NYC: Al Qaeda's Next Target?
It's true that all monuments, tourist attractions, landmarks and cities are potential targets for Islamic fanatics (or attention-seeking copycats), but does anyone seriously doubt that should another major massacre occur it'll once again be in New York City? Even destroying the U.S. Capitol or White House would pale in comparison to a well-planned assault in midtown Manhattan (or the Lincoln Tunnel), a catastrophe that would devastate the world's economic center. According to Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL), chairman of the intelligence committee, there are perhaps 100 Al Qaeda maniacs at large in the U.S., and it's certain they're not just playing pinochle at the local bar.
The specter of Ground Zero Two in New York City must be Mayor Bloomberg's and the Bush administration's paramount domestic concern. Another blast that approximates the damage of Sept. 11 is a nightmare waiting to happen: citizens here took that sucker punch and have recovered far more quickly than one would've expected back in October. But I'm not sure people would bear up as well if another part of the city were leveled. The exodus of residents and businesses would be rapid; the financial condition of the city would probably be in ruins.
I bring this up because 10 days ago my family spent an hour at Penn Station awaiting an Amtrak train down to Baltimore for Presidents' Day weekend. There was no security to speak of, certainly not a squadron of cops or National Guardsmen who ought to be at both Penn and Grand Central stations around the clock. When we trudged to the waiting room with our bags, the woman who's supposed to check tickets just waved us by, and chatted on a cellphone while polishing off a Krispy Kreme donut. While we stood on the line to descend downstairs for the Acela train, nobody's luggage was even glanced at, an astounding and frightening fact, given that a "dirty bomb" could've easily been planted in the underground, with results too horrible to contemplate. Two men behind me, one a fellow Anglo-Saxon, the other black, were just as angry at the nonchalance of Amtrak personnel.
And by the way, when it comes to Amtrak?just like the U.S. Postal Service?there's just one word that'll do: privatize. The railroad network lost $1.1 billion in 2001 and will certainly curtail service in the next year, since it's unlikely that its request for $1.2 billion from the government will be met. I've traveled on Amtrak probably 500 times in the past 30 years, and for short distances it beats flying hands-down. There's no sitting on the runway for an hour; you can walk around at will; and the seats are pretty darn comfortable.
Dan Savage, a syndicated sex columnist, wrote a terrific op-ed piece for The New York Times on Feb. 20, a testimonial to the charms of this now old-fashioned means of getting from here to there. He said: "Traveling by train, I've spent time with people I would never have met otherwise. Once in Havre, I played poker at 8 o'clock in the morning with an elderly rancher I'd had dinner with on the train the night before. The Empire Builder makes an hourlong morning stop in Havre, and when I got out to stretch my legs, the rancher hurried over, grabbed my hand and asked if I would be so kind as to escort her to a small casino a few blocks from the station. She didn't want to go by herself, she explained, because it isn't ladylike to gamble alone so early in the morning. We talked politics at dinner the night before and in the casino that morning; she was a straight, pro-life Bush supporter, and I am a gay, pro-choice Gore voter, and we got along famously."
Don't talk to me about Britain's muddled results in privatizing their railroads: this is a country, after all, that believes the sun won't come up if Saddam Hussein is trifled with. There are enough smart entrepreneurs in the U.S. who, with proper incentives, could turn Amtrak into a profitable enterprise.
But back to the current crisis.
Every day, it seems, some terminal at a major airport is evacuated because of suspicious behavior or outright threats from over-the-edge passengers. It was comical, perhaps, that New Orleans' airport was closed down for five hours because a "suspicious substance" was found in a lavatory, and it turned out to be several containers of gumbo. But there's no such thing as overreaction anymore. The country has, by and large, responded sensibly to the long delays, canceled flights and presence of machine-gun toting soldiers. In fact, criticism that air travel still isn't safe enough?such as that only a fraction of checked baggage is being scrutinized?far outweighs complaints of inconvenience.
So why is there no outrage from the populace about the ticking time bombs at this city's train stations? The local press is lately in a tizzy over Bloomberg's secret weekend getaway in Bermuda 10 days ago, a relative nonissue given the circumstances. The New York Post's Gregg Birnbaum wrote on Feb. 22, in response to Bloomberg's explanation that "My personal life is my personal life": "Not when you're mayor, it isn't. New Yorkers are entitled to more than someone who punches a timecard at City Hall, then disappears into a black hole."
One day earlier The New York Times editorialized: "Mr. Bloomberg deserves his long weekends away from the hubbub of the city, but New Yorkers deserve to know where their mayor is headed, even if they can't watch him at rest." Michael Daly, the Daily News' star columnist, was even more indignant, saying: "Even on a glorious day to match any in Bermuda, we remain a city at war. We are still recovering our dead, and we cannot be assured there will not be another attack... [Bloomberg] is our leader in time of war and the question is not where he went, but why he went anywhere at all."
Frankly, I think there's a class-envy theme at work here; the tabloids would love to have Bloomberg-in-beach-gear photos splashed on their front pages. But this isn't 1940: the Mayor, with a private jet at his disposal, and instant communication with his deputies, doesn't need to be in the city 365 days a year. Daly's correct that the city is in constant peril, but he'd be better off criticizing Bloomberg?and the Bush administration?for the complacency that's developed in the months since Sept. 11.
William Powers, in an essay for the Feb. 22 National Journal, was spot-on in his criticism of the media's short attention span. He recalled that as recently as December an edition of Meet the Press was devoted to the "Age of Seriousness" that had enveloped the nation, including "the notoriously lightweight media." Powers laments: "Have you noticed? The war is still there, but it's playing in the background. And the philosophic searching is gone, supplanted by Enron, the Olympics scandals, Botox, the Oscar race, and a lot of other relatively ephemeral stories, exactly the kind of stuff we used to thrive on before September 11... Since the anthrax incidents, there have been no more successful incidents of domestic terrorism, despite several dire warnings. Fear has diminished, and it has taken with it that urgent collective need to get our arms around our mortality. Enron knocked us out of our ruminations, reminding journalists that while the ultimate questions are nice once in a while, they're a bit rich for our homely trade. We're back into greed, ego, and deception, and that's right where we belong."
Powers' article was published before the confirmation of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl's savage murder, and that has understandably jolted the media, but it's a one-week story. And then, for the elite dailies, it's back to GOP-bashing (with the exception of Colin Powell), Daschle-boosting, the elixir of campaign finance reform and smearing Judge Charles Pickering.
(Fringe left-wing websites have become even more crazed. For example, BuzzFlash.com, in relishing the arrest of John Fund last weekend on charges he assaulted a former girlfriend, blast-e-mailed unfortunates this message. "The sordid saga of another Grand Hypocrisy Party hypocrite continues to unfold. John Fund, leading Clinton character assassin writer for the barbaric Wall Street Journal editorial page..." Strange choice of words, "barbaric," since that's the most commonly applied adjective related to the murder of Pearl. BuzzFlash, like mediawhoresonline?which is so nutty it calls the Times' Richard Berke a GOP-toady?spews garbage about Bush daily, which is fine by me, but funny, I thought John Ashcroft had eviscerated both the Constitution and Bill of Rights?)
Pearl's execution ought to reawaken the media to the fact that Al Qaeda and similar fanatic organizations have but one goal: to kill Americans and Israelis. But it won't. Reporters and pundits will continue to harp on the "inhumane" conditions at Guantanamo Bay, Bush's "simplistic" invocation of the "Axis of Evil," America's wanton slaughter of Afghans, while pleading that Yasir Arafat be allowed to give peace a chance.
Imagine that.
Jimmy Carter, contrary to his reputation as America's model ex-president, is one bitter bastard. Instead of meddling into foreign policy debates?Carter was an unnecessary distraction to Bill Clinton?the ex-peanut farmer would serve the country better by building houses and writing lousy poetry.
On Feb. 21, at Emory University, the big-mouth Georgian was at it again, calling Bush's "Axis of Evil" doctrine "overly simplistic and counterproductive." Carter, whose own forays overseas resulted in one brief moment of Mideast glory, an amateur's reaction to Iran's revolution, and the creation of ABC's Nightline, isn't exactly an expert in that arena. In fact, his further statement that "I think it will take years before we can repair the damage done by that statement," is clear evidence that Bush was correct to issue a stark warning to countries that are developing the means to destroy modern civilization.
North Korea's brutal dictatorship gets the message: during Bush's Asian trip last week, a flack from that country said, in addition to calling the President "a politically backward child": "We are not willing to have contact with his clan, which is trying to change by force of arms the system chosen by the Korean people." Translated: Bush's resolve against countries with nuclear capabilities really, really sucks.
Carter wasn't the only sad-sack seeking media attention last week. Mario Cuomo, the former New York governor whose increasingly dotty rhetoric will, one hopes, doom his son Andrew's chances to defeat Gov. Pataki, spoke before a Boca Raton audience on Feb. 21, and after paying lip-service to supporting the war, lobbed grenades at Bush. According to Sun-Sentinel reporter Jonathan Baum, "Instead of just military action, Cuomo said the United States needs to try to understand terrorist motivations, and eliminate them where possible. He said America needs to become more socially responsible worldwide?helping Argentina cope with its economic disaster, for example."
It's clear Cuomo is living in another political era. He also said, "Sept. 11 united us just like World War II united us. It's good to be united during a crisis, but the true character of a nation is tested during the lapses between crises. Why don't we declare war on education, or do something about the 40 million people who don't have health insurance?"
What the 69-year-old lawyer is thinking is anybody's guess. Does he really believe there's currently a lapse between crises?
And, as always, there's Bill Clinton, the "cash and carry" ex-president who's making worldwide speeches that have the effect of undermining the Bush administration's wartime policies. At a "peace conference" in Sydney last week, Clinton delivered remarks (for a reported $300,000) that amounted to little more than taking jabs at his successor and fattening his wallet.
According to local media reports, Clinton said: "This is a brief moment in history when the United States has pre-eminent military, economic and political power?it won't last forever. The Chinese economy is growing, the Indian economy is growing and the European economy is growing together. It seems to me if we would think about it like that [when the U.S. is no longer the world's lone superpower], it would be much more likely to lead all Americans, without regard of their party, to making the right decisions about how we should approach a lot of the problems that we face. We should be humble about this; this is a fleeting moment in history."
Incredibly, this con-man still has supporters in the U.S. media. On Feb. 13, Boston Globe columnist Scot Lehigh, normally fairly sensible, came up with a whopper of a proposal. Lehigh, plunging dangerously into Sidney Blumenthal territory, suggested that Bush appoint Clinton as a Middle East negotiator. According to Lehigh: "First, there could be no higher-level envoy save President Bush himself, and as he leads the campaign against terror, the president clearly doesn't have the time to become intricately involved. Clinton does. Placing him in that position?and putting foreign policy above domestic politics?would be a signal to the world about just how committed the United States is to brokering peace in the Middle East. Second, in the last year of his administration, Clinton came tantalizingly close to getting an agreement. 'Bill Clinton is a master negotiator, and those skills were evident not only in the Middle East negotiations but in Northern Ireland,' says US Representative Martin Meehan."
Sure, let's send Clinton?who hosted Arafat at the White House more than any other foreign leader?to the Mideast to sort things out. Why not make things more confusing?
Time to check in with Newsweek's Anna Quindlen. Her Feb. 18 column, which was a feeble attempt to defend media colleagues, was a reminder of how pleasant it is with this woman no longer commanding space on the New York Times' op-ed page. (Not that her successors deviate from Quindlen's sanctimonious lectures. The creepy Frank Rich's Feb. 24 Times Magazine piece on the confused-and-proud-of-it David Brock is a monument to the paper's intellectual disarray.) She writes: "Only people with the world's most free and open press and greatest cornucopia of media outlets in the history of the planet could feel so comfortable trashing the entire enterprise... Misled by Katie Couric's $65 million contract and the opportunities for Vanity Fair correspondents to hang with Tom Cruise, readers and viewers probably don't realize that the median salary of a reporter in this country is around $30,000. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, reporters and editors in both print and broadcast news are paid on a par with nurses, teachers and firefighters."
I'm not sure if Quindlen consciously meant to denigrate "nurses, teachers and firefighters," but she conveniently omits the fact that most of those $30,000 reporters and editors?who weren't forced into the profession?probably aspire to the six-figure annual fee Quindlen receives for writing a column every other week.
It must gall small-town journalists, who aren't as well-connected as Quindlen, to read her work. Her smug, quasi-feminist-with-a-yuppie-twist essays are cookie-cutter diatribes against anything that doesn't conform with her East Coast liberal nostrums. How difficult, for example, would it be for anyone with a high school education to duplicate Quindlen's March 4 kneejerk reaction to Bush's State of the Union speech?
This excerpt is priceless: "If, as another bit of presidential phrasemaking has it, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, America is in deep trouble. The American people are afraid. They are afraid of additional acts of terrorism, of always looking over their shoulder on planes and in skyscrapers. They are afraid that huge corporate entities that once promised secure employment and investments are hollow at the core. And they are afraid their children face a future far less certain and far more terrifying than the past. That is the crisis that grips the country. Attempting to answer it by using saber-rattling to attack an amorphous axis of enemies is a great failure of leadership. Much greater than not knowing to how to scan a box of cereal in the supermarket."
What does Quindlen advise President Bush to do? She doesn't say, although I'm sure it would include meaningful discussions with terrorists to find out why they hate the United States so fervently. As for "those huge corporate entities" who screw the "real people" (unlike Quindlen), for every Enron or Global Crossing there are thousands of companies that don't cook books or offer special investment deals to Terry McAuliffe. But that fact of life somehow escaped Quindlen's limited repertoire of socially conscious topics.
Feb. 25
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