U.S. must wipe out the terrorists and their sponsors

CAMBRIDGE, MA. - A military adage holds that a man under fire will show the best or worst side of his character. Judged by that standard, Osama bin Laden, 45, a Saudi Arabian native commander-in-chief terrorist who operates terrorist bases and training camps in southern Afghanistan - one of the three hungriest countries in the world, according to a last year published United Nations (UN) report - and has been indicted by the United States for the bombing of two of its embassies in the African nations of Tanzania and Kenya in 1998, killing over 200 people, most of them Africans, allegedly once again came out by proxy, but this time on Sept. 11, 2001, showed the best of himself. Shock struck the United States and the rest of the civilized world on that early morning of September (The date coincided with Sept. 11, 1922, when a British mandate came into force in Palestine, over the heads of unyielding Arab opposition) after bin Laden's followers or bandits first hijacked two American commercial jets full of fuel and then simultaneously commandeered them to attack the crowded World Trade Center twin towers (two of America's symbols of economic power) in New York City, home to men and women of every faith from some 60 nations, felling both structures. Thousands of innocents citizens lay dead in the wreckage of the buildings and thousands more suffered injuries.

An hour later or so, hundreds more were consumed by flames after a third hijacked American commercial plane ploughed into the Pentagon, America's symbol of military power, in Washington, D.C. But the fourth hijacked commercial airliner, apparently aimed at the White House, crashed into a field in Pennsylvania, causing all of its passengers, including the hijackers, to loose their lives. How big an economic blow? Now comes the issue of measuring the economic loses - though no model has been built to determine the statistical relationships between both, the dependent variable Y, which can be defined as: the United States economy, and the x independent variables, such as: airlines and real estate industries - caused by the worst terrorist acts ever in the annals of the modern world. How big a blow? The ordinary business of life - airline flights, sporting events, shopping malls, stockmarkets, etc. - in the United States was shut, suggesting that billions of dollars in revenue were lost. Billions of dollars more are likely to be lost in the weeks or months to come as confidence in the economy remains an issue of concern. Ford Motor Corp., for example, warned that profits would be just half of what had been expected before the attacks for the third quarter. Analysts now expect Knight Ridder Inc. to earn 65 cents a share, down from earlier expectations of 80 cents. And Dow Jones & Co. to earn 19 cents a share, down from 29 cents during the second quarter. The current hit to corporate earnings, adding to the airlines companies that have been forced to be on the verge of bankruptcy since four of their planes were hijacked by the terrorists, causing citizens to continue to be afraid to fly, forcing executives to struggle to keep them afloat by stepping up their pleas for immediate financial assistance from the Federal government that goes beyond grants and loans to include liability relief, as insurance companies are in the process of squeezing their premiums and significantly reducing coverage, could prompt to even more layoffs, in addition to the 20,000 or so already announced by the airlines industry, as well as significantly reducing capital spending, as companies struggle to bring costs into line with lower demand for goods and services. Cynics may not agree with the author of this column. But all of the above relevant factors analyzed give real cause for concern, suggesting that since the Sept. 11 attacks the United States economy is no longer having a hard time landing, it will in the near future not escape a recession, defined as two consecutive quarters of falling growth GDP. Depending on the country, recession might therefore be when the growth rate falls significantly, say, by at least two percentage points below its long-term potential, causing unemployment to rise. For example, Morgan Stanley, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF), uses weights based on countries' GDP measured at purchasing power-parity (ppp), which adjusts for differences in price levels between countries. J.P. Morgan uses weights based on GDP at markets exchange rates. The ppp gives far more weight to emerging economies, such as those of Colombia, with a projected GDP of $106.3bn for the year ending Dec. 31, 1998 and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela $110.2bn, according to the Economist Magazine (The World in 1998). What exactly are the new set of problems that will be created by a recession - even if it is just a growth recession? The explanation for the latter is that the economy grows, but at a rate below the long-term trend of 3 percent. Whatever the case, the unemployment rate will rise and business and personal bankruptcies will increase as less and less money is collected in the form of Federal taxes by the United States government. And this, in spite of a ten-year cumulative budget surplus of $3.4 trillion - a brave assumption - produced by the American Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in August. With a little further tinkering, guided by the combination of a slower economy, anti-terrorism spending, airlines bail-outs, to include the tax cuts already slated for fiscal year 2002, the surplus, which in May was first forecast at $5.1 trillion (4.1 of GDP), will most likely be sliced even thinner, driving the officially measured budget toward a deficit during the fiscal year 2002. The author's most pessimistic view is not the definition of the big "R" word or recession. So, too, it is not the anticipated resulting problems just enumerated and analyzed above. But from a hypothetical perspective, a prolonged 1-point increase in the national unemployment rate, on a scale running from 5 percent to 6 percent, will promote social problems. The most common social problems may be defined as: suicides, homicides, domestic violence or divorces, homelessness, child delinquency, fatal heart attacks or strokes, deaths from liver cirrhosis, admissions to mental hospitals, and admissions to state prisons, as citizens commit more crimes for a variety of reasons. For example, many new unemployed people will steal goods from department stores they do not have money to purchase. Others will break and enter homes and end up killing the victim(s) to avoid detection. To assume that the number of crimes now being committed by citizens will go upward and their economic costs to the taxpayers will be highly correlated is a great leap of logic. But the economic costs of public wrongs, or acts prohibited by the state, will be hardly to measure accurately. However, one may use current or previous United States government relevant expenditures to demonstrate that there will be a significant increase in crime-related expenditures - they will most likely total many billions of dollars annually. Yet the Sept.11 unspeakable (political) crime also came at such a fragile moment for the rest of the industrialized world economies, which already were having a hard time escaping an official recession. It presented them all and others with enormous economic loses since the combined revenue generated by many multinational corporations and foreign countries - the latter through taxes paid, for example, in the form of sales, personal and corporate taxes, etc. - intersect with the performance of the United States' economy. And consider the New York City's economy itself - the most hardly hit. The question that Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and New York state Governor George W. Pataki are soon going to have to address is: will the economy of that city recover in the short-run to its pre-Sept. 11 terrorist acts place in the American economy, or whether it will enter into a downward spiral? The question is worth asking. New York City's greatness is determined by a circular causation. How so? This can be best explained by its people and businesses. They locate there, after all, because of the economic opportunities created by the presence of other people and businesses. Assume a substantial number of New York City' s people, all traumatized by the Sept.11 terrorist acts, decide to leave the city. Businesses, too, no longer want to remain there because other businesses are leaving; they are also concerned about future terrorists acts and fear the consequences for their future effectiveness. It would not be wrong to conclude that the local economy will most likely fall below critical mass and enter a downward spiral. The terrorist acts, a "declaration of war" The appalling atrocities of Sept. 11 must be seen as a declaration of war, not just on the United States but on the rest of the civilized world, which is not limited to France, for example. They must also be seen as an anti-democracy and capitalism declaration, especially "anti-democracy." The U.S. government, together with Congress, will be forced to come up with new legislation in an effort to minimize the possibility of future terrorist acts. Because of that, citizens will be deprived of some civil liberties that they now enjoy. That seems unlikely this time. But assuming that the United States - leader of the first world, not an island of prosperity - decides to deal with terrorists rather than just terrorism. Attempts are then made to capture bin Laden, the prime suspect, while ignoring his vast terrorist networks and others. He shoots himself to death or he is shot to death in the process. His death will certainly promote him, as he always envisions, from leader to martyr. The history of the free world must not be written by Islamic fundamentalist groups, including bin Laden. Tragically for Islam, a 1,400-year-old great religion that literally means "surrender," these groups and bin Laden base their actions on a surah in the Koran, a verse that reads: "Fight in the way of Allah against those who fight against you, but begin not hostilities. Lo! Allah loveth not aggressors. And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution is worse than slaughter." However, to many Islamic scholars those teachings simply authorize violence just in self-defense. History of the free world must neither be written based on the teachings of a 14-century firebrand, Ibn Taymiyya, who stated unequivocally, "jihad," which literally means struggle, "against the disbelievers is the most noble of actions." One can only say that history of the free world must, rather, be written by democratic countries. The United States, in concert with its allies, must muscularly respond (A campaign that must also be waged on the diplomatic and ideologically fronts) to the early last week attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., destroying as many of these extremely violent, criminal groups as possible." Still, there will be possibilities. The United States and the rest of the civilized world should not be naive enough to say with confidence the terrorist groups, including just conceived home-grown lunatics, will not attempt to avenge the destruction of their partners in crime. Since it is so, the United States and the rest of the civilized world will have to supplement their high-technology intelligence gathering snooping for counter-terrorism, which depends on pooling on information and also requires international co-operation, with human intelligence or spying to help meet future enemies' threats. Who have long been backing, at least financially, the Islamic fundamentalist groups? Certainly a handful of totalitarian dictators in the Middle East. Wiping out as many of these evil dictators and their governments, too, will (hopefully) play a role in helping the countries they have long turned into pariah states to progressively achieve democracy. The cold war may have long been over, suggesting that there have been a misunderstanding human nature, believing that foreign policy should not rate high - say, on a scale of zero to ten. However, the dilemma of a new type that the United States was presented with on Sept. 11, of course, not only suggests that it is still as important as it was before the collapse of the Soviet Union, but a re-assessment of it is long over due. In so doing, the United States will not only fully comprehend why anyone should be moved by such hatred against it, but be better prepared to deal with "terrorists' suitcases," for example - a new "Damocles sword" hanging over the civilized world and democracy.

As the United States and its allies are preparing to embark on an unprecedented campaign to write the obituary of many terrorist groups, especially that of bin Laden, they must not forget about Haiti's chief bandit and radical leftist Jean-Bertrand Aristide who on Sept. 7, four days before the assault on the United States and democracy, told Haitians gathered at the Port-au-Prince's only soccer stadium for a make believe public illiteracy meeting "The little bird is going to show the big bird what he can do." What exactly was he saying? The small country or dirt poor Afghanistan, but through bin Laden, is going to show the big country or the United States what it can do. No wonder the current economic conditions, too, in these countries will (hopefully) change for the better since the "grand thieves" will no longer be in

Brignol Lindor, a radio journalist hacked to death by brutal dictator Jean-Bertrand Aristide on Dec. 3, 2001

Days after devastation visited Lower Manhattan and Washington, D.C., in the United States the mood is grief, purpose, unity, anger, and outraged patriotism with talk of war. The explanation for the latter is that even avowed nonpacifists would agree with St. Augustine's contention, a fourth century Christian philosopher, who said "the greatest danger of war is not the the physical harm that it causes but the passions that it inspirers." And on behalf of the majority of the Haitian people, who dream of a democratic Haiti, and "We Haitians United We Stand For Democracy," I convey my condolences to United States President Georges W. Bush and his fellow compatriots. Yves A. Isidor teaches economics at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth and is the spokesperson for "We Haitians United We Stand For Democracy, a Cambridge-based nonpartisan political pressure group. Correspond with Professor Yves A. Isidor: yvesisidor@wehaitians.com

*This column was also published in The Standard-Times on October 7, 2001. More, this column has been reprinted by more than 17 newspapers and magazines in the U.S., Europe, and Latin America. At leat two newspapers have translated this column into the Spanish language and ultimately accommodated it for publication