The New York Times news department responds in today's paper to yesterday's attack the way a great newspaper should -- with textured, factual and comprehensive coverage that puts the newspaper's vast resources on display in an impressive way. Sure, there are moments of unintended comedy, as when the Times reports that President George W. Bush's plane "was surrounded by Air Force personnel in full combat gear with drawn M-16's." (An M-16 is big enough that, unlike a sword from a scabbard or a pistol from a holster, one wouldn't ordinarily speak of it being "drawn.") And sure, there are ways in which the Times news department was beaten by the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post; the Times, for instance, does not publish the list of tenants of the twin towers, the way the other two papers did.
Where today's Times is disappointing, though, is on the editorial page, which propagates a number of harmful myths.
Perhaps the most wrongheaded is the newspaper's call for a change to a defensive posture in American foreign policy. "While the United States must retain its conventional and nuclear war-fighting machinery, the government needs to consider a reallocation of resources to homeland defenses against unorthodox threats," the Times editorial says. The editorial concludes, "A concerted national effort to remake the nation's defenses must begin immediately." The reader is left with the image of America retreating like a turtle into its shell in the face of this attack -- exactly what the terrorists want. There's no recognition in the Times editorial that the best defense is a good offense -- the capacity to disrupt and destroy America's enemies on their own soil. What's needed is a concerted national effort to remake -- and to use -- America's offense. And that offense consists not just of missiles and bombs and battleships, but of aid to the democratic resistance in Iraq and support for radio stations and free labor unions like the ones that helped overthrow the Soviet empire.
But the flaws in the editorials are manifold. The Times writes, "This is an age when even revenge is complicated, when it is hard to match the desire for retribution with the need for certainty. We suffer from an act of war without any enemy nation with which to do battle." This is just sheer applesauce. That the morning after the twin towers and the Pentagon are attacked and hundreds die, the Times could write an editorial claiming that America is "without any enemy nation with which to do battle" is just a sad and stunning example of the fog of delusion that has settled in the minds of many Americans. America has plenty of enemy nations with which to do battle. The editorialists might check out the report in their own newspaper which says Iraqi state television hailed the attacks on America as the "operation of the century" which the United States deserved because of its "crimes against humanity." As Laurie Mylroie has usefully documented, there is strong evidence of Iraqi involvement in the last attack on the World Trade Center. Other enemies include the other states on the U.S. State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism: Iran, Syria, North Korea, Sudan, Cuba, Libya. And Afghanistan, where Osama Bin Laden is in refuge. And Saudi Arabia, which has obstructed the American investigation into the bombing of the Khobar Towers in Dharan. And Yemen, which has obstructed the American investigation into the bombing of the USS Cole. These nations, particularly the seven on the terrorist list, are America's enemies even if it turns out that yesterday's attacks are the work of a domestic group of environmental activists or anti-globalization protesters. America's failure to hold those nations accountable for past attacks like the one on the Cole and on the barracks in Dharan only emboldens other aggressors.
Which is why the Times assertion that "retaliation is warranted . . .once the organizers are identified" is so silly. Why wait to identify the organizers of this particular attack? Why not retaliate now against the countries that have already been identified as sponsors of prior terrorist attacks against American targets?
The Times editorialists also revert to the "root causes" argument that they also use to explain crime. "Part of the challenge for the United States is to recognize that the roots of terrorism lie in economic and political problems in large parts of the world," the Times writes. "The end of the cold war has brought a resurgence of ethnic conflicts that were often stilled by the superpower conflicts between East and West." Again, this is just applesauce. It absolves individuals and governments of the responsibility for their evil acts. There are plenty of people who grow up in places with "economic and political problems" who respond to those challenges in a more constructive manner than by intentionally flying jet planes into American office buildings. They fight for freedom in their own countries, or they immigrate to places where they can build better lives. America can respond to those economic and political problems by helping the forces of freedom and democracy around the world -- today's Times instead calls for America to "consider a reallocation of resources to homeland defenses." The newspaper's editorialists sound like Patrick J. Buchanan or the America First Committee on the eve of World War II. It's the sort of thinking that in this sort of crisis sends American warships steaming for New York Harbor instead of the Persian Gulf. The point about the Cold War is particularly ill-conceived. In fact, terrorism has declined with the fall of its main sponsor, the Soviet Union. Most of the terrorist states -- North Korea, Syria, Iraq, Cuba -- are former Soviet clients. The notion that terrorism is yet another reason for the Times editorialists to lament the fall of the Soviet Union says little about terrorism and a lot about how much the Times editorialists miss the Soviet Union.
The Times op-ed page today isn't much better than the editorial. One Times columnist writes, "If we are smart, like Israel we may now start thinking more clearly about the stateless enemy as a threat to our national security." The Israelis that Smartertimes.com talks to don't make the mistake of thinking about a "stateless enemy." They know that the enemy is funded by Iran and Iraq and Saudi Arabia, trained in Syria, armed by North Korea, based in Syria and Afghanistan. The "stateless enemy," like the "faceless enemy," is a myth, and the sooner the Times gets over it, the sooner America can get to the task of spreading freedom and democracy to the states that harbor these enemies.