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writ small and large
The nation's editorial writers gum over our tragedy
By Jamie L. Jones
War is indeed hell, and when it strikes so strike thousands upon thousands of words from the nation's newspaper editorial writers, as bullets splattered on pages, most in a tone of great urgency.
And of course much of it is the drivel that spews forth on such public occasions, but there too are the odd commentaries of great insight, seemingly slipped in as if by accident amid the torrents of anger and rabble-rousing rhetoric.
There is also a great and refreshing diversity of expression and emotion. A ramble through America's editorial pages truly does give one a sense of how Americans, informed and otherwise, feel about an issue.
This week, the editorial pages of America’s newspapers were quick to respond to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., and their reactions were predictably varied.
Most of this week’s editorials and columns fall into one of a few categories. There are columns that mourn the victims and their families.
Some columns are fierce rants of anger that urge swift military action against the attackers and their sympathizers, while more distant, scholarly voices encourage slow, measured responses.
Others heartily rally behind the leadership and cheer the country on in its valiant response, while some quietly admonish an America that made itself so vulnerable to attack.
The consensus?
Only that the answers and reactions to the terrorist attacks will be as complex as the problems that incited them.
Anger, more than any other tone, is singing out on editorial pages this week.
"Revenge. Hold on to that thought," urges the Philadelphia Daily News in a Thursday editorial.
"Go to bed thinking it. Wake up chanting it. Because nothing less than revenge is called for today. . . To the cowards responsible, know this: We will remember your actions and crave only one thing: blood for blood."
Writes William Safire in The New York Times on Wednesday:
"Lashing out on the basis of inadequate information is wrong, but in terror-wartime, waiting for absolute proof is dangerous. When we reasonably determine our attackers' bases and camps, we must pulverize them—minimizing but accepting the risk of collateral damage—and act overtly or covertly to destabilize terror’s national hosts."
Others harbor a raw anger.
Chicago Sun-Times columnist Richard Roeper cannot shake the image of the Palestinian children celebrating in the streets after the attacks in New York and Washington, D.C.
"You want to kill those kids in the picture, don’t you?" writes Roeper. "Grab 'em by their necks, slap them silly, kick them in the seat of their pants. You want to tell them to wipe those goddamn smiles off their faces and stop dancing on the fresh graves of innocent Americans."
Yet other editorial writers seem more concerned with the nuances of the word "war," as well as "punishment" and "revenge," as if to suggest we can really consider any action until we agree on just what these words mean.
A Thursday editorial in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune takes up the etymological debate:
"‘War,’ however, is a term of art; it means something specific. War is organized, businesslike and determined; waging it is the antithesis of striking out in anger and hate. War seeks primarily not to harm or kill but to defeat. It has rules of conduct that must be obeyed. If the acts of Tuesday are linked to a government, that government must not be simply punished, but defeated."
Meanwhile, somber predictions abound on the new kind of war that will be waged on the threat of terrorism.
An editorial in Thursday’s Fairbanks Daily News-Miner ran with the headline "A New Kind of War":
"It is a war where Americans became not only the victims of our enemy but also the weapon of choice."
A very few quiet voices on the editorial pages plead for a peaceful, nonviolent resolution.
A quote by Mahatma Gandhi appeared on a few editorial pages, including that of the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
"‘If we practice an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, soon the whole world will be blind and toothless,’" quotes columnist Lolis Eric Elie in a column that urged peace.
More common than the pacifists on the editorial pages were the few that admonished the country for its overconfidence and obliviousness to terrorism in other parts of the world.
"U.S. Pays Heavy Price for Its Arrogance All Over the World," reads a headline on the editorial pages of the Miami Herald.
"America right now is a repository of exhausted ideas, like dead stars," writes columnist Jonathan Power in a Thursday column.
"The arrogance of power has produced this inevitable reaction. America is threatened not by nuclear-tipped missiles from unknown rogue nations but by small groups of angry men who, although prisoners of their zealotry, know well enough that much of the world, while not agreeing with them, understands their frustration."
Another columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle writes that the new model of war is "new" only to the U.S.
"Psychologically, every day in Israel is like Sept. 11 in the United States. Every day in Chechnya is like Sept. 11 in the United States. Non-declared non-wars with heavy civilian casualties are the dominant mode, the Next Big Thing," writes Jon Carroll.
"We have now officially joined the global village. It doesn’t look a lot like those Intel ads, does it?"
New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman filed his Thursday column from Jerusalem where he, too, imagined the international viewpoint when he heard about the new airport security restrictions.
"I suddenly imagined a group of terrorists somewhere here in the Middle East, sipping coffee, also watching CNN and laughing hysterically: ‘Hey boss, did you hear that? We just blew up Wall Street and the Pentagon and their response is no more curbside check-in?’"
September 14, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
-Jamie L. Jones is a staff writer for Media Life.
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