Nine-Eleven Reflections: The “baby boom” generation to which I belong is now in charge of the country, and three years ago today we got our biggest dose of reality ever. (Right about this hour, the towers were coming down; I was a safe distance away in Newark, but I did get outside to see the bizarre sight of one tower standing, smoking like a chimney. I went back inside and a fellow worker told me that the second tower just went; it’s just as well that I didn’t see that.) We Boomers grew up singing about peace and love, draft beer not students, make love not war. Now we’re running the show, and we find out that some powerful and dangerous elements from across the seas have rejected our offer of an idealistic new world. Instead, they are coming at us using very ancient techniques and philosophies. E.g., survival of the strongest and nastiest, something that served Atilla the Hun and Genghis Khan quite well.

I’m not a big fan of President Bush and I won’t vote for him in November. However, I will give him credit for pushing the battle line across the ocean, to the homeland of those powerful and dangerous elements that toppled the towers and smashed the Pentagon. You have to be a real liberal to argue against the Afghanistan war, and I’m just not that real. As to the Iraq invasion, I still think it was a mistake. But it did draw the front line far from our borders. Even though it started out as a war against Saddam Hussein and the Baathists, the Iraqi campaign has become a long-term, low-intensity battlefield against Al Qaeda and its clones. It has merged with the continuing American military presence in Afghanistan into an overall shooting battle between the US and the Greater Middle East Terror Establishment; this was pointed out the other day by Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama’s right hand man, on a video shown on Al Jazeera.

In a lot of ways, that’s not good. Our troops and generals are probably in for years of on-and-off battles in Afghanistan, Iraq, and some other places like that. Maybe 500 or so Americans are going to die each year for perhaps the next ten years. We will no doubt see some progress in forming modernized, Westernized forms of representative government in the region. But the nasty elements won’t let us say “mission accomplished” and leave; they will threaten to take apart everything we established once we’re gone.

You might be thinking that I’m wrong about this and that the mysterious forces that challenge us in Iraq and Afghanistan can’t be all that strong; we can surely root them out, given our incredible military might. I’m old enough to remember when people used to think the same thing about the Viet Cong. As with Vietnam in the 60s, the Middle East today has millions of young people taught to hate and resent America. We can keep on killing 20 of our shadowy enemy for every American life lost; but they won’t have much problem replacing every martyr of theirs that we dispatch to the heavenly realm of the thousand black-eyed virgins.

So, perhaps even the most liberal of us owe GWB some respect for taking the fight to the enemy’s doorstep. At 5 PM on 9-11-01, I was totally convinced that we were in for more horror. Visions of suicide bombers in crowded malls and dirty bombs going off in financial districts danced through my head that night. And yet here we are, three years later. We’re not out of the woods by any means, but even if the next big homeland catastrophe comes later today (and I pray that it doesn’t), it’s still hard to believe that we’ve had three years of safety, albeit a very nervous and anxious kind of safety.

But at this point, the die is cast. Even if Kerry were to somehow turn things around and be elected, he’s not going to bring the boys (and girls) home from the Middle East, despite his campaign promises. If not Iraq, it’s gonna be Yemen or Indonesia or some where else. And obviously GWB is in no hurry to lay down our guns, even if losing 500 or so Americans every year starts to make people out in the heartland a little bit ornery. Hopefully that will put the next big domestic attack off for as long as possible. But we could be in for another big shock in the near future, even if it doesn’t take place on our soil.

Here’s what I’m thinking: Pakistan has nukes and a cadre of scientists and engineers who know how nukes work. As Graham Allison pointed out in an article in the October, 2004 Atlantic Magazine, a whole lot of people in the Pakistani government have ties to Al Qaeda and its affiliates despite Pakistan’s nominal allegiance to the United States. Over the next five years or so, it becomes more and more likely that enough equipment and nuclear expertise will seep out, into the hands of the wrong people. At some point, Al Qaeda may be ready to try out a crude atomic device. It will probably be rather large and fragile, and it may not have enough yield to take out an entire city (at least not on the first couple of tries). It will probably require nursing and tinkering by its inventors right up to the last minute. So, it may still be quite a while yet before Al Qaeda could sneak a nuke into New York City on a container ship and level the face of Manhattan.

However, the nasty boys might soon be able to put a not – ready – for – prime – time bomb on a pickup truck and drive it up to the gate of an American military base in Iraq or Afghanistan, make a few last checks and adjustments, hit a timer switch (which might even allow the driver and crew enough time to run for their lives), and boom, take out maybe 200 soldiers or marines in one fell swoop. And leave behind a radioactive crater where no one can go for years. And leave everyone in the US and Europe shaking in their boots wondering when Al Qaeda or whomever is going to sneak a bomb into their backyard.

I totally hope that I’m wrong here and that we’ve got a close eye on the nuclear situation in Pakistan (and elsewhere). But let’s face it, right now we’re living by the sword. The sword can keep you alive for a while, but eventually you’re gonna die by it. The U.S. is the richest country in the world, but is also one of the greediest. Of the “developed nations” of the world, i.e. Japan, Canada, the US and Western Europe, the U.S. gives almost the lowest share of its national wealth away in foreign aid. OK, if you include private donations in with the government programs, the ranking gets a bit better, but still ain’t great. Foreign Policy magazine recently updated its overall ranking of the 21 richest nations regarding their overall impact on the poor; this study considers foreign aid, low-cost loans, investment, trade policy, immigration policy, and peacekeeping efforts. The U.S. comes out somewhere around the middle, tied with Germany and France. Our friends in Australia, Canada and Great Britain do better. Uncle Sam could definitely do more for the world. (To see the article, do a Google using ‘Foreign Policy Ranking Rich 2004’; otherwise you have to register with the Foreign Policy site).

This ain’t good. Instead of relying so much on our guns and smart bombs, maybe we had better start sharing the wealth some more. When you’re the rich man in a poor village, you’re gonna get mugged sooner or later. But if you use your wealth to help the village to become a better place, well – you may still get mugged, but at least you’ll keep your halo.