Comment

Other Voices

originally published September 26, 2001

An Outline Of Our War Aims

"We must be clear that our purpose is not mere vengeance for the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001," said Robert Tracinski, columnist for Creators Syndicate and senior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute. "The goal of this war is a cold, practical necessity: to eliminate a threat to civilization."

Tracinski's "must do" outline of our war aims:

1. We must have a clear grasp of the means, ends, and morality of the war we are about to wage.

2. We must not regard these attacks as a criminal matter. The perpetrators are not just lone individuals, but the governments that support them.

3. We must eliminate the terrorist headquarters and training camps in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Sudan.

4. We must also depose these governments, capture or kill their leaders, and put whoever remains on trial for their war crimes - we must accept no apologies or offers of cooperation from them now.

5. We must replace these leaders with new regimes under the control of the United States - just as we did in Japan and Germany at the end of WWII.

6. We must undertake a military occupation of the Middle East to ensure that no terrorist organizations can ever again form to attack the United States.

7. We must be prepared to use nuclear weapons - just as we did to end WWII - to spare the lives of hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops.

8. We must prepare the American people to accept a very real, protracted, all-out war - to accept the grim task ahead and to prosecute it to the end.

The Ayn Rand Institute
Southerners Can Sympathize

Like most people, I watched in horror as the events unfolded but a few days ago in New York and Washington, D.C. Only slowly did the awful extent of this attack creep into my consciousness. It moved me on a very deep level. Something stirred within me; something I knew I didn·t want disturbed. The vast terror I witnessed had called to something deep within the recesses of my psyche, and to my amazement, it received a response. Curious, I tried to discern what it was that so distressed me deep within myself. What was it that revealed such kinship with calamity? It took a few days of reflection, but finally I realized what it was.

We must be prepared to use nuclear weapons - just as we did to end WWII - to spare the lives of hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops.

Indeed, the events of 11 September 2001 compose an atrocity that has rarely been seen in the world, and never in the North. But Southerners have seen such. Our unspeakable atrocity wasn·t a few days ago, but over 130 years ago. Ours wasn·t in the space of a few square blocks, but over 15,000 square miles - in Georgia alone! I have heard those responsible for the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks referred to as "beast" and "devil." We had those, too. There was General "Beast" Butler, who – among other things - issued his infamous General Order #28, which said that any local woman who offended any member of the Occupying Army would be treated as a common prostitute - and then thrown in jail for the night. And then, of course, there was that devil incarnate, General William T. Sherman. The death and destruction brought to the North recently took all of a couple of hours. The reign of terror brought upon Southern civilians by Lincoln·s terrorists lasted for months. Most were not killed immediately; rather, all livestock were slaughtered, farming implements destroyed, barns burned with their harvests in them, and even the family dog shot in front of the children. Civilian families - consisting mostly of women, children and the elderly - were heartlessly left to starve by Yankee terrorists in uniform. Before the soldiers moved on, many times they satisfied themselves by raping the (black as well as white) civilian women – and girls. Sherman himself estimated the damage at one hundred million dollars of which eighty million was simply waste and destruction. Recovery in New York is expected to take a few years. To this day Dixie has not recovered – has not been allowed to recover – financially, politically or emotionally.

Yes, the events of 11 September were horrific, and Southerners can fully sympathize with our northern neighbors. Your new pain and grief reawakens our old pain and grief, the wounds of the one just as raw as the wounds of the other. Our prayers and our aid go out to them, if for no other reason than because we have suffered even greater atrocities than this. We know. We understand. We remember. For a sovereign Georgia,

Bradford Isbell
State Chairman, Southern Party of Georgia
The Way Of The West

The horrendous terrorist attacks on Tuesday are something quite new in world affairs, not in their scale and character, but in the target. For the U.S., this is the first time since the War of 1812 that its national territory has been under attack, even threatened. Its colonies have been attacked, but not the national territory itself. During these years the U.S. virtually exterminated the indigenous population, conquered half of Mexico, intervened violently in the surrounding region, conquered Hawaii and the Philippines (killing hundreds of thousands of Filipinos), and in the past half century particularly, extended its resort to force throughout much of the world. The number of victims is colossal. For the first time, the guns have been directed the other way.

The same is true, even more dramatically, of Europe. Europe has suffered murderous destruction, but from internal wars, meanwhile conquering much of the world with extreme brutality. It has not been under attack by its victims outside, with rare exceptions (the IRA in England, for example). It is therefore natural that NATO should rally to the support of the U.S.; hundreds of years of imperial violence have an enormous impact on the intellectual and moral culture.

It is correct to say that this is a novel event in world history, not because of the scale of the atrocity - regrettably - but because of the target. How the West chooses to react is a matter of supreme importance. If the rich and powerful choose to keep to their traditions of hundreds of years and resort to extreme violence, they will contribute to the escalation of a cycle of violence, in a familiar dynamic, with long-term consequences that could be awesome. Of course, that is by no means inevitable. An aroused public within the more free and democratic societies can direct policies towards a much more humane and honorable course.

Noam Chomsky
(excerpted from a radio interview)