Day of infamy

The hunt is on for those responsible for the worst terrorist attack ever seen. As the scale of the atrocity sinks in, and the death toll continues to mount, Americans will be looking to their president for leadership



A monumental struggle

“A MONUMENTAL struggle”, was how President Bush described it, “of good versus evil.” Such was the horror of September 11th's suicide-hijackings in New York and Washington that few would quibble with the president's apocalyptic tone, nor with his description of them as “acts of war”. But there was nothing approaching such a consensus on the appropriate response. Although there were widespread suspicions about the terrorist most likely to be behind them—Osama bin Laden—there was no proof. Nor, even if there were, would the government or public opinion be satisfied with simple tit-for-tat retaliation.

“Let's not think that one single counter-attack,” said Colin Powell, the secretary of state, “will rid the world of terrorism of the kind we saw yesterday…This is going to take a multi-faceted attack on many dimensions…All sorts of things have to be done to bring this scourge under control.” But, like his colleagues, Mr Powell studiously avoided specifying what sorts of things must be done to whom. That depends on the intensive forensic examination now underway.

Much of that investigation is taking place in Boston, from whose airport two of the hijacked planes took off. A local newspaper has reported that investigators there found a pair of bags accidentally left behind by one of the planes, containing a copy of the Koran, a videotape on how to fly a commercial airliner and a fuel-consumption table. Another report claimed that five Arab men had been identified as suspects, and that a hired car, in which Arabic-language training manuals were found, had been seized. In Florida, meanwhile, a number of homes and businesses belonging to passengers on the flights were searched. Several people have been detained for questioning in both Boston and Florida. The FBI says it knows the identities of many of the hijackers. The hunt for those involved is international, spreading to Mexico, Canada and even Thailand. On September 13th, German police, acting on an FBI tip-off, arrested a man in Hamburg. An undisclosed number of people have been detained for questioning in America.

More evidence has been provided by mobile phone calls made by frightened passengers on the hijacked planes. This suggests that groups four or five hijackers on each of the planes herded passengers and crew into the back of the aircraft, threatening them with knives and box cutters. On one plane, passengers decided to overpower the hijackers when they heard, again over cell phones, of what had happened in New York. The aircraft, aimed at Washington, crashed into a field.

On past form, this investigation stands a good chance of success. Starting with no more evidence than a fragment of the van that held the bomb in the previous World Trade Centre bombing in 1993, the FBI eventually tracked down an entire terrorist ring based in New Jersey. A similar forensic trail led police to the bombers of the American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, which were subject to simultaneous attack in 1998. At the time of Tuesday's attack, four of them were languishing in a jail just a few blocks from the World Trade Centre awaiting sentencing. Another suspect is awaiting trial. On this occasion, there are reports that congratulatory phone calls between jubilant aides to Osama bin Laden were intercepted not long after the disasters.


On the case

Even if America succeeds in netting the small fry, however, the mastermind is presumably safely holed up in some faraway land. American officials have been at pains to show they are not leaping to any conclusions about which group or country orchestrated the attack. But if they can identify the culprits, or even make a plausible guess, the response is likely to be swift and severe. Like Israel's government, America's will be anxious to demonstrate that no attack on their country goes unpunished. Military officials have been quoted threatening America's enemies with “a very large hammer that can be brought to bear in a number of ways at any time.”

But whom to hammer? Even if America finds evidence, or persuades itself, that Osama bin Laden is to blame, that does not mean that his protectors in Afghanistan approved the attack. Mr Bush has said he would draw no distinction between the perpetrators and those who shelter them, giving himself a mandate to bomb all manner of third-world boltholes. But retaliating against a country like Afghanistan will be neither effective nor satisfying.

The likeliest targets are all rogue states, impoverished, war-torn ruins. As it is, one faction in Afghanistan's civil war is already bombing Kabul. The spectacle of America contributing to the 20-year-long devastation of Afghanistan would be less than edifying. It would also be very unlikely to result in the death of Mr bin Laden or of many of his followers. They have presumably already evacuated their known bases, in expectation of some sort of retaliation. America clearly does not have very sound intelligence on Mr bin Laden's comings and goings, or it would have known he was planning a massive terrorist blitz. And it has already attempted to target him once before, after the bombing of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, to no avail. That cruise-missile strike proved a total fiasco, when one of the bombs landed by accident in neighbouring Pakistan, and another destroyed a purported chemical-weapons plant in Sudan that turned out to be an innocent aspirin factory. If anything, America's heavy-handed reprisal stoked the sort of anti-American feeling reflected in the horrors in New York and Washington.

American military planners are probably also considering sending American troops into Afghanistan to hunt down Mr bin Laden and his cadres. Such a move has enormous risks. For starters, Afghanistan is not an easy place to invade, even on a commando raid—as the Soviet Union discovered to its cost. Furthermore, any move that destabilised the Taliban regime could easily come back to haunt America, in the form of intensified civil war, redoubled drug cultivation, chaos in Pakistan and so on.

Counting the cost

As the search for the perpetrators of the outrages gathered steam, there was no let-up in the hunt for survivors. Rescue workers are still digging and sifting through the debris at the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.


Hope amid the rubble

New York's mayor, Rudy Giuliani, said on September 13th that 4,763 people were still missing in the city, but even that may not represent the full death toll. Earlier, the port authority estimated that as many as 20,000 people may have died in the World Trade Centre and the shopping mall underneath. The city has ordered 11,000 body bags. Earlier, the mayor said that 259 rescue workers were missing, and about 1,100 people were being treated at local hospitals. That seems very few, compared with the numbers believed to have been inside the twin towers when they collapsed. Those on the higher floors had no way of escaping; some were seen jumping to their deaths to escape the horror inside. In Washington, estimates of the number of people who died in the Pentagon range from 100 to 300.

The death toll in the end is likely far to exceed the 2,400 or so who died 60 years ago at Pearl Harbour, on a “day of infamy” that stood as the worst previous act of undeclared war against America. In responding to this modern atrocity, most Americans are ready to rally together in national solidarity against a hidden enemy, and behind their president. But already, there has been criticism of Mr Bush: for his failure to return at once to Washington when disaster struck; for his wooden, uncomfortable demeanour at a time of national grief; and for the impression he has given of being behind the curve. The criticisms may be unfair—who knows what security advice prompted the president to delay his return to the capital—but, as he said of America, so it can be said of him: this is a test. He has yet to pass it.

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