>http://www.counterpunch.org/

>Who Saw It Coming?

>By Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair

>

>Tuesday's onslaughts on the World Trade Center and the

Pentagon are being

>likened to Pearl Harbor and the comparison is just.

From the point of

>view of the assailants the attacks were near miracles

of logistical

>calculation, timing, courage in execution and

devastation inflicted upon

>the targets.

>

>The Pearl Harbor base containing America's naval might

was thought to be

>invulnerable, yet in half an hour 2000 were dead, and

the cream of the

>fleet destroyed. This week, within an hour on the

morning of September

>11, security at three different airports was

successfully breached, the

>crews of four large passenger jets efficiently

overpowered, the cockpits

>commandeered, navigation coordinates reset.

>

>In three of the four missions the assailants attained

successes probably

>far beyond the expectations of the planners. As a feat

of suicidal

>aviation the Pentagon kamikaze assault was

particularly audacious, with

>eyewitness accounts describing the Boeing 767 skimming

the Potomac before

>driving right through the low lying Pentagon

perimeter, in a sector

>housing Planning and Logistics.

>

>The two Trade Center Buildings were struck at what

structural engineers

>say were the points of maximum vulnerability. The

strength of the

>buildings derived entirely from the steel perimeter

Is A. Cockburn in this country legally? Is he a US citizen? And Illegal (excuse me, "undocumented") alien?

Mr. Cockburn's insights will be condemned by the warrior class but sober reflection in the heat of battle is crucial, especially when such critical insights may be part of the solution. The continuing failure of American leaders to learn the risks of the warrior culture, and blind preoccupation with search for vengence by the cabal at the top of the capitalist empire will only make us all more vulnerable to the next attack. This attack may take more lives than any previous loss in a battle, including the battles that ended the mighty Roman Empire, amounting perhaps, to tens of thousands dead Americans, but there are no safe places anywhere and the vulnerability of the technological civilization puts an end to the history of warrior cultures, which cannot survive. When every adversary or terorist gang can arm themselves to the teeth with automatic weapons, atomic and chemical instruments of mass destruction, and when trust and cooperation with our neighbors and other global inhabitants via Internet can achieve more than competition, more than street demonstrations, and more than the assertion of hyperpower, there can be no avoidance of the imperative shift to new modes of association beyond the deadly, blind. and stupid warrior culture, in which there is no glory and few heros except those caring for the dead and dying.

You say we shouldn't fight wars. Yeah, war is bad. So what should we do -- let these guys decide our foreign policy in Israel? I'd rather go to war than let these dudes run our country.

Then you better be ready to go to war with your own government and state department, because

as Mr. Cockburn's analysis subtley suggests, the real terrorist is (and always has been) in our own midst...

(As for Mr. ins, piss off...)

Asscraft admits the pilots were trained in the US.

CIA was on-board and bailed prior to impact.

The capitalist allies were fooled into believing the action was the work of Bin Laden.

The moronic but nazi- controlled Bush junta will end up giving their supposed closely-held hand of CIA coverup away. We will include the tens of thousands of lives lost on the Bill Of Impeahment against George bush, King Nazi III.

A case of mixing up a trio of erudite journalists.

And at first I just didn't get it. After all Pearl Harbor was an explicitly military instalation while the WTC was full of civilians. But then either Westinghouse, General Electric or Disney pointed out this evening that Pearl Harbor qualified as a 'sneak attack'! Ah, I get it now, a sneak attack (as opposed to those attacks where the enemy is kind enough to give us fair warning). Both the WTC suicide bombing and Pearl Harbor may have both been sneak attacks (presumming for a moment that we really didn't have any inteligence that the WTC was intended to be hit and that the terrorists somehow neglected to give us advance warning). Ah but what of the civilian vs. military component of the attack? For this reason I maintain that either Hiroshima or Nagasaki are better analogies. Both of these were also sneak attacks and both primarily targeted civilian populations. I guess the only place this new analogy falls short is that while the destruction of the WTC happened TO US, Hiroshima was done BY US. Is this a minor point? At any rate I feel the only reason Westinghouse, General Electric or Disney like the Pearl Harbor image so much is that one they have lots of stock footage they can draw upon and two both events inspire a sense of outrage. Perhaps this is really why I hate the Pearl Harbor analogy so much - I despise that the American people are so quick to be manipulated into hysterical outrage. We continue to scream out 'who shall we blame' and neglect to ask 'why did someone believe this had to happen'.