicly that another member state should be wiped from the face of the earth,
and suggests that if he had the means, he would act on that idea, one cannot
say that the world is at peace, even if it is quiet at the moment.
And, of course, there is a great deal of shooting going on, and hundreds
of rockets flying each day, all intended to kill people.
Some historians believe that World War III is already under way. To
us it began in
Beirut
on October 23, 1983, at 6:20 a.m., although we had no idea
of it at that time. October 23, 1983 is a date which should have been
proclaimed to live in infamy. It is the date when a Hezbollah truck,
loaded with explosives was driven into a barracks at the international airport,
killing 241 American servicemen and women, primarily Marines. Rather
than pursuing and eliminating the attackers, as was done with the pirates
of
Tripoli in the early
19th century, President Reagan responded by withdrawing all American forces
from Lebanon, which became a Syrian protectorate. President Bush the
elder led a worldwide response to the invasion of Kuwait in 1991, over the
opposition of a great majority of Senate Democrats, but due to international
pressure, he left the invaders alone. The United States did urge the
marsh Arabs in Southern Iraq to arise, after which they were slaughtered
by Saddam Hussein and the marshes drained so the area could no longer support
life. The outcome was similar to winning the battles of World War II
and then stopping at the German border.
President Clinton was distressed at the first attack on the
World
Trade Center (February 26, 1993), which was treated as an isolated criminal
act masterminded by a
blind sheik in New
Jersey; the bombing of
Khobar Towers
in Saudi Arabia on June 25, 1996, which killed 19 U.S, servicemen; the bombing
of our
embassies
in Kenya and Tanzania, on August 7, 1998 (in Nairobi, 224 killed and in Dar-es-Salaam,
11 killed); and the attack on the
U.S.S. Cole on October
12, 2000, which killed 17 sailors. Our reaction to the African bombings
was to fire a Tomahawk missile into a soap factory in the Sudan.
Plans to kill Osama Bin Laden, who was thought to have some responsibility
for these events, were reportedly scotched by
Samuel R. Berger,
the national security adviser, who was recently prominent when he was caught
trying to steal documents from the Library of Congress by stuffing them in
his pants.
Clinton deserves credit, however, for his use of force (78 days of air strikes
on
Belgrade)
which brought peace to the former Yugoslavia in 1999. Remember that
Clinton’s Secretaries of State were the elegant
Warren Minor Christopher
(1993-97) and the diverse
Madeline Korbel Albright
(1997-2001).
With the modest and ineffective United States response to his previous efforts,
it is understandable that Osama Bin Laden felt the necessity to do something
bigger to call attention to his cause. The tragic result was September
11, 2001.
We all know what has happened in the last five years. The point we
make in this article is that there were warnings, there was an eighteen-year
run-up to 9/11, and that earlier American action might have had an impact
on Al Qaeda’s growth, its leadership and its ability to conduct major operations.
We hope you will excuse this diversion from New York City government issues,
but there are several wars under way at the moment, and we thought this minor
historical excursion might be helpful in promoting understanding of where
we are and what happened in the last quarter-century to put us in the current
situation. Compared with the world situation, our city looks pretty
good.