2001 : WHAT NOW?

This time the answers are not all in the hi-tech world of physics and electronics, but in psychology, sociology, knowledge-assembling. to the extent physics and computers can be harnessed to serve those areas, hi-tech can do a job. but the human factor , the human thinking , dedication, perseverance; awareness , belief in the cause, will be much more important then just the sheer hi-tech.

As to Dawkins' article, people were always willing to sacrifice their lives, more often then one may think. They are doing it in war, elite commando units, while they are combating crime, or rescuing other people, or in some extreme sports (mount climbing, car racing ), or even in medicine and some scientific endeavors, or in pursuing political causes. It is a subject for group dynamics, education , and strong motivation and inner belief system. Indeed in all these cases it seems to be a calculated risk and not a certain risk. but the gap between calculated risk and sure risk. is probably in the minds of some people more quantitative and less qualitative, then we tend to think.

Why are these people so angry at us? It is odd, but that question is rarely voiced. It is all too easy to say that they are crazy, but we might wonder, even so, how it is that we incurred their wrath. They don't attack Italy or Sweden. Anyone who has spent significant time abroad can tell you that in most countries there is love-hate relationship with the U.S. Most of our citizens fail to understand why this is the case and instead back mistaken notions of patriotism, waving flags, and talking about bombing people who don't like us. It really isn't all about the U.S. support of Israel. That is too easy an answer. We need to look for more difficult answers and do the very thing the terrorists want us to do, reexamine the role of the U.S. in the international arena. Just because that is what the terrorists want us to do, does not make it the wrong thing to do.

There is a technological answer to the hijacking problem of course. The problem is that the technological answer comes with a price. It is quite feasible to create a national identity card and have that be used to check in at the airport. From that point, no silly security questions need be asked. Computer programs can be created that establish exactly the patterns and likely actions of any passenger and determine what questions if any should be asked by the airline personnel and whether the passenger is a risk of any sort. Airlines could refuse to allow on board people who don't fit their safety profiles. This is easy to do, but it would require installation of foolproof identity software (such as retinal scans) and make available to the government the complete whereabouts and intentions of every citizen. We may not be willing to give up the anonymity that many of us cherish. On the other hand we may have to.

The biggest problem is education. When our citizens chat on the Internet about how badly they feel, they do not become better informed. They still think that killing a Sikh store owner is a patriotic action. They still don't know where Afghanistan is and what its role might be. They believe that killing one man will end our problem. Much of our current problems stem from how badly educated the public is. This, of course is even more of an issue in the poorer Islamic countries. If education were a priority in this country, and by this I do not mean silly attempts to raise meaningless test scores, but real attempts to get people to think long and hard about issues that affect their lives, then maybe this wouldn't have happened. If we created high quality on - line courses, for example, if Harvard and Yale and other universities took seriously their role as world educators, then perhaps what they built could be exported to the rest of the world. If it were not done on a for profit basis, but were offered for very little money, then people in poor countries might qualify for better jobs and might be able to reason more adroitly about the complex issues they face. Instead we leave their education to mullahs or their angry fathers in law. While we, as a nation export television, movies and blue jeans, we do not export quality education. Why not? Because for the most part we aren't even interested in that kind of education for our own citizens. No government agency is concerned with establishing reasonable curricula for students (instead we rely on one that was established in 1892!) or in assessing how well we are doing in creating a nation of employable graduates who can reason critically. Instead we focus on meaningless measures and allow schools to do whatever they like as long as they stay within those measures. The private universities are interested in the education of the elite and no one looks out for the average guy. But it is the average guys who vote, the average guys who fight, and the average guys who sometimes act out bizarre notions of retribution.

The eloquent statements made by people much closer to this tragedy and its root causes than I am prompt me to consider how we should deal with one of its effects: not just the crash of the four airliners, but the crash of the airline system which followed.

I suspect that the 9/11 events will be remembered like the Hindenburg disaster of 1937. Although modern airliners are rugged, proven, hard-working and highly-evolved craft, the air travel system as a whole has become fragile, overextended, and subject to spectacular failure. 1937 signalled an end to the era of airships and led directly to our current airline system; 2001 may signal an end to the era that began in 1937 and the beginning of something else.

Technologically, there are many solutions to the problem of high-speed transport besides airliners. Most are variations, one way or another, on the principle that it is inefficient to build machines that fly above most or all of the atmosphere to achieve high speeds when you can simply remove the atmosphere from a small tube on the surface and send whatever you want, exactly where you want it, at almost any speed you wish.

In addition to technology, there is topology. Our hub-and-spoke airline system was near a breaking point, and adding a 2-hour delay in getting through an airport that then gets you to another airport that is still 2 hours from your destination could be the final straw that gives alternatives a chance. Think packet-switching of 6-passenger capsules rather than circuit-switching of 200-passenger planes.

A new network won't begin to grow until it is given a critical mass from which to start. ARPA had to get the Internet started with those first few nodes. Don't throw good money after bad trying to bail out the airline industry; put that money into something else. Get the oil pipeline industry, Boeing, Detroit, and all defense contractors on board. The United States deserves an internal transportation system commensurate with its stature as the leader of the free world. This war will be won on the ground, not by trying to defend against rogue missiles, rogue airliners, or rogue states.

How did the United States of America win the cold war? It wasn't by building Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. It was by building the Interstate Highway System.

I assume that 'What Next?" means: how can we avoid this sort of thing in the future? There are two approaches. One is to do with preventing terrorism at the site of action; the other to preventing it at its origin.

The first is easy. Here's what we do:

The job of any useful anti-terrorist organization should be to find opportunities for terrorist acts before they happen and close any loopholes. The best way to do this is to set up an autonomous government — or even world — agency to use teams of 'terrorists' to devise, in secret, schemes for mayhem which stop short at the final fatal deed. It could be called World Agency Resisting Terrorism (WART).

Their activities would be unknown to the CIA or the FBI, they would go undercover, they would infiltrate, they would do all the things terrorists do — stopping just short of killing the pilot, dropping real anthrax, setting off the bomb, or whatever. If they reach that final point without being detected, they declare themselves and the next phase begins. An official commission of inquiry will investigate the 'disaster', calculate likely casualties, point the finger at the culprits who failed to prevent it and order new measures to be taken to increase security. They will also determine massive fines to be paid by whoever has failed to prevent the 'attack' (usually large companies) — through lax security procedures, errors of detection, etc, with the fine related to the projected loss of life. Also, the CIA, the FBI, and anyone else whose job it was to detect them and who failed will be punished in some way — sackings, penalties, etc. The fines (of which there will be many in the early days of the system) will go towards the costs of the Agency, and pay for an exhaustive investigation of the sort that is usually carried after a real disaster. Conversely, if the 'terrorists' fail, there will be an inquiry to determine where credit lies for the terrorism being thwarted and rewards will be given, again in proportion to the likely lives saved.

The same principle can be applied to man-made disaster prevention. Power station design and operation, chemical factories, aircraft and other transportation technology, bridge design, all have the possibility to cause massive loss of human life. In this case, a different agency, Action To Avoid Catastrophe (ATAC), will carry out its activities openly along the following lines: it will identify some major public project or technology and investigate its operations exhaustively. It will then attempt to devise a scenario, however unlikely, that could result in disaster. (The Three Mile Island Disaster Inquiry is a model of such an investigation — the problem is it should have been carried out before the event.) If such a scenario is impossible to devise, the company or organization is rewarded for good practice. If a remotely plausible sequence of events is spelt out that could result in disaster the company is fined, massively.

Now the second, more difficult, approach:

Violence of the sort we are trying to avoid is not, in the end, caused only by American power and oppression, Israeli occupation, religious antagonism, the evils of capitalism. Such grievances are necessary but not sufficient. After all there are many people who endure these without strapping explosives to themselves or bombing buildings. There is always an additional factor, almost too trite to mention — the willingness of a person to use physical violence against other people with whom he disagrees. To reduce violence we need to understand this. And, in various ways, we do already. There almost certainly exist important and useful research findings from different academic disciplines that might not be generally known to other academics or to the world at large. In particular, there may be practical measures, as yet untried, that could be taken to reduce violent behaviour at every level from the individual to the state, starting in childhood.

It may well be that violent behaviour — man against man, man against woman, man and woman against child, men against other men within their society, one race against another, one nation against another — has common roots at whichever level it operates. Those roots may well lie in the way individuals react to threat or perceived threat either from the object of their violence or elsewhere. Thus, even international conflict may have its roots in the personal responses of statesmen and the interaction of those responses with the psychological makeup of the individual members of the state. If such common factors exist, they will more easily become apparent through the exchange of views of a wide range of academics, the wider the better.

The insights we need do not necessarily require new research findings. Neuroanatomy and physiology, sociobiology, experimental psychology and psychiatry, anthropology and sociology, political science, and analytical psychology — all of these disciplines have traditionally looked at the roots of violent behaviour and there are research findings which can enlighten us.

There are many questions whose answers might help:

Neuroanatomy and neurophysiology — where are aggressive impulses located in the brain? Are there differences in anatomy and physiology between normal and abnormally violent people? What do we know of the mediators of anger and violent behaviour in the brain? Are there ethically justified ways of reducing violent behaviour, both pathological and non-pathological, using this knowledge? Is it significant that the sexes differ in aggression?

Sociobiology — does inappropriate violence against members of the same species exist in other animals? What can we tell about violent behaviour from animal studies? What is the evolutionary history of aggressive behaviour? Has it evolved because it has a function?

Psychology and Psychiatry — are there "criminal types" or only criminal behaviour? What makes a violent criminal and how can it be prevented? What are the origins of intrafamily violence, a major contributor to the toll of murder in developed societies? What are the mechanisms that operate in the case of child-batterers, rapists and wife-beaters that are absent in the rest of us when faced with similar temptations? What links are there between childhood circumstances and subsequent violent behaviour? Is there an innate tendency in humans not to harm others? If so, what circumstances lead to a reduction or elimination of this tendency? If not, is it only the law that stops everyone killing everyone else who stands in their way? Are there experiments that suggest ways of modifying violent behavior?

Anthropology and Sociology — is inappropriate violence against fellow-humans present in every society at a similar level? What can we learn from those societies that are less violence-prone than ours? What are the mechanisms that operate to allow representatives of one group (race, religion, political party) to exhibit and express hostility to another, often resulting in extremes of violent behaviour? What role does the ability or inability to identify with the objects of our hostility play in enabling violent behaviour towards others? Are there useful ways of resolving or preventing disputes?

Political science — is there such a thing as a "national character'? Are some nations more aggressive than others? If so why? Do some nations deal more successfully with the resolution of conflict than others? Is there any correlation between the nature of different governing systems and the belligerence of the state?

Analytical psychology — are there links between the behaviour and personalities of statesmen and the aggressiveness and violence of the countries they run? Does differential perception of threat play a part in people's threshold of violence?

Out of the answers to such questions, some known already, can emerge a consensus for action. It would be too much to hope that what scientists say is likely to be true will automatically be accepted by politicians and the public. It hasn't often in the past. But perhaps a new mood born of need will operate to make that acceptance happen in this case, and lead to knowledge-based actions rather than knee-jerk responses. It will be a slow but important process and won't lead to an immediate violence-free society. But we might get a reduced violence generation and eventually a low violence society.

The most immediate concern is that an ill-judged US response to the WTC attack could heighten tension still further. But recent events should be a "wake-up call", alerting us to the risk of even more devastating attacks, using nuclear devices. A long-range missile carrying a compact warhead Ù the kind of weapon that "star wars 2" is supposed to defend the US against Ù may be beyond the resources of dissident groups. Not so, however, detonation of a stolen weapon transported in a truck or ship, or a crude device assembled, using stolen fissile material, in a city apartment. The latter activities are less technically demanding; and they would would, unlike a missile -launched bomb, leave no trace of their provenance. The US and Western Europe should offer resources to accelerate programs to monitor and dismantle the 20000+ nuclear weapons in the FSU, and to safeguard fissile material. A devastating amount may already have gone astray, but this effort surely deserves far more urgent priority from the US government than missile defenses.

But what terrifies me most is the potential impact of biological advances. Thousands Ù even millions Ù of people will soon have the technical capability to make and disseminate "weapons" that could cause widespread (even worldwide) epidemics. Not even an organised "cell" or network of terrorists is required Ù just a single fanatic, or a wierdo with the mindset of those who design computer viruses (or even someone who is merely incompetent rather than malign) . Even if all nations imposed strict regulations on perilous applications of biological advances, the chances of effective enforcement are no better than in the case of the drug laws. And a single infringement could trigger disaster. I'm despondent about the 21st century because there seems absolutely no realistic chance of preventing these hazards from looming ever-larger.

In his speech to Congress, Bush Ù perhaps unintentionally Ù presented the choice before us: we will either bring justice to the nations of our enemies, or bring our enemies to justice.

Although he probably didn't mean it this way, his two alternatives represent two completely different tacks. The former suggests extending the ideals of the Enlightenment on which this nation was founded into regions where human rights are not honored. The latter implies nothing less than accepting the fundamentalists' invitation to holy war.

Were we to bring justice to those who currently suffer under despotic regimes, it would certainly mark a shift in our foreign policy, which has until now been based more on short-term strategic goals than extended democracy's reach. It would be a welcome change, and one less likely to create the kinds of fundamentalist Frankenstein monsters we sponsored in the past.

Engaging in a traditional holy war would be entirely less fruitful, and tragically hypocritical. Currently, we are witnessing what happens when the narratives human beings have been using to understand their reality no longer work. Fundamentalism is the belief that the real world conforms to the stories we were told about it; that reality has an author, God. We do not participate, we merely adhere to the story (or risk damnation) and are willing to die for the story because the ending has already been ordained. When the map no longer fits the territory, it is the territory that must be changed. Life itself is fixed. Dead.

In the West, thanks to our relative openness, wealth and the scientific advancement it allows, we have been empowered to abandon our narratives, and to understand reality as emergent, rather than ordained. Our brand of idealism Ù our emphasis on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness Ù encourages us to participate the writing of the narratives we live by. As a result, our overarching narrative is a consensus, and more fluid. Unlike the fundamentalists' ordained apocalypse, it offers us a way out: evolution.

The attack on the US marks a shocking discontinuity for most Americans. Ito could lead us back into narrative Ù as far back as the Holy Crusade against the Moslems Ù in order to find a mythology that conforms to these events. Or, we can look to the underlying causes and even our own complicity in the emergence of these phenomena, and accept responsibility for writing a new narrative, altogether.

The time has come to realize this:

"We will soon be living in an era in which we cannot guarantee survivability of any single point."

This statement was made in 1964 in the first of a series of reports from RAND Corporation authored by Paul Baran, an electrical engineer, striving to solve the problem of a nuclear war triggered by a mistake. 

Baran's concern was that the communication systems of the nuclear powers of the day were extremely vulnerable to attack. The systems were centralized, like the telephone network, depending on a central node connecting everyone else. If this node was wiped out with a bomb, no one could communicate. Scenario studies showed that for a missile-controlling general in such a situation, the urge would be to fire his missiles before they were wiped out. The result would be a total exchange.

The existence of a less vulnerable communication network would therefore be of great importance to the prevention of a nuclear war. It would be beneficial to each superpower if the other power had such a network, Baran argued.

Paul Baran outlined the vision for a distributed, digital communication network based on what is today called packet-switching. His inspiration came from the central nervous systems of animals, surprisingly robust to injuries. The vision has now become a reality called the Internet (although many of the people who built the ARPAnet from 1969 and onwards insists that the were not influenced by Baran's vision, but that's another matter).

The important point is the insight that Baran brought us: Our world is dramatically changed by the existence of intercontinental ballistic missiles. One could say that it has changed from 2 to 3 dimensions.

All traditional military and organizational thinking has revolved around the idea of a headquarters that could always be defended, or, at least defended until the very end. Such headquarters exist in historical forms as royal castles, white houses, and TV-stations. They have been defended by moats, barbed wire and doormen. The idea basically being that we live in a flat world in which enemies don't want to drown in the water when the bridge has been drawn up.

However, with nuclear rockets offering ruin from the air, fences and road blocks can no longer guarantee the safety of headquarters. Therefore, one has to build a communication system without headquarters.

Baran's original diagram showing of the difference between a centralized and a distributed network (available athttp://www.rand.org/publications/RM/RM3420/RM3420.chapter1.html) displays in my view the essence of our age. 

The trend is now to move away from dependence on headquarters and into distributed networks of information flow. 

Headquarters are a problem in many organizations and systems, where they represent an irrational bottleneck in the free flow of information. Be it the CEO of organizations, the CPU of computers or the conscious self control of human beings, the idea of every bit going through the center, is not functional. Building computers, robots and networks has taught us the need for parallel processing.

There is a historical irony in the fact that it was the atomic bomb that led to the end of the age of the headquarters. 

Now, after the tragedy of September 11, 2001, we know that it is not only nuclear missiles that makes Baran's observation of the vulnerability of headquarters true. Even a bunch of suicidal madmen armed with small knives can wipe out commercial or military headquarters at their liking.

We can no longer guarantee the survivability of any point.

What now? We have to think along two different lines:

1. How to limit the consequences of attacks;
2. How to limit the probability of attacks.

In an age when we believed we could always defend a given point, it was wise, cheap and sometimes efficient to concentrate everything in headquarters. Now, the King's Castle and Manhattan offer pretty interesting targets for destructive minds.

But is it so obvious that we need to concentrate so many people and so much power in such a small place, creating vulnerable targets?

In the old days, there was no alternative. Communication was not possible without bellboys going up an down elevators in tall buildings gathered on a small island. 

But do we need to concentrate things and people in the age of networks? 

The realization of Paul Baran's vision in the form of the Internet makes it possible to avoid headquarters.

So what am I saying? That we should give in to maniacs living in caves of mountainous deserts and dismantle Manhattan? No. But I am saying that perhaps we need not proceed further along the road of vulnerable centers.

Rather than building skyscrapers with 100,000 inhabitants, as now planned in South-East Asia, we should listen to the physicist Freeman Dyson who in his recent essay on "The Sun, The Genome, and the Internet" (1999) argues that we should "reverse the flow of people from villages to megacities all over the world". Dyson argues that dependence on solar energy, which is spread all over the globe, and communication networks, makes village life once again attractive.

This is not to say that metropoles are not important. But only to argue that in the long term we can and should reduce the consequences of attacks by organizing our lives closer to equilibrium.

To do so would be wise and enhance the quality of life for many people.

The probability of attacks is another matter. 

It is obvious that we are now at a global level confronted with the same challenge that we faced a century ago at the national level: It is not in the interest of the rich people to leave the poor people in poverty. 

Welfare and social security is in the egoistic interest of the people who are well off. It means less crime and more harmonic societies. Poverty increases the likelihood of disease and leads to the spread of infections. 

Once the air plane has been invented, the quality of life all over the world has become the immediate concern of even the richest guy in the richest country. Reservoirs of infection and migration are two reasons. Terrorism a third.

Of the six billion humans alive on this planet, one billion have hunger and malnutrition on their daily agenda, while another billion has overweight on theirs. The amount of money one has to move from each rich guy to each starving guy to end starvation is ridiculous: One dollar a week (see Edge 62).

Making sure that everyone has their basic needs fulfilled is not an unachievable task. To get there will not end terrorism but it will reduce its probability. And make everybody feel better.

Religions are a driving force in modern terrorism. But rather than ridiculing them, as Richard Dawkins likes to do, we should confront ourselves with an enormous cultural task: To see the different world religions as reservoirs of human knowledge of how to manage life. Cognitive science have come to recognize of the essential role of non-conscious information processing in the human central nervous system. Most of what we do, we do without conscious awareness, even though we tend to see ourselves as fully conscious and rational agents.

This theme has been dealt with for millennia in religious circles. Is there a chance that we could express the wisdom of the religious traditions in terms of everyday language, transparent and obvious to everybody? Could we take up the project of Aldous Huxley, formulating a perennial philosophy?

In that case we could show that there is an enormous shared wisdom in the religions that can be expressed in everyday words. This common wisdom of humanity could then make the particular traditions and historical dogma of the individual religions less important. They would still be there, but less fundamental. 

Everyone needs a religion (atheism being one), like everybody needs a language. It doesn't have to be the same one, yet there is a 'universal grammar'.

The probability of attacks will be lowered if all cultures could see each other as visions of the same reality, expressed in different ways.

All this, of course, is very naive and does not confront the legitimate need for immediate revenge. 

But in the long term, we have to accept what the Danish poet Piet Hein saw as the condition of the nuclear age:

In addressing the question of "What Now?" I want to speculate freely on what might happen on a large scale in the near term. Here are some rough scenarios, with my even vaguer estimate of their likelihood.

A. Aum Shinry Kyo II. The malefactors of September 11 are rounded up with little effort, because they are not genuine provocateurs of a Clash of Civilizations; they are merely nuts. Only distantly connected to any serious revolutionary terrorist, they are in fact an obscure splinter cult who are mostly dead at their own hands. The suffering of New York City is seen in retrospect, not as a grand battle over any principle worth fighting for, but as a simple aberration that is both tragic and crazy, a loathsome, Jonestown-like phenomenon. No particular lessons are learned, very little changes in the global scene, but there's a lasting blow to general morale and to humanity's assessment of itself. Society is saddened and sickened, and people around the world are often seen to hesitate before setting foot in a subway or airliner. Probability: 15%

B. Gulf War III. After a great deal of angst and sword-sharpening, there's a quick, surprising Coalition victory. Those who promised a ruthless struggle to the death in the Mother of All Battles are revealed as blowhards. Suicide bombing cells turn out to be careless and unprofessional terrorists, who are easily rounded up by street-wise cops. Americans and allies go back to their barracks, leaving a few extra Southwest Asian bases to keep guard on the troublemakers. A war-leader President with the gratitude of a relieved nation loses his re-election due to economic troubles.
Probability: 25%

C. Cold War II. A sustained ideological and economic struggle sets in between the G-8 and the world's poorest and bitterest countries. There are numerous hot-war flare-ups, much narco-terror, a great deal of ruthless, paramilitary spy skullduggery, and considerable civil dissent from dissidents in the West unable to morally stomach this grinding, Balkan-style dirty war. McCarthyism and witch-hunts flare up, while the sentiment of "Viva Osama" moves to a simmering Central America. There is huge, inflationary spending on imaginary, symbolic, and unusable super-weapons. The general American population is put under a level of police surveillance previously available only to American black people. This grinds on for decades, with America gamely bearing-any-burden, on until the opposition loses all heart and begins drinking itself to death. Probability: 15%

D (1). Pearl Harbor Straight to Bretton Woods. Since there really is no military enemy to fight — a few nasty guys with boxcutters — there is a general economic and diplomatic rearrangement, without WWII's ugly bother of bombing and sacking whole continents. The original enemy — a rather vaporous notion of "terrorism" — is quickly lost sight of in a general, very wide-scale, geopolitical emergence into 21st century Modernity. This global New Deal moves Russia, China, Cuba, Vietnam and other longterm pariahs into the "Civilized" camp, while the broken nations that are today considered basket-cases are made into blue-helmet protectorates. The Second World vanishes. From now on, there's just two sides: Real People, and some pariahs.

Among the Real People, there is a great deal of general housecleaning: currency reforms, arms reduction, climate treaties, economic rationalization, demolition of trade barriers, labor laws, emigration, all that sort of thing. Everybody else — The People Without Plumbing, basically — have to live off a combination of empty threats and emergency handouts.

Oddly, the one major power least likely to join the Real People is probably the United States, but the USA may have a grudging unilateral role as a kind of Third Way or Loyal Opposition.

D (2) . 1989 Redux. Upset and alarmed by the unnecessary global mayhem so cynically triggering by madmen, civil society takes to the streets worldwide in a touching display of aspiration and political maturity. Democratization sweeps the Moslem world in a second wave of Velvet Revolution. A grateful mankind sees the martyrs of New York as the unwitting harbingers of a better and kinder way of life, which is full of caring, solidarity, human rights and social justice. This scenario is basically the same as D(1), but seen from the other side of the WTO fence and the Genoa barriers. Since Al Qaeda can't distinguish a Western radical from a Western capitalist, they are both in the same boat now and can henceforth work in tandem.
Probability: 20%

E. Greater Afghanistan. The Coalition suffers an outright military defeat at the hands of indomitable armed peasants, in a ruthless, bloody, punjee-stick dirty war, possibly combined with an unconventional use of weapons of mass destruction. NYC 9.11 turns out to be just the first of a series of bloody Tamerlane-style attacks from a growing and increasingly frenzied horde of enemies of the West. Nerve-shattered, the West takes the last copter from the Saudi embassy and sues for peace.

This Qaeda victory scenario has a number of variants, which could exist singly or in combination.

E1. The Empire Formerly Known As NATO. The US bears the blunt of blame for its clumsy handling of the global conflict, which relied so fatally on the so-called strength of America's arrogant and untenable free-market ideology. The defeated Alliance splits up much like its former mirror image, the Warsaw Pact. Without Persian Gulf oil, the American economy and its war machine both collapse. Severe discord and disillusionment ensues, with crime and corruption skyrocketing. Desperate Russian women leave the streets of every capital in the world and are replaced by desperate American women.

E2(A). The Great Terror. A victory by fanatics careless of life becomes a giant Khmer Rouge-style death machine for Islam; the Aztec charisma of a Qaeda cult requires ever-greater human sacrifice, especially of one's own. A 12th-century lifestyle can only sustain a 12th-century population.

E2(B). A Grand Caliphate. With malignant American and Jewish influence finally scorched from the holy lands of the Umma, a new Golden Age of just and tolerant Universal Islam ensues. It's ruled by Sharia law, under a wise and merciful Caliph who re-unites Sunni and Shi'a and outshines Haroun Al Rashid. A grateful mankind erects many grand and glorious mosques in memory of the warrior saints of Islamic fundamentalism; men whose tactics were rather rough, but in the eyes of history, fully justified. Combined probability of any of the E variants: 10%

F. America Goes Bonkers. The globe's worst fears of a paranoid "Cowboy America" come true, as further terror provocations decapitate the American nation. A ferocious nuclear power, eyeballs gone rigid with a crazed lust for vengeance, launches a massive thermonuclear lynching spree. Probability: 2 %

G. Many More Wild Cards. This is neither an "age of terror" nor an "age of freedom". This is an age of random calamities. It's a genuine end of history, in which the passage of time in human affairs no longer has any rules as we previously understood them. There is no great historical narrative at hand, nor is there any grand scheme by which a rational analyst can make useful sense of events. NYC 9.11 is quickly eclipsed by other, biggest factors even more untoward and shocking: perhaps dumber acts of terror by even smaller groups, plus some Greenhouse calamities, an asteroid strike, some brand-new plagues, or even free beer and five cent nano-genetic intelligent cigars. Humankind has lost all control of our destiny and nothing can restore it.
Probability: 3%

There are a number of metaphors for buildings. A common visual metaphor is Buildings Are Heads, where windows and doors are openings in the head like eyes, nose, and mouth. For many people this metaphor interacted with the image of the plane going into South Tower of the World Trade Center, producing via visual metaphor the unconscious, but powerful image of a bullet going through someone's head, the flame pouring from the other side blood spurting out. 

Tall buildings can, via visual metaphor, be people standing erect. For many the falling of the towers activated this metaphor. Each tower falling was a body falling. 

We are not consciously aware of the metaphorical images, but they are part of the power and the horror we experience when we see them.

Each of us, in the prefrontal cortex of our brains, has what are called "mirror neurons." Such neurons fire either when we perform an action or when see the same action performed by someone else. There are connections from that part of the brain to the emotional centers. Such neural circuits are believed to be the basis of empathy.

This works literally — when we see plane coming toward the building and imagine people in the building, we feel the plane coming toward us; when we see the building toppling toward others, we feel the building toppling toward us. It also works metaphorically: If we see the plane going through the building, and we unconsciously metaphorize the building as a head with the plane going through its temple, then we sense—unconsciously but powerfully—being shot through the temple. If we metaphorize the building as a person and see the building fall to the ground in pieces, then we sense—again unconsciously but powerfully— that we are falling to the ground in pieces. Our systems of metaphorical thought, interacting with our mirror neuron systems, turn external literal horrors into felt metaphorical horrors.

Here are some other cases:

• Control Is Up: You have control over the situation; you're on top of things. This has always been an important basis of towers as symbols of power. In this case, the toppling of the towers meant loss of control, loss of power.

• Phallic imagery: Towers are symbols of phallic power and their collapse reinforces the idea of loss of power. 

• Another kind of phallic imagery was more central here. The planes as penetrating the towers with a plume of heat. The pentagon, a vaginal image from the air, penetrated by the plane as missile. 

• A Society Is A Building. A society can have a "foundation" which may or may not be "solid" and it can "crumble" and "fall." The World Trade Center was symbolic of society. When it crumbled and fell, the threat was more than to a building. 

• We think metaphorically of things that perpetuate over time as "standing." Bush the Father in the Gulf War kept saying, "This will not stand," meaning that the situation would not be perpetuated over time. The World Trade Center was build to last ten thousand years. When it crumbled, it metaphorically raised the question of whether American power and American society would last.

• Building As Temple: Here we had the destruction of the temple of capitalist commerce, which lies at the heart of our society.

Our minds play tricks on us. The image of the Manhattan skyline is now unbalanced. We are used to seeing it with the towers there. Our mind imposes our old image of the towers, and the sight of them gone gives one the illusion of imbalance, as if Manhattan we sinking. Given the symbolism of Manhattan as standing for the promise of America, it appears metaphorically as if that promise were sinking.

Then there is the persistent image, day after day, of the charred and smoking remains: it is an image of hell.

The World Trade Center was a potent symbol, tied into our understanding of our country and ourselves in a myriad of ways. All of what we know is physically embodied in our brains. To incorporate the new knowledge requires a physical change in the synapses of our brains, a physical reshaping of our neural system.

The physical violence was not only in New York and Washington. Physical changes—violent ones—have been made to the brains of all Americans.

2

The administration's framings and reframings and its search for metaphors should be noted. The initial framing was as a "crime" with "victims" and "perpetrators" to be "brought to justice" and "punished." The crime frame entails law, courts, lawyers, trials, sentencing, appeals, and so on. It was hours before "crime" changed to "war" with "casualties," "enemies," "military action," "war powers," and so on. 

Rumsfeld and other administration officials have pointed out that this situation does not fit our understanding of a "war." There are "enemies" and "casualties" all right, but no enemy army, no regiments, no tanks, no ships, no air force, no battlefields, no strategic targets, and no clear "victory." The war frame just doesn't fit. Colin Powell had always argued that no troops should be committed without specific objectives, a clear and achievable definition of victory, a clear exit strategy — and no open-ended commitments. But he has pointed out that none of these is present in this "war."

Because the concept of "war "doesn't fit, there is a frantic search for metaphors. First, Bush called the terrorists "cowards" — but this didn't seem to work too well for martyrs who willing sacrificed their lives for their moral and religious ideals. More recently he has spoken of "smoking them out of their holes" as if they were rodents, and Rumsfeld has spoken of "drying up the swamp they live in" as if they were snakes or lowly swamp creatures. The conceptual metaphors here are Moral is Up; Immoral is Down (they are lowly) and Immoral People are Animals (that live close to the ground).

The use of the word "evil" in the administration's discourse works in the following way. In conservative, strict father morality (see my Moral Politics, Chapter 5), evil is a palpable thing, a force in the world. To stand up to evil you have to be morally strong. If you're weak, you let evil triumph, so that weakness is a form of evil in itself, as is promoting weakness. Evil is inherent, an essential trait, that determines how you will act in the world. Evil people do evil things. No further explanation is necessary. There can be no social causes of evil, no religious rationale for evil, no reasons or arguments for evil. The enemy of evil is good. If our enemy is evil, we are inherently good. Good is our essentially nature and what we do in the battle against evil is good. Good and evil are locked in a battle, which is conceptualized metaphorically as a physical fight in which the stronger wins. Only superior strength can defeat evil, and only a show of strength can keep evil at bay. Not to show overwhelming strength is immoral, since it will induce evildoers to perform more evil deeds because they'll think they can get away with it. To oppose a show of superior strength is therefore immoral. Nothing is more important than the battle of Good against Evil, and if some innocent noncombatants get in the way and get hurt, it is a shame, but it is to be expected and nothing can be done about it. Indeed, performing lesser evils in the name of good is justified — "lesser" evils like curtailing individual liberties, sanctioning political assassinations, overthrowing governments, torture, hiring criminals, and "collateral damage."

Then there is the basic security metaphor, Security As Containment — keeping the evildoers out. Secure our borders, keep them and their weapons out of our airports, have marshals on the planes. Most security experts say that there is no sure way to keep terrorists out or to deny them the use of some weapon or other; a determined well-financed terrorist organization can penetrate any security system. Or they can choose other targets, say oil tankers.

Yet the Security As Containment metaphor is powerful. It is what lies behind the missile shield proposal. Rationality might say that the September 11th attack showed the missile shield is pointless. But it strengthened the use of the Security As Containment metaphor. As soon as you say "national security," the Security as Containment metaphor will be activated and with it, the missile shield.

3

There are (at least) three kinds of causes of radical Islamic terrorism: 

Worldview: The Religious Rationale
Social and Political Conditions: Cultures of Despair
Means: The Enabling Conditions

The Bush administration has discussed only the third: The means that enable attacks to be carried out. These include: Leadership (e.g., bin Laden), host countries, training facilities and bases, financial backing, cell organization, information networks, and so on. These do not include the first and second on the list.

Worldview: Religious Rationale

The question that keeps being asked in the media is, Why do they hate us so much? 

It is important at the outset to separate out moderate to liberal Islam from radical Islamic fundamentalists, who do not represent most Muslims.

Radical Islamic fundamentalists hate our culture. They have a worldview that is incompatible with the way that Americans — and other westerners — live their lives.

• One part of this worldview concerns women, who are seen as "pearls," objects of value and beauty to be hidden from all men but their husbands. They are to hide their bodies, they have no right to property, no right to travel on their own, and so on. Western sexuality, mores, music, and women's equality all violate their values, and the ubiquity of American cultural products, like movies and music, throughout the world offends them. 

• A second part concerns theocracy: they believe that governments should be run according to strict Islamic law by clerics. 

• A third concerns holy sites, like those in Jerusalem, which they believe should be under Islamic political and military control. 

• A fourth concerns the commercial and military incursions by Westerners on Islamic soil, which they liken to the invasion of the hated crusaders. The way they see it, our culture spits in the face of theirs. 

• A fifth concerns jihad — a holy war to protect and defend the faith. 

• A sixth is the idea of a martyr, a man willing to sacrifice himself for the cause. His reward is eternal glory—an eternity in heaven surrounded by willing young virgins. In some cases, there is a promise that his family will be taken care of by the community.

Social and Political Conditions: Cultures of Despair

Most Islamic would-be martyrs not only share these beliefs but have also grown up in a culture of despair that leaves people vulnerable to the idea of martyrdom: they have little to lose. Eliminate the conditions of despair and you eliminate much of the breeding ground for terrorists. When the Bush administration speaks of eliminating terror, it does not appear to be talking about remedying cultures of despair and the social conditions that lead one to want to give up your life to martyrdom.

Princeton Lyman of the Aspen Institute has made an important proposal—that the world-wide anti-terrorist coalition being formed address the causal real-world conditions as well. Country by country, the conditions (both material and political) leading to despair need to be addressed, with a worldwide commitment to ending them. It should be done because it is a necessary part of addressing the causes of terrorism—and because it is right! The coalition being formed should be made into a long-term global institution for this purpose.

What about the first cause—the radical Islamic worldview itself. Military action won't change it. Social action won't change it. Worldviews live in the minds of people. How can one change those minds — and if not present minds, then future minds? The West cannot! Those minds can only be changed by moderate and liberal Muslims—clerics, teachers, elders, respected community members. There is no shortage of them. I do not know how well they are organized, but the world needs them to be well-organized and effective. It is vital that moderate and liberal Muslims form a unified voice against hate and, with it, terror. Remember that "taliban" means "student." Those that teach hate in Islamic schools must be replaced — and we in the West cannot replace them. This can only be done by an organized moderate, nonviolent Islam. The West may be able to help in some ways, but we alone are powerless to carry it out. We depend on the good will — as well as the courage and effectiveness — of moderate Islamic leaders. To gain it, we must show our good will by beginning in a serious way to address the social and political conditions that lead to despair.

But a conservative American government, thinking of the enemy as evil, will not take the primary causes seriously. They will only go after the enabling causes. But unless the primary causes are addressed, terrorists will continue to be spawned. 

5

I am convinced that military action will not prevent further acts of international terrorism against the United States. This is a very complex and complicated matter.

However difficult this vote may be, some of us must urge the use of restraint. Our country is in a state of mourning. Some of us must say, let us step back for a moment. Let us just pause for a minute and think through the implications of our actions today so that this does not spiral out of control.

I have agonized over this vote, but I came to grips with it today and I came to grips with opposing this resolution during the very painful yet very beautiful memorial service. As a member of the clergy so eloquently said, ''As we act, let us not become the evil that we deplore.''

I agree. But what is striking to me as a linguist is the use of negatives in the statement: "not prevent," "restraint" (inherently negative), "not spiral out of control," "not become the evil that we deplore.'' Friends are circulating a petition calling for "Justice without vengeance." "Without" has another implicit negative. It is not that these negative statements are wrong. But what is needed is a positive form of discourse.

There is one.

The central concept is that of "responsibility," which is at the heart of progressive/liberal morality (See Moral Politics). Progressive/liberal morality begins with empathy, the ability to understand others and feel what they feel. That is presupposed in responsibility — responsibility for oneself, for protection, for the care of those who need care, and for the community. Those were the values that we saw at work among the rescue workers in New York right after the attack.

Responsibility requires competence and effectiveness. If you are to deal responsibly with terrorism, you must deal effectively with all its causes: religious, social, and enabling causes. The enabling causes must be dealt with effectively. Bombing innocent civilians and harming them by destroying their country's domestic infrastructure will be counterproductive — as well as immoral. Responsibility requires care in the place of blundering overwhelming force.

Massive bombing would be irresponsible. Failure to address the religious and social causes would be irresponsible. The responsible response begins with joint international action to address all three: the social and political conditions andthe religious worldview and the means with all due care. 

6

The idealistic claim of the Bush administration is they intend to wipe out "all terrorism." What is not mentioned is that the US has systematically promoted a terrorism of its own and has been trained terrorists, from the contras to the mujahadeen to the Honduran death squads to the Indonesian military. Indeed, there are reports that two of the terrorists taking part in The Attack were trained by the US. Will the US government stop training terrorists? Of course not. It will deny that it does so. Is this duplicity? Not in terms of conservative morality and its view of Good versus Evil and lesser evils.

If the administration's discourse offends us, we have a moral obligation to change public discourse!

Be the change you want! If the US wants terror to end, the US must end its own contribution to terror. And we must also end terror sponsored not against the West but against others. We have made a deal with Pakistan to help in Afghanistan. Is it part of the deal that Pakistan renounce its own terrorism in Kashmir against India? I would be shocked if it were. The Bush foreign policy of self-interest does not require it.

The question must be asked. If that is not part of the deal, then our government has violated its own stated ideals; it is hypocritical. If the terrorism we don't mind — or might even like — is perpetuated, terrorism will not end and will eventually turn back on us, just as our support for the mujahadeen did.

We must be the change we want!

The foreign policy of moral norms is the only sane foreign policy. In the idea of responsibility for oneself, it is eminently practical. But through empathy and other forms of responsibility (protection, care, competence, effectiveness, community development), it would lead to international cooperation and a recognition of the reality of interdependence. 

7

Where is the $40 billion coming from? Not from a rise in taxes. The sacrifices will not be made by the rich. Where then? The only available source I can think of is the Social Security "lockbox," which is now wide open. The conservatives have been trying to raid the Social Security fund for some time, and the Democrats had fought them off until now. A week ago, the suggestion to take $40 billion from the Social Security "surplus" would have been indefensible. Has it now been done — with every Democratic senator voting for it and all but one of the Democrats in Congress? 

Think of it: Are your retirement contributions — and mine — are going to fight Bush's "war." No one dares to talk about it that way. It's just $40 billion, as if it came out of nowhere. No one says that $40 billion dollars comes from your retirement contributions. No one talks about increasing taxes. We should at least ask just where the money is coming form. 

If the money is coming from social security, then Bush has achieved a major goal of his partisan conservative agenda — without fanfare, without notice, and with the support of virtually all Democrats.

Calling for war, instead of mere justice, has given the conservatives free rein. I fear it will only be a matter of time before they claim that we need to drill for oil in the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge for national security reasons. Senator Murkowski has already proposed a rider to this effect on the appropriations bill for funding the war. If that most "pristine" place falls, they will use the national security excuse to drill and mine coal all over the country. The energy program will be pushed through as a matter of "national security." All social programs will be dismissed for lack of funds, which will be diverted to "national security."

Cheney has said that this war may never be completed. Newt Gingrich estimates at least four or five years, certainly past the 2004 election. With no definition of victory and no exit strategy, we may be entering a state ofperpetual war. This would be very convenient for the conservative domestic agenda: The war machine will determine the domestic agenda, which will allow conservatives to do whatever they want in the name of national security.

The recession we are entering has already been blamed on The Attack, not on Bush's economic policies. Expect a major retrenchment on civil liberties. Expect any WTO protesters to be called terrorists and/or traitors. Expect any serious opposition to Bush's policies to be called traitorous.

Who has the courage to discuss domestic policy frankly at this time?

The only sanity-preserving way to think about what happened on September 11th is as a 'natural disaster', in which human beings were caught up as tragic agents as well as tragic victims.

Had it been an earthquake, we would not have mourned the less, we would not have been any the less determined to prevent a re-occurrence. But, by now, we would have been energised by our capacity to explain, and on the back of this to make good and to overcome.

Our duty as scientists in response to the present crisis is no different. We must try to explain the shifting plates of human psychology and culture, and show why and how these can erupt in individual acts of such madness. This is not to recommend forgiveness — no one forgives a volcano or a hurricane — but it is to oppose any interest in retribution.

When the perpetrators are brought to trial — normal, less than 'infinitely just' human trial — there will be a single, but obvious, defence: that these pathetic human beings acted 'while the balance of the mind was disturbed'. We must try to understand just what this meant — and means.

Now that we are alert for terrorism in the air, the next terrorist act will not come from the sky but through biological or chemical weapons in a public place, for example at Times Square when the New Year's ball drops.

However, for the moment, let's focus on air travel. We've come to realize that no amount of airport security with respect to carry-on items will prevent a high jacking. Three strong men armed with ball point pens and shouting that they have shampoo bottles full of anthrax could be successful in a highjacking. In this respect, it is not useful to overly restrict the nature of items carried onto planes.

Instead, we should add a voice-activated system in the cockpit such that when the pilot says the word "Zanzibar," the plane can't be highjacked. The code word also triggers an emergency alert to air traffic controllers. The plane is sent into autopilot mode. Other biometric devices, such as fingerprint readers, might be useful.

If the cockpit is to be physically isolated, a video monitor must be installed in the cockpit so that the pilots can see the cabin and flight attendants — to check for misdoings and also to avoid the feeling of extreme isolation that one might encounter when locked into a small compartment for many hours. Similarly, the flight attendants should have access to a monitor so that they can see the pilots during conversations, which would also reduce the feeling of imprisonment and isolation.

We should also put a toilet (or other waste collection system) in the cockpit so that the pilots need not leave the cockpit.

In all cases, it is sad that convenience and personal liberty will be sacrificed — while prejudice is increased. Will four men named Mohamad ever be allowed on the same plane?

Attack and defense strategies are limited short-term responses. Given that there are 10,000 symbolic targets, largely indefensible, and a number of decentralized terrorist networks, these short-term strategies — while worth doing to some extent — can not be expected, by themselves, to produce an acceptable long-term solution.

These short-term strategies have the added risk of placing discretion in the hands of those (military, CIA, FBI) who to a large extent created the situation and who stand to profit from its escalation. As we provide such people with discretion over our resources and freedoms we should expect them to be what they are.

A colleague in the State Department, who taught politics at West Point for a few years, emphasized to me the divergence of State and Defense Department mentalities. The former, at its best, asks why, and move to create a positive win-win relationship with the main stream of the opponent's base.

Clinton gave a talk to a Jewish group in DC just after he left office. He spoke of two types of wounds. One should be left alone because it is healing. That is Northern Ireland — still difficult but healing. It is healing because the two sides have developed economic ties where each sees the success of the other as contributing to their success. The other type of wound needs intervention because it is not healing and could lead to catastrophic failure. That is the Israeli-Palestinian situation. Clinton pointed out that advancing technology made it unlikely that attack an defense strategies will succeed — for either side.

This latter type of wound is symbolic of the larger global situation that breeds terrorism.

The only realistic long-term strategy is to move to a new global socio-economic strategy, a new social contract between the developed and developing world. This is in everyone's interest. The wounds will — with difficulty — heal.

Without a convincing initiative along these lines the prospect is for the global stage to recapitulate the last forty years of the Israeli — Palestinian conflict — only at a more painful and destructive level.

FRANKFURT. President George W. Bush did not say what was in the script. One could even write that he did not say what Americans until now believed one should say at such a moment. He has withstood the pressure of succumbing to the collective consciousness and — if one interprets the impressions correctly — by doing so he has reinvented a piece of America. His address will do more than bolster international solidarity with the United States. Despite his allusions to Pearl Harbor and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Bush's breaking the mold heralds a changed perception of America's role. His speech shows that it is no mere phrase to call the coming struggle a "struggle for culture." This speech could become something like a founding document of this cultural renewal.

The screenplay, this all-powerful reality script that has long been creating reality in its image, hails from Hollywood and the literary-industrial complexes of the past 50 years. It is engrained not just in the minds of politicians, generals and journalists; it has been rooted in the imagination of the entire world, including, as we have seen, in that of the terrorists, as a globalized role model. They produced their bloody Hollywood exactly as they found it in the American imagination. In fact, as every detail shows, down to preparatory visits to the gym, they set it in motion like a machine. And they believed that everything would happen the way it is set out in Hollywood's scripts.

According to the script, this is what should have happened after the attack: A government, surrounded by bunkers real and imagined, fearfully and hastily sets in motion a fateful mechanism that engulfs the world in flames. It was hardly coincidence that CNN used the apocalyptic title "The Day After" for its coverage. In Hollywood's imagination, in the 1980s and '90s the attack on the Pentagon alone would have unleashed the big strike.

Whatever the future brings, this much is certain now: It is the U.S. government and not, as European fantasy would have it, concerned world opinion that is urging patience. The U.S. president is not dealing with the crisis sitting in a bunker, as Tom Clancy and Hollywood played it, but by visiting a mosque a few days after the assault. The United States is not forcing conspiracy theories upon the world, taking the big powers into a world war — another stereotype — instead, it is trying to forge an alliance with Russia and China.

In other words, until the destruction of the World Trade Center, that is to say, for as long as the Islamist terrorists had the initiative, everything was running according to a Hollywood script. But only until that point. The Americans are putting an end to the movie. And they are also putting an end to any form of predictability, even by the notoriously anti-American groups in Europe. For the Islamic terrorists, nothing could be more disruptive to strategic planning than this change of script.

"It will be a showdown." These words were spoken yesterday not by Bush but by the Taleban's ambassador to Pakistan. This was the moment when the ambassador, deliberately speaking not in any Afghan language but in Arabic, used a piece of Wild West terminology in a renewed attempt to focus the Arab world on the comic-book version of America, which yesterday became history.

As the Arab world becomes unable to interpret the West, it would make sense for us to reassess our own comic-book versions of the attackers and their leaders. Those who attacked New York were not displaced, starving, misguided youths. The men who studied in Hamburg were all from middle-class backgrounds. Their parents appear to be enlightened, almost secularized citizens. The attackers were also far from ascetic. From the German girlfriend to the drinking bout before the attack, everything points to a type of global terrorist whose ideology consists essentially of nothing but murdering other people.

After Sept. 11, we know that in addition to this death wish, it also consists of planning and executing mass killings of civilians. Who can seriously doubt that such a domestic frontline will open up in Germany too? Groups like the irrelevant Association of German Writers (to which hardly any writers now belong) — that can think of nothing better than to warn against a rerun of the nationwide pogroms of November 1938, this time with burning mosques — are following a script of alarming stupidity.

The enemies of the open society know no more about that society than what its own cultural industry throws on the world market. In Bush's speech, they have now suffered the first powerful counterattack. They cannot read the signs, and these children of the wealthy classes merely imitate the showdown they know from the movies. An open society reacts differently, with more skill, intelligence and patience. 

But it is also true that our society itself expected this least of all. Its image of immediate escalation, inspired by the Cold War and still often promoted by narrow-minded politicians and generals, no longer applies. This does not necessarily mean the crisis will not escalate. But it will no longer do so for the reasons laid down in the familiar plot. There is no script. 

Self-images will change. Films and books will now change — as will culture itself. For example, the idea that every undertaking by Western civilization must end in failure. Or the idea that we have no enemies. Or the idea that we can leave it to America to attract all the hate for the world in which we live.

There's been a lot written about our military limits, as if it were impossible to combat a network.

Actually, we've learned a great deal in the last ten years about how to degrade, detach and destroy human trust networks (as distinct from electronic networks). Ironically, it's the flip side of what we've been furiously learning about how to make ours work better.

I wrote an article in The Washington Post on September 17th about destroying networks after I got a chance to talk to a lot of smart people, from Manuel Castells to John Arquilla to Karen Stephenson. The whole piece is at:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41015-2001Sep16.html.Some key excerpts follow:

"Disconnect the Dots
Maybe We Can't Cut Off Terror's Head, but We Can Take Out Its Nodes"
By Joel Garreau
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 17, 2001; Page C01

But how to establish a target list in a network?

The good news is that in the last decade we have developed a whole new set of weapons to figure that out.

An industry has arisen to help corporations build new networks and junk old hierarchical bureaucracies in the age of merging and emerging companies, says Kathleen Carley, director of the Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems at Carnegie Mellon University. New tools have been developed that analyze how an organization interacts, yielding a kind of X-ray that shows where the key links are.

There is a general set of principles to any network, says Stephenson, whose company, NetForm, has developed software that mathematically analyzes networks.

She points out that typically a network is made up of different kinds of nodes — pivotal people.

The critical ones are "hubs," "gatekeepers" and "pulsetakers," she believes. Hubs are the people who are directly connected to the most people; they know where the best resources are and they act as clearinghouses of information and ideas, although they often are not aware of their own importance. Gatekeepers are those connected to the "right" people. They are the powers around the throne, and often they know their own importance. Pulsetakers are indirectly connected to a lot of people who know the right people. They are "friends of a friend" to vast numbers of people across widely divergent groups and interests.

The classic example of how to use this analysis is "finding the critical employee in the company — the lone expert who knows how to fix the machine," Carley says. Ironically, without network analysis, managers frequently don't recognize who that is and the nature of his importance.

"But there's no reason it can't be turned around in the opposite way," she says. There's no reason organizational glitches, screw-ups, jealousies and distrust that slow and degrade performance can't be intentionally introduced." A network's ability to adapt to new challenges can be degraded.

Carley says: "One of the things that leads to the ability to adapt is who knows who and who knows what. The higher that is, the better the group's flexibility. But you can reduce the number of times the group can communicate or congregate. Or you can rotate personnel rapidly." And in war, this may have to be done by capturing or killing them. "You can also segregate the things people are doing, so they learn only on a need-to-know basis. The more isolated the tasks are, the more you inhibit their ability to function as a team.

"Imagine in your office if you knew who went to whom for advice," Carley says. "If you found a set of people who gave out more advice than anyone else and then removed them from the network, so they can't communicate with others, you would infringe on the ability of the network to operate."

In the case of terror networks, people are linked by family ties, marriage ties and shared principles, interests and goals. They thus can be all of one mind, even though they are dispersed and devoted to different tasks. They "know what they have to do" without needing a single-central leadership, command or headquarters. 
 

On the other hand, depending on the structure of the network, removing a few key nodes can sometimes do a lot of good, says Frank Fukuyama, author of the seminal work "Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity" and now a professor at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

"Some are so tightly bound to each other that they are not embedded in other networks. Kill a few nodes, and the whole thing collapses. Take the case of the Sendero Luminoso [Shining Path] in Peru. It couldn't have been that hierarchical. It was designed for the mountains of Peru. It couldn't have been terribly centralized. It had a scattered cell structure. It was hard to infiltrate. It was dispersed. And yet when you got [Shining Path founder and leader Abimael] Guzman and a few top aides, the entire thing fell apart.

"The idea that there is no end of terrorists, no way to stamp them all out, that if you kill a hundred, another hundred will spring up — I would be very careful of that assumption. The network of people who are willing to blow themselves up has to be limited. Sure, there are sympathizers and bagmen and drivers. But the actual core network of suicide bombers is probably a much smaller population. It is also tightknit and hard to infiltrate. But it is limited. It is not obvious to me that there is an endless supply."
Another tactic: advancing the cause of the weakest link.

"Suppose I've got a really powerful pulsetaker," says Stephenson, "vying for a position of dominance. But I also know that a member of the blood kin group is moving forward who is weaker. If you arrange an accident to eliminate the pulsetaker, and let the weaker family member come in, you've helped corrupt the network."

The beauty of seeding weakness into an organization is that you can degrade its effectiveness while still monitoring it, and not causing a new and potentially more efficient organization to replace it. "You don't want to blow away the organization. You want to keep some fraudulent activity going on so you can monitor it. If you blow them away, you lose your leads," says Stephenson. "Better the devil you know. Like [Moammar] Gaddafi. Keep him alive, because you know him. Who knows what sort of clever mastermind might replace him."

Intelligence is crucial to analyze the network's weak links so you can destroy it.

"You're talking about what amounts to a clan or a tribe or brotherhood of blood and spilled blood. That is really tough to crack. Trying to infiltrate it — we're talking years," says David Ronfeldt, a senior social scientist at Rand. However, from outside the network you can also look for patterns that stand out from the norm, like who talks to whom, e-mail exchanges, telephone records, bank records and who uses whose credit card, says Ronfeldt.

"I would attack on the basis of their trust in the command and control structures by which they operate," says Arquilla. "If they believe they are being listened to, they will be inhibited. If we were to reduce their trust in their infrastructure, it would drive them to non-technical means — force them to keep their heads down more. A courier carrying a disk has a hell of a long way to go to communicate worldwide. If you slow them down, interception is more likely."

Human networks are distinct from electronic networks. But technology is the sea in which they swim.

"What made nets vulnerable historically is their inability to coordinate their purpose," says Manuel Castells, author of "The Rise of the Network Society," the first volume of his trilogy, "The Information Age."

"But at this point," he says, "they have this ability to be both decentralized and highly focused. That's what's new. And that's technology. Not just electronic. It's their ability to travel everywhere. Their ability to be informed everywhere. Their ability to receive money from everywhere." 
 

However, Arquilla likes the idea of understanding how the network works by using clandestine technical collection. For instance, he says, when any computer user surfs on the Web — looking for travel tickets, say — more often than not a piece of software, called a cookie, is transmitted to his computer. The device monitors his every move and reports back to some database what he's done.

Now, Arquilla says, "think of something much more powerful than cookies." They exist, he says. One way to use them is by creating "honey pots." This involves identifying Web sites used by activists or setting up a Web site that will attract them, and seeding them with these intelligent software agents. When the activists check in, they can't leave without taking with them a piece of software that allows you to backtrack, getting into at least one part of the enemy network. "That likely gives you his/her all channel connections, and maybe even some hints about hubs or the direction of some links," says Arquilla.

There are other possibilities.

"You know those little cameras that some people have on top of their monitors? Let me just say that it is entirely possible to activate those and operate them and look through them without the machine being turned on," he says.

Software also exists that "allows you to reconstruct every single keystroke. One after the other. Why is that important? If you do find the right machine, you can reconstruct everything that happens. Even with unbreakable encryption, you have all the keystrokes.".

In 1996, Arquilla and Ronfeldt wrote a slim but highly prescient volume called "The Advent of Netwar" for the National Defense Research Institute, a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the defense agencies.

It predicts that in a war between human networks, the side with superior intelligence wins. It also makes some tactical suggestions about countering human networks with counter-networks that actually have been used to combat computer hackers.

They include:

• Find a member of the enemy group who is clearly a harmless idiot; treat him as if he were the most important figure and the only one worthy of being taken seriously.

• Single out competent and genuinely dangerous figures; write them off or call their loyalty to the cause into question.

• Control the stories people tell each other to define their reason for living and acting as they do. The terrorist story, says Ronfeldt, "gives these people common cause — us versus them. Right now the U.S. would seem to have the edge at the worldwide level. But within the region, there was the dancing in the streets in Palestine. Part of the story is that America's evil, and that America's presence is to blame for so many of the problems in the Middle East. We have to attack that part."

• Find the list of demands extorted by the network; grant some that make no sense and/or disturb and divide their political aims.

• Paint the enemy with PR ugly paint so that they seem beyond the pale, ridiculous, alien, maniacal, inexplicable.

• Destroy their social support networks by using "helpful" but differently valued groups that are not perceived as aggressive.

• Divide and conquer; identify parts of the network that can be pacified and play them against former allies.

• Intensify the human counter-networks in one's own civil society.

Adds Manuel Castells: "We should be organizing our own networks, posing as Islamic terrorist networks. We should then demand to join one of these networks and then destroy the trust structures. Only way to infiltrate. Oldest technique in the world."
Few of these ideas involve flattening Kabul, all of these analysts note.

Stephenson worries that massing the Navy near Afghanistan is "a symbolic show of old-fashioned strength. It's not about that anymore. This whole playing ground has shifted."

"In order to do anything, you cannot be blind," says Castells. "The most extraordinary vulnerability of the American military is it looks like they do not have many informants inside Afghanistan. It also looks like the majority of the components of this network do not relate directly or essentially to nation-states. That is new. Unless we have a fundamental rethinking of strategic matters, it's going to be literally, literally exhausting and impossible. It will be desperate missile attacks at the wrong targets with a lot of suffering. Massive bombardments turn around the opinion in many ways."

"Basically," says Ronfeldt, "you have to find somebody to wipe out."

When Martin Heidegger famously observed that 'science does not think' he was referring (in part) to the fact that it does not, of itself, supply a system of values. Thus the perversion of science known as Lysenkoism occurred (also in part) because the USSR, in becoming as wholly atheistical as Richard Dawkins, lost the touchstones of ethics, truth, and humility. By willfully misconstruing the insights of Darwin, the 'agrobiological' experiments of T.D.Lysenko, director of the Soviet Academy's Institute of Genetics, directly led to the deaths of millions in famines. It is not just religious fanatics, however defined, that commit atrocity. It was bad science, of course, but even good science is no more than a powerful way of finding things out. In the words of Dr Johnson "Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful."

In appearing to blame the recent attacks in the USA on the existence of religion in general, Dawkins's scientism comes close to fundamentalism itself. His implication that all religion is concerned with ultimate ends is wrong, as is his assertion that nothing would be lost were Islam, Christianity and Judaism to be superseded by science as a form of life. At the same time as the founder of Sufism in Islam, Rabi'a al-Adawiyya (A.D. 717-801), was concluding that an authentic life was incompatible with either acting out of hope of reward or, equally, fear of punishment (she thought that to aim for Paradise would not only lack humility but would be an affirmation of something that was not God, and thus fundamentally false), other Arabic scholars were keeping the flame of Aristotle alive and creating the basis of modern university science. This is Dawkins's own scholarly and civilizational inheritance – one that, along with Bach's Passions and Kant's Critique of Judgment, is grounded in a profound religious sensibility. 

Obviously, like all things human, religion can go as badly wrong as science. bin Laden is religion's Lysenko. To extrapolate from his fanaticism that the complete demise of three world religions would be no loss, as Dawkins does, is curious. Perhaps it is his evangelical atheism that helps Richard Dawkins come to terms with the shock and disappointment all sane people feel at present. All I can say is that the religious enriches my life, so I for one would lose out in the brave new world he envisages, as would many who are at this moment finding that it is the church, mosque, synagogue or temple that provides solace and hope for continuing their lives beyond grief in the face of their particularly traumatic bereavements. From a prehistorian's perspective, it seems that our species has evolved aptitudes and sensitivities for both science and religion over many tens of thousands of years. Although they have often been antagonized in the history of civilizations, both play central, long-term roles in maintaining and developing our humanity. Ultimately, in my opinion, neither can be any good in the complete absence of the other.

America has long been spared the most painful experience of modern warfare: massive civilian casualties. The terrorist attack on September 11 has taught us what most other nations learned earlier in the century, that no one is safe. Pearl Harbor was a military target and American civilians were safe in their homes and communities through two world wars. We have also been spared that other less dramatic experience of modern warfare, the destruction of infrastructure, with all the dislocation, privation and economic disruption that follow. In earlier wars, the U.S. infrastructure was ramped up, not destroyed, but today significant parts of it are at risk. The terrorist attack has newly taught us how dependent we are on a complex and interconnected infrastructure and the economy is reeling, but we have yet to understand the implications of these new experiences.

The first lesson to learn and act on is not that terrorists are uniquely evil but that all targeting of civilians is immoral. This includes the destruction of infrastructure, which is equivalent to the Biblically prohibited poisoning of wells, the material basis, of survival and the disruption caused by economic sanctions. Economic disruption creates unemployment and lost savings in industrialized nations; in the third world it can create famine and uncontrolled epidemics. The casualties are real. One of the problems with calling our new effort against terrorism a "war" is that it legitimates punishing ordinary people for the crimes of leaders they did not choose. We must not express our anger by retaliating against populations or writing off the "collateral casualties" caused either by bombing or blockade. America learned from the smoldering enmities that followed the civil war and World War I that peace is not founded on vengeance, a lesson expressed in the Marshall Plan. America needs to combine that earlier insight with this new and painful sense of vulnerability.

The appropriate expression of this understanding would begin with the lifting of US economic sanctions in all those places where they have deliberately and apparently bloodlessly eroded the material basis of survival without changing government policies, such as Cuba and Iraq. Above all, Afghanistan, with whose civilians we say we are not at war. Only weapons and weapon building materials should continue to be blocked (and these should be reduced world wide). The "wells" that need to be protected from poison today include infrastructure of all kinds: transport, water purification plants, public health, electricity and basic industry and food production; protecting these includes maintaining communications and education. An appropriate next step would be to join with our allies in the coalition against terrorism in the creation or restoration of essential infrastructures worldwide, especially in the poorest countries which U.S. economists have taken to writing off.

The second lesson is the urgent need to take seriously the full meaning of globalization. Globalization offers huge benefits and huge dangers, and is in any case probably irreversible short of calamity. Today we must add skillful, disciplined terrorism to a list of dangers that includes new infectious diseases transported rapidly around the planet, as well as the dangers of human and environmental exploitation that have been emphasized by the anti-globalization movement. Yet globalization at its best goes far beyond economic interest and must combine respect for the distinctiveness of cultural traditions, religions, and bioregions with the awareness of a radical degree of interdependence and mutual responsibility.

Hard as it seems to realize, America's self interest can no longer be distinguished from that of other nations — not just our traditional allies but our rivals and even our enemies. Recognizing this, the United States must reengage with international efforts like those for arms control and against global warming, as a nation among nations rather than perpetually demanding to be treated as an exception. We need to recognize that we are vulnerable in our homes — and that our home depends on the health and goodwill of the entire planet.

I have read all the contributions to this discussion and I feel strangely (the right word, in these terrible circumstances) uplifted. More or less randomly chosen examples are Robert Provine's calm and insightful application of signal detection theory, David Myers' social psychology, George Dyson's inspired shift from hub and-spoke travel to packet-switching, Karl Sabbagh's world-wise savvy, Nick Humphrey's constructive humanity, and Bruce Sterling's sober futurology. Unlike Colin Tudge, I come away with enhanced respect for the scientific mind and what it has to offer, even outside the field of science, narrowly defined. It heightens my sensitivity to what – should we become plunged into a new Dark Age – we have to lose: the culture of scientific rationalism which every one of the Edge contributors exemplifies and takes for granted: a culture which, it must be admitted, is almost as alien to many in Britain and America as it is to the Taliban.

With perverse injustice, a wave of anti-American verbal nastiness – accompanied by nice, liberal self-doubt – was triggered by the physical anti-Americanism of September 11th. We hear talk of Coca Cola, MacDonalds and other unpopular icons of supposed American culture. These are not what I would be sorry to lose, and they are relatively trivial. Modern America is the principal inheritor, and today's leading exponent, of European scientific and rational civilisation. And that means the highest civilisation ever, not excluding the Greeks and Chinese.

When we bend over backwards to see the other point of view and blame ourselves for everything; when we fall over ourselves to sympathise with religious 'hurt', 'offence' and legitimate grievance; when we tie ourselves in knots to avoid anything that could conceivably be misinterpreted as racist, let us keep a sense of proportion. The chips are down, and I suddenly know whose side I am on. A world without Islam, indeed a world from which all three Abrahamic religions had been lost, would not be an obviously worse world in which to live. You may take that as British understatement if you choose. But a world which had lost enlightened scientific reason (which is at its best in America, and not only because more resources are spent on it) would be impoverished beyond all telling. So I hope I shall not sound too corny if I want to stand up as a friend of America. Even (and it feels like pulling teeth to say so) Bush's America.

George Lakoff wants us to mobilise moderate and liberal Muslims. This is, no doubt, a worthy aim. My own constructive suggestion is that we should listen to and support those brave former Muslims who have renounced their faith altogether. The Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society (ISIS) carries on its web site a perceptive and knowledgeable commentary on the recent atrocity, by Ibn Warraq (not his real name – as a Koranic scholar he knows the punishment for apostasy). He is a leading post-Muslim intellectual and the author of Why I am not a Muslim, a book which I strongly recommend. Please read him at (http://www.secularislam.org/)

I have withdrawn most of the rest of my contribution, in deference to what seems to be an American taboo against offending religious opinion. I remain baffled by the fact that liberal arbiters freely allow us to offend against political, economic, musical, artistic and literary opinion, but religious opinion is almost universally regarded as off limits, even by atheists. Douglas Adams called attention to the same paradox, in a speech in 1998 (http://www.biota.org/people/douglasadams/index.html ).

I agree with Steve Grand that an appropriate response to the current atrocity would be for us all to stop being so damned respectful.

The US must not let the war on terrorism drive out other priorities. For example, we should still pay attention to human rights, non-proliferation, free trade, and democracy. We should not make the mistake of the Cold War where we let our anti-Soviet priority lead to collaboration with brutal right-wing dictators.

Even more important, we must not let the war on terrorism distract us from dealing with other problems. Examples of other problems that need attention are the plight of millions of refugees from and in Afghanistan, the stagnation of our relationship with North Korea, the adjustment of China to the WTO, and the possibility of progress between the PLO and Israel. And if another problem arises that calls for attention, we must not be too distracted to deal with it as well. An example would be a currency crisis in a country like Argentina, that if not attended to, could spread through the continent and then throughout the Third World.

One of the most important issues facing the United States and its like is to prevent 2004 from becoming 1984 (Orwell's story of a dismal future). In defense of liberty and in order to defeat those who attempt to subvert it by terror, we must avoid so changing our society that they will have won.

It is very easy to demand changes in our laws and those of our friends that will "make it easier to protect ourselves". These laws now protect our citizens from excessive intrusion of government at all levels into their private life and their private thoughts. It is tempting to argue that the government needs to be able to listen to your phone calls, to monitor you email, to make sure it can by forbidding encryption etc. It will also be argued that having cameras trained on citizens in public places and keeping those records for latter analysis will help keep us safe. Picture a future politician who retroactively applies those records to a morality in the future and shows how you met a non-person years ago and thus you must be non-loyal. Ben Franklin said more than 200 years ago — "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

We must defend our liberty not just now but we must realize that what we do now will define what nation we will pass on to our children and their children. Liberty, once given up, is almost impossible to recover. We must choose wisely and deliberately what we do to defend our democracy and our future — and our children's future.

I take your "what now?" question literally — what should "we" do — the people reading and writing these? Not "we" the political entities of the West or "we" the heirs of civilization. It strikes me that in these times, the answer is actually quite clear, and it has to do with the great flexibility of that concept of "we."

As a number of people have observed over the years, human beings have a mighty capacity to line up with the rest of their team against some other team, but this mental structure is not committed to any particular content. You might think of it as a syntax without any semantics: We know how to do Us vs. Them, but I have yet to see a persuasive case that any particular form of Us (ethnic, nation, class, religion, even kin) is "built in." So when "we" are attacked we have a cognitive problem: Defining what "we" means. And the problem is of vital importance, because the answer we use doesn't just interpret the world for us, it guides future actions. The story of the attack shapes our response, therefore it matters a great deal what the story is.

And this struggle to define what "we" means is what I see occurring all around me, in New York City, in the United States, and in the world. It is, of course, taking place in billions of individual minds, so the answers vary, from President Bush announcing that our quarrel is not with Islam to the people down the street from me saying they should round up all Arabs in this country. (They are, by the way, neighbors to an Arab family, whose son is away — he's in the US Army). But it is not purely a matter of individual psychology. Some concept of "Us" will succeed, and become part of what Lyotard calls a master narrative of this conflict. It will be the widely shared representation of what our side is, as the story of the American Civil War (not settled until 1863) was "we are those who fight slavery" or the story of World War II (not settled until the 1940's) was "we are those who are destroying totalitarianism."

We are all in the early, unsettled stages of defining our side. Within Islam and within the United States, there are those who speak in terms of God and the sins of nonbelievers. In Europe, I see, at least one Premier has proclaimed the superiority of "Western civilization." Our own president here used the unfortunate word "crusade." It is not inconceivable that in this struggle the "we" definition that succeeds will be Islam vs. Non-Islam; or North vs. South; or the West vs. the Rest. Many of these potential definitions point to a world where "our" victory would be scarcely better than "our" defeat. (In a war of Christianity vs. Islam, where is an atheist materialist going to go?)

So, now what? People on the Edge list should now engage in this worldwide struggle over what it means to be on "our" side. We must fight the rhetoric of metaphysically pure communities, of clashing civilizations, of mystical cycles and divine interventions, and work to shape a definition of "our side" which will be worth fighting for.

What happens now is that we (by which I mean the West) eradicate state-sponsored terrorism. And we can achieve that only by replacing all political systems that perpetrate or collaborate with terrorism, by systems that respect human rights both domestically and internationally.

This will require, first of all, war. Then, it will require spectacular success at the notoriously difficult task of improving other nations' political systems. But we have done such things before: we did it for Germany and Japan in 1945. We have also failed many times at it. We must succeed this time.

But more: it will require changes in us. In our conception of the political landscape. It will take violations of old taboos and the creation of new understanding and new traditions. Genuinely this time, it will require the creation of a new and better world order. At a moment like this, people like those gathered here — Edge contributors — surely have a great deal to offer.

I haven't read all the contributions. I agreed with much of what I read, disagreed with some. But I found little of what I had hoped for.

Richard Dawkins, as usual, talked sense, and made several true and timely points. He praised America as "the principal inheritor, and today's leading exponent, of European scientific and rational civilisation", and he broke a taboo by pointing out that this is "the highest civilisation ever". He took sides: "I want to stand up as a friend of America" — as do I. But in one important respect, his remarks did not seem to me to reach the heart of the issue. He blames religion, and our convention of "respecting" it. Now, I am no advocate of religion, but religious belief is surely not central to the present disaster. There are plenty of terrorists at large who are not pursuing any religious agenda. There are notorious sponsors of terrorism who are driven by nationalist or socialist ideologies, not religious dogma. And there are plenty of religious zealots who are no danger to anybody (except themselves and their unfortunate wives and children).

That is not to deny that mainstream Islamic culture has exhibited a major moral failure. It seems to struggle even to find the language and the conceptual framework genuinely to oppose the crimes that are committed in its name. Large numbers of peaceful Muslims find themselves in effect condoning mass murder, and painfully few can bring themselves to side with the victims now exercising their right of self defence. Nevertheless it is not the tenets of Islam that have caused the present violence. This is a political evil we are facing, not a religious one. And it is a modern evil, not an ancient one.

Moreover, mainstream Western culture has also exhibited a major moral failure: a refusal to distinguish between right and wrong. The unique glories of our civilisation — self-criticism, tolerance, openness to change and to ideas from other cultures — have in many people's minds decayed, under this moral failure, into self-hatred, appeasement, and moral relativism.

For instance, Freeman Dyson begins his contribution by attributing the First World War to an excess of zeal in fighting terrorism. His "What Now?" is that we must "stop telling the rest of the world how to behave" and instead "learn to live with the world as it is, not as we want it to be". He also describes his youthful sympathies with the Nazi bombers who in 1940 were dropping death on London, the "citadel of oppression" in which he lived. Of the recent suicide attacks he says: "I find it easy to imagine the state of mind of the young men who so resolutely smashed those planes into the buildings. Almost, I could have been one of them myself". It is ironic that he shows so much empathy with the pilots who murdered thousands in the cause of evil, and so little for those who are at this moment risking their lives to destroy a genuine citadel of oppression.

But this is no coincidence. Moral relativism always sees itself as evenhanded, and indeed it begins with a retreat from judgement or taking sides. But in practice it always entails siding with wrong against right. I said that we need to change. Here is something that desperately needs to change. A colleague wrote recently: "Despite the morality of responding in self-defence to a terrorist attack, I am thinking about how to find solutions that do not include tit for tat." Yet nothing that the West has done so far, or has threatened to do, or has proposed to do, has involved any hint of tit for tat. The idea that it does, is another example of the moral relativism that has pervaded far too much of Western thought and policy making, and is an integral part of what caused the attacks. In reality, the impulse for revenge plays no significant role in the political culture of the West. If it did, then the vast, peaceful, humane and diverse civilisation of the West itself would not be possible.

It is not true that the recent attacks on the US were motivated by a state of mind similar to that which is currently motivating the Western response. The Western stance — and even Western mistakes, including appeasement and moral relativism — are driven fundamentally by respect for human beings, human choices and human life. Western values are life-affirming and life-seeking. The murderers worship death. There is no symmetry between life and death.

There is no "cycle of violence" that we have to "break" by making the murderers and their sympathisers feel less angry with us. Their anger is unjustified: To cleanse the Arabian peninsula of non-Muslims is an immoral aim, violating the human rights both of non-Muslim residents and of Muslims who wish to associate with them (and, perhaps more pertinently, to seek their assistance in defending themselves). To cleanse Israel of Jews is an aspiration similar in kind but much more evil both in its racist motivation and in its intention to destroy an entire nation. To replace secular or less-than-fundamentalist governments by religious fundamentalist ones in all Islamic countries is an utterly tyrannical agenda. And there is a fourth unjustified 'grievance' that goes implicitly with those three: they demand the right to punish the West, by mass murder, with impunity, if anyone in the West opposes them in pursuing any of those other 'grievances'.

In contrast, the West's anger, and the West's restrained, careful and humane response in self-defence, are justified. The problem is not to find alternatives to defending ourselves against murderers. The exact opposite is true: this violence will end if and only if we defend ourselves, effectively. And effectiveness will depend in part on our saying truthfully what we are doing, and why our stance is not essentially the same as theirs.

You can perceive our stance and theirs as symmetrical only by expunging morality from your analysis: seeing all political objectives as being legitimate, all rival value systems as matters of taste, treating murderers and their victims with evenhanded sympathy. You have to look at tolerance and its opposite, intolerance, and pretend that they are two versions of the same thing. You have to pretend that the richness and diversity and creativity of our civilisation are playing the same role in our lives as empty repetition, oppression, and pitiless enforcement of a monoculture play in theirs.

People wring their hands and say that there must be "better ways of finding solutions" than warfare. Of course there are. We have already found them. The nations and people of the West use them all the time. They are openness, tolerance, reason, respect for human rights — the fundamental institutions of our civilisation. But no way of finding solutions is so effective that it can work when it isn't being used. And when a violent group defines itself by its comprehensive rejection of all the values on which problem-solving and the peaceful resolution of disputes depend, and embarks instead on a campaign of unlimited murder and destruction, it is morally wrong as well as factually inaccurate to represent this as a case of our needing "better ways of finding solutions". That is why we have to insist, by force if necessary, that everyone else in the world also respect, and enforce, the minimum standards of civilisation and human rights. Western standards.

One last thought. If I am right that there has been a moral failure in the West despite — and in a way, because of — the moral superiority of Western political culture over that of its enemies, then there is also a second irony. One may argue about the precise role of religion in the terrorists' mindset, but Mr Blair and Mr Bush, both of them religious believers who purport to derive their moral stances from their religions, are certainly not part of the problem: on the contrary, they are leading the solution. Mr Bush, speaking to an audience of children, addressed the question that everyone has asked: "Why would somebody hate so badly"? And he replied: "my answer is, there's evil in the world. But we can overcome evil. We're good." This is the simple truth — a truth on which all our futures depend — yet the moment Mr Bush uttered it, all the intellectuals in the Western world winced. Even those who, like myself, agreed with the proposition, winced, vicariously, because we recognised the intensity of the taboo that was being broken.

How many non-believers would have been capable of giving the right answer to that question? President Bush was able to answer it, and to articulate the explanation, and to use it as an essential element of national policy, not especially because he knows it intellectually but because he understands it in his gut. And the process by which it got into his gut was intimately connected with his religion. I must hasten to add that this process also entrenched there a slew of wrong ideas. Nevertheless, civilisation will survive the miscellaneous evils that one finds in a mature, Western religion — such as Bush's opposition to abortion, and the like. But it would not, pace Richard Dawkins, survive the typical non-believer's (pre-September-11) take on the nature of morality. We non-believers have failed too. What comes next is that we must correct that failure, by incorporating into the Western tradition of critical rationalism an objective conception of right and wrong.

Here are some thoughts about the disaster and our reactions to it. They don't answer your question, but perhaps it may be helpful to look at these events in a wider context. 

The day after the disaster, I had lunch with an Austrian friend. He talked about the events of July 1914 after the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo. Many people in the Austrian government, including the Emperor, felt that this act of terrorism should be handled diplomatically. But the newspapers were screaming for war against Serbia, using the same rhetoric that we hear today. The Serbian government is sheltering the terrorists and must be punished. The world must know that the Austro Hungarian Empire is a great power and capable of defending its interests. Since we can't make war on the terrorists, we must make war on Serbia for helping the terrorists. This barrage of patriotic frenzy in the newspapers continued for four weeks, and finally pushed the government to take the disastrous steps that led to the outbreak of World War One at the end of July. In many ways, our present state of mind is uncomfortably similar to July 1914 in Vienna.

The events of September 11 brought to mind another vivid and uncomfortable memory. I am sixteen years old, lying in bed at my home in London on a noisy night in September 1940. I am violently hostile to the British Empire and everything it stands for. I hate London, the citadel of oppression, with its grandiose buildings sucking the wealth from every corner of the world. I lie in bed listening to the bombs exploding and the buildings crumbling. What joy to hear, after each explosion, the delicious sound of buildings falling down, the great British Empire audibly crumbling. The joy far outweighs any fear that my own home might be hit, or any pity for the people in the falling buildings. How many sixteen-year-olds all over the world are now seeing on television the pictures of the World Trade Center buildings collapsing, and feeling the same joy that I felt in 1940. I find it easy to imagine the state of mind of the young men who so resolutely smashed those planes into the buildings. Almost, I could have been one of them myself.

The only wisdom that I can extract from these memories is that the problem of terrorism is not a military problem. It is a problem of people's hearts and minds. Attempts to solve it by military means will only make it worse. I don't pretend to know how to solve it. A good way to start would be for our country to stop telling the rest of the world how to behave. We must learn to live with the world as it is, not as we want it to be. We must treat our enemies with respect, so that we do not appear to be trampling on their cultures and traditions. The ultimate goal must always be, not to destroy our enemies but to convert them into friends. And meanwhile, do whatever we can to defend ourselves without killing more thousands of innocent victims.

I was very disappointed to see that Richard Dawkins had felt obliged to withdraw some of his comments about the role of religion in this issue. To me his original comments rang truer than many of the prosaic psychological insights offered elsewhere and have been chillingly confirmed by the recent revelations in the infamous letter written by one of the WTC hijackers to the rest of his demonic crew. "Keep a very open mind, keep a very open heart of what you are to face," the document says. "You will be entering paradise. You will be entering the happiest life, everlasting life."

No mention of 72 virgins, true, but a startling indication of just how powerful religion can be in its corrosive ability to distort and corrupt people's thinking. A perfect example too of why scientific thinking is utterly at odds with religious belief because anybody who thinks scientifically would automatically qu estion everything about the absurd notions harbored by these terrorists concerning God and the afterlife.

And although many religious people would denounce the terrorsists' ideas, Dawkins is surely right to point out that it's the whole mode of religious thought that creates these terrible dangers by brainwashing people with blind faith. As the guardians of reasoned thought, scientists have a special responsibility in impressing on the wider public the distinction between the rationality of science and the irrationality of religion. It would be good to see more scientists stand out decisively against religion instead of, as so many seem to do, pretending to see some middle way in which both can happily coexist.

[Ed. Note: In my first email to regular Edge contributors I mentioned that emails I had received from members of the Edge community (Richard Dawkins, Paul Davies, and Martin Rees, as well as a conversation with Kevion Kelly) helped me to decide to run this project. These messages, which were prior to the "WHAT NOW" Question Project were abbreviated in my Web introduction above. Richard Dawkins Guardian piece has been available all along at the link above, and, he has also provided a new comment as well — click here. He did not withdraw the comments you refer to.

Your point about the importance of scientists and religious thought is well taken. Nicholas Humphrey, Mike Csikszentmihalyi, Dave Myers, J.C. Herz, Stewart Brand, Tim Taylor, and Richard Dawkins, among others all have strong views on the subject. Plans are now underway for an new Edge question project to address this set of issues in the next couple of months. Best, JB]

I think I should contribute something from the "strategic" point of view to the "what now?" discussion since it seems to be sadly missing, or, perhaps, simply obvious to all.

1. Terrorism is a military strategy to accomplish certain specific goals. It is used by those whose numbers and strength is unquestionable less than their opponents. It can be remarkably successful. The French reign of terror was conducted by 22 men and successfully control an entire country.

1. The specific strategy of the terrorist is to provoke a response in the enemy that leads to the enemy's downfall. It is warfare's equivalent to jujitzu in which the small in number and weak in strength use the opponents strength against him.

As one example, the Algeria terrorist provoked the French to withdraw from Algeria all native-born troops (and other actions) that clearly demonstrating to Algerians that the French did not really consider Algerians equal citizens and Algeria, itself, a southern province of France.

3. It is clear from his statements that bin Laden wants to provoke an attack by the US-led Western forces that will be viewed by the Moslem world as an attack on it in order to start a war which he believes the Moslems would win. It is not that he wants to weaken us directly, although the economy has taken a hit, he wants to provoke us to act in a way that will support his assertions about our animosity toward Islam.

4. Terrorists have been halted repeatedly when their actions produce either no response or responses that they do not want. The Palestinian terrorists instantly stopped hijacking planes and attacking airports following the Athens attack when the response in countries like Greece was unfavorable. In fact, Arafat issued a death threat to any such hijackers.

What now? This is a no-brainer. We must respond in a way that disqualifies bin Laden's goal. We must respond in a way that indicates that we are not hostile to Islam. Everything else, is commentary, as the saying goes.

5. Unfortunately the structural problem lies in the fact that information is capable of being distorted. No matter what we do, many people will be told we have done something else. Thus the terrorist does not really have to provoke us into an act that will be useful to him, but he has to be able to interpret what we do in that fashion. An example is that the attack on the World Trade Center is being reported as the work of the Israeli secret service. What scientists can do now is perfect systems that allow open communications. What ever happened to the sun-powered computers that could be provided to third world people that got information from satellites? 

I want nothing more right now than to have distance from the awful events of Sept. 11th, but distance is not available to me. I live five blocks from the poor World Trade Center and saw the attack from an outdoor café at the corner. I saw many things that I am not ready to describe. I was evacuated and returned almost a week later to find my home damaged. It isn't yet clear if I'll have to move or not. And yet, of course I feel lucky, even a little guilty, at my relatively extreme good fortune.

Seeing the dreadful rescue site is an unbearably sad daily ritual. It is beyond my mental capacity to register that I have seen with my own eyes over 6000 civilians suddenly killed in front of me.

I struggle for something useful to say. I think I'll be wiser about this at some point in the future, because some distance must surely form with time.

Here is a scattering of ideas that might be of some small use:

I must first address some remarks to "Leftist" readers in Europe. Many of you have suggested to varying degrees that we Americans brought this attack on ourselves through our horrid foreign policy. The claims vary from the mild- that we can't expect to extend our will around the world without somebody striking back- to the insane, as exemplified by the words of Karlheinz Stockhausen , who said the attack was "the greatest work of art ever." I'm a composer, and I fear these words will tarnish the tradition of Western music forever. That someone could even think to say this is an indictment of our esthetics. Could one of our most prominent artists really have lost touch with all concerns other than the quest for extremity and public notice?

To address the more mild slights: I don't think our recent foreign policy has been as consistently bad as it's often portrayed. Somalia really was a humanitarian effort; our Balkans policy was late and confused, but not imperialistic, and was at least better than Europe's; the Clinton mid-East peace proposal was enlightened, respectful to all sides, and at least plausible; our man Mitchell is roving around the world talking sense to all parties

There are a lot of kinds of power. There's an odd strategic parity between post-industrial democracies and the new worldwide society of suicide-cult terrorists. You really don't need to envy us now, ok?

Here is a historical framework that I have found useful in thinking about the attack: The advantages of confederation have not been constant. Rather, they've been on a constant track of modification due to changing technologies. Technology has changed the degree to which cooperation between people improves their fortunes.

If we go back far enough, say before the bronze age, there were limits to the advantages individuals could gain from forming large alliances, and indeed there were benefits to staying in small hunting or scavenging parties instead of large ones.

But once a technology like the shield appeared, it created a rationale for large scale cooperation. A line of men cold walk with their shields overlapped to form a moving wall of metal which was quite impenetrable. Similar observations could be made about agricultural and many other technologies. This enabling of scaling produced in its extremes the Roman Empire, and eventually the modern states.

By the time we come to the twentieth century, there was a new problem: States had become TOO powerful, once again because of changing technologies. Survival in a nuclear age depended on détente and treaties, structures that superceded states.

Perhaps we are now entering a period when tiny groups of people, or even individuals, routinely become powerful enough to be threats to large numbers of people. If this is so, then the original advantages of the state no longer apply. The technologies that are enabling this transition are, disturbingly, ones that I have devoted much of my life to improving; distributed communications networks, simulators, and open education institutions and teaching tools.

As I think about the forms of defense that could protect us from repeated intense threats from insane but powerful small groups of people, I see few strategies that are appealing. We could try to live in something like an immune system instead of a state with it's attendant army. It's plain, after all, that a traditional army is ill-matched to the present threat. The immune system metaphor is revolting to us, however, because we've all struggled so hard to cease to be racist or to otherwise divide the human family into the similar and the foreign.

It's hard to be completely honest about whether an immune system approach is what's really needed, or whether it's just the easiest response for us to envision. Xenophobia seems to me to be a universal human tendency, and that observation stands whatever mix of nature and nurture might be responsible.

On the other hand, maybe ever more severe social structures that resemble immune systems are inevitable, and as we learn to survive in the new situation we will expose a new grim corner of the confines of the human condition.

In the past, I was pro-privacy and most definitely against the notion of a government spying on me. Now I think I was crazy to have that position. Yes, the government poses a threat, but I wasn't willing to believe before that there were other threats that are even worse.

I can see a few rays of hope that dimly illuminate how a society might be pleasant and still protect itself from violent/suicidal cults. Instead of surveillance, a high degree of transparency might protect us from evil. An American supreme court justice famously proclaimed that "Sunlight is the best disinfectant". While this trope originally concerned censorship, it could just as easily be applied to the balance between privacy and security. The Dutch came upon a version of this. Theirs is a dense society of intense interdependence, and in it one does not close one's curtains. Perhaps we should make all our emails and phone calls freely available to anyone who is interested. Almost no one will be. Once revealed, our fascination with the private lives of other people will be so minimal that our boredom could form the basis of a stable social order.

Another possibility is that we might retain privacy but imagine more elaborate governmental structures than we have yet seen to reduce the chances that intelligence agencies will abuse their powers or become lost to their own ideological phantoms.

There is also a McLuhanesque thought that has occurred to me. In the last few years, the Arab world has encountered its own mass media for the first time, in the form of satellite television stations. I've seen a little of the material, and it is inflammatory. It might be the case that societies require some years to get sufficiently used to mass media so as not to be driven insane by it. World War II might have had something to do with the West's early experience of the power of mass media and modern propaganda. Over time one grows somewhat immune to it. In this light, cynicism is seen to be not only a good thing, but a mental habit that is necessary if any society is to survive in an age of potent media.

Finally, I must address a question to my colleagues on edge.org. In the final decades of the twentieth century we've seen an unprecedented rejection of the enlightenment. The assault on rationality has come in many forms, from pricey astrologers for coddled pet dogs, to the prominence after centuries of obscurity of the most militant and strident variants of just about every world religion. We have recently seen neo-Christian suicide cults (the Branch Dividian), Jewish extremists not heard from since Roman times (the "Settlers"), Hindu ultra-nationalists, and many others.

Is our way of marketing science and technology part of the problem? I must emphasize that it's the marketing that I worry about, not the technological capabilities or scientific theories. I'm thinking of the way we market computers as living things and Darwinian interpretation as an oracle. Some of this must play very strangely to people who are poor and wonder what will happen to them as the elites in the West soar into uncharted heavens on the wings of Moore's Law and the genome, hoping to leave even the most basic rules of life as it was known behind.

Is violent fundamentalism in part encouraged by a sense that science and technology are ruining faith in the soul?

I'm not talking about any notion of an immortal soul. I just mean the sense that a person is somehow really there, conscious, that when one communicates with other people they are similarly really there. I know many of the respondents on edge.org believe it's only a mental confusion to feel alive, but I beg you in this instance to reconsider your position. You can do so without harming science in any way, and you'd be more honest for having done it.

I do not think you can discuss the bombings and not talk about mideast policy and a lot of other social issues. Kevin Kelly is quite right, the bombings have nothing to do with technology; they are about social rage and pain. This is my hard-edged comment after many years of feeling some of that pain as I watched the brutal politics that produced it.

I agree that there is a lot of talent, expertise and intelligence in this group. I think the proper response to these attacks is an intense public focus on the reasons for them; teach-ins on the model of the Vietnam teach-ins of the sixties; work by artists and intellectuals to integrate the cultures of the two sides; strong political resistance to attempts to militarize and police America and the world in the name of security. That's for starters. There is going to be plenty to do.

How will we see September 11 in hindsight? Was it an "act of war?" Or was it "a crime against humanity?" Our actions in the coming weeks will depend on how we think and talk about what's happening. Alternative scenarios can help to frame these acts so we can make sense of what seems like senseless tragedy.

Scenarios can provide anticipatory disaster relief, a way of avoiding trouble by rehearsing futures in our minds so we don't have to live them as fact. Alternatively, scenarios can inspire us to raise our sights. By imagining positive outcomes, we can see more clearly the steps that will be necessary to get there.

The following scenarios offer such food for thought. The first, Jihad, is dark indeed. The second, One World, paints a future worth working for.

Jihad

Paris, July 12, 2003: Today's attack on the Eiffel Tower continues the string of international incidents. If only the Americans had listened when Chirac insisted that it wasn't a "war".

Like many a commander in chief who lost a conflict by confusing it with the last war, the Americans thought they could mobilize their military might to defeat the terrorists. They sent their ships and planes toward Afghanistan. They did their best to smoke out Osama bin Laden to catch him on the run. They tried desperately to find a battle they could win . . . but there was none. The enemy was elusive, invisible, dispersed.

America wanted action, retribution, and the punishment of the perpetrators. Surely the massed might of America would be sufficient to find and eliminate the enemy. So America went to war.

Trouble was, Chirac was right: It wasn't really a war. At first it looked like Bush "got it." There was talk of "a different kind of war." The first strikes were "surgical," very little "collateral damage." But just when the Americans were celebrating their "victory," the second one hit, the atrocity at the World Series. Enraged by that diabolical choice of targets, America lashed out with less discrimination. You want terror? We'll show you terror! And a terrible attack rained down from the heavens over Afghanistan.

And that was just what Osama bin Laden wanted-an escalation from crime to war. Pictures of maimed women and children helped to unite the Islamic world against America. What had begun as an exchange of carefully focused rapier thrusts now turned into a brawl between the military might of America and every Muslim, every anti-globalist, every disenfranchised child of poverty, both within and outside the borders of the U.S.

Throughout 2002, massive air strikes by the U.S. were followed by terrorist attacks in the least likely places ‹ a shopping mall in Toledo, a high school graduation in Austin, a rock concert in London, the assassination of a governor, the kidnapping of a group of business executives.

By the end of 2002 the terror had created massive paranoia. People stayed home. Restaurants and theaters remained empty. Businesses shut down. The Dow dipped to triple digits.

Like the "war on poverty," like the "war on drugs," this "war on terrorism" looks like it will drag on and on. How can it end now that the war has escalated while one side remains invisible?

One World

New York, July 12, 2003 Today ground was broken for the new World Trade Center. It won't be as tall as the old one, but its reach will be even broader. In the weeks and months following the attack in 2001, the community of great nations got bigger. United by the common cause of uprooting terrorism all over the world, countries like Russia and China acquired an increased respect for the rule of law. Pakistan and Syria came in from the cold. The stick of American power loomed large, but the carrot of peace and prosperity loomed larger.

Focusing on global "crime," America refrained from indiscriminate attacks and relied instead on special forces, covert operations, and some very good investigative police work. As a result, America managed to walk the fine line between appeasement on the one hand, and on the other a show of force that would have united the Islamic world in a jihad against the U.S.

Walking that fine line wasn't easy. People were impatient. The pain was deep. But this crime against humanity led to humane responses: Not only heroic rescue efforts and an outpouring of generosity, but also a soul-searching quest for what is most important in life. No sympathy for the criminals. After seven long months of searching, they were found and punished. But the patient precision of their defeat saved the world from decades of descent into senseless bloodshed.

What is the moral of these two scenarios? It makes a big difference whether you talk about the tragedy of September 11 as an "act of war" or as "a crime against humanity."