A tricky proposition.

• Author: Reed, Adolph L., Jr.
• Position: Class Notes - Terrorism, United States

I live and work part of the time within two miles of the site of the World Trade Center. The magnitude of the horror and human tragedy is especially visible here. The attack's impact on New Yorkers is no doubt unique. Many people here remain shaken by the event and will remain so for a long time to come. The gruesomeness of the act, the scale of the grief, and the immediacy of the terror keep many preoccupied and disoriented.

Being in this environment makes it clear to me that progressives cannot afford to skirt the question of the need to combat the forces of international terrorism in the here-and-now. And surely we cannot content ourselves with easy, smug pronouncements about "chickens coming home to roost" or "the United States getting a taste of its own medicine." Such assertions are simply not credible to the people we need to win over.

Yes, U.S. attacks on Libya and Sudan, the daily assault on the people of Iraq, and Israel's brutalization of Palestinians amount to state-sponsored terrorism. Those actions and practices, along with many other less dramatically lethal ones, have certainly earned the U.S. government vast numbers of enemies all over the world.

That said, we must support efforts to bring to justice those responsible for September 11 and to neutralize such international networks of terrorist activity as do exist. That doesn't mean applauding the Bush Administration's global ambitions. But it does mean endorsing the use of internationally coordinated law enforcement efforts to identify and apprehend terrorist groupings and dry up their lifeblood of material and logistical support.

We know that such loose networks of terrorist activity exist within the extremist right wing, both domestically and internationally. There's no reason to doubt that those or others also may overlap with some strains of Islamic fundamentalist militancy and twisted variants of anti-imperialism.

I recognize this is a tricky proposition. It could carry us that much closer to an international neoliberal security regime.

It's not too far-fetched to imagine a global antiterrorist alliance morphing into a new "Red Squad"--or worse--that targets any opposition to the International Monetary Fund. And Attorney General John Ashcroft is chomping at the bit to use the excuse of a "war against terrorism" to undermine civil liberties in this country and trample human rights elsewhere.

The global alliance against terrorism could become a contemporary version of...