Vancouver Province
for September 13, 2001

The acts were unspeakable. It’s hard to fathom the grief that permeates so many homes amongst our neighbours to the south.

The playing and re-playing of that horrible scene of the second airliner hitting the World Trade Centre is etched in the minds of billions around the world.

The giant has been aroused as at no time since Pearl Harbour. Our vision of the American as a slob slugging back beer in front of his TV football game will disappear as we see the great republic, seething in anger, planning and executing its retaliations.

What we must understand is that this is war, 21^st century style. No longer are there ultimatums delivered by men in frock coats and striped pants to other men in frock coats and striped pants. It’s not even the more modern version where one nation, without warning, strikes at another. This time the great powers of the world must fight a shadow. There is no nation to invade – there is an elusive enemy to chase.

This is war no less for that. The time has come that the electronic genius that permits crab poachers on our coast to check out their traps by satellite is used to track those who can hit so hard then hide.

Ironically, it’s been our faith in our electronic genius that’s got us into this trouble. We’ve heard how American spy planes can spot the licence plate numbers on cars in Moscow and have come to believe that we have all the bad guys of the world under constant surveillance. As I will point out in a moment even if we have, it’s not enough.

If we have had faith in the macro abilities of electronic surveillance we have been confident in the extreme about our micro efforts such as at security points in airports. Well, folks, ten days ago I walked through the airport security at Manchester airport with one pocket full of change and another full of car keys upon which there was a penknife. No bells rang – I was through like a breeze. The lessons of Air India and Lockerbie had very little staying power.

What’s become clear is that American security in the old fashioned sense of spies and infiltrators – the stuff of James Bond – has disappeared in the fiction that we can do it all with tiny cameras, One former CIA director after another has confirmed this. We may be able to watch the Bin Ladens of the world in their camps but we can’t hear what they have to say. Only infiltrators and experts in espionage can do that. We will, unless I miss my guess, see a great change in the methods the United States employs in this new form of warfare.

We now see a terrible sight – the United States of America in white hot anger. Forget that beery slob watching his football game – this is the America that in its infancy sent the Marines to the Barbary Coast with the cry "millions for defence but not one cent for tribute". This is the America whose most chilling symbol is not the Stars and Stripes or the American eagle but the snake with the motto "don’t tread on me".

This is the America that in 1941 had a tiny army drilling with broomsticks while co-pilots in open biplanes dropped sacks of flour as bombs then, after Pearl Harbour became a white hot angry force fighting viciously all over the world. When Admiral Yamamoto, having sent his planes to Pearl Harbour, reflected on the matter he observed wearily that Japan had now "roused the sleeping giant."

The "sleeping giant" has been aroused again. This is no mere insult to the national psyche – this has been an act of war. And as Japan and Germany found in their time, an America aroused is a terrible enemy to behold.

There is, however, an underlying catalyst which, if not neutralized, will keep this terrible war going indefinitely. The Middle East crisis must be solved. It is time for the United States to forget about the niceties of diplomacy and step into that situation and, if necessary, force a solution that leaves an Israel as secure as is possible next to a Palestinian state as satisfied as is possible.