The FEUDAL HERALD SPECIAL EDITION September 2001 The Baronage Press Website Condolences Immediately following the initial impulse to write to our American
friends to express our most profound sympathy, to convey our most
sincere condolences, came the realisation that this magazine and
its newsletter, shaped by a readership that is seventy per cent
American, are no longer sufficiently British to justify writing
as unattached, distant foreigners. Baronage now belongs to North
America, to Australasia and to Southern Africa as much as to the
British Isles, and thus instead of sending condolences from three
thousand miles away, as if to strangers, we can and must share
this terrible grief directly. No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of
the Continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by
the sea, Europe is the less: the same as if a manor of thine own
or of thy friends were. Any man's death diminishes me, because
I am involved in Mankind. And we are indeed all involved. But for what? The first desire
for retribution seems to have been replaced largely by calls for
justice, but whereas the former appeared to lack a target, the
latter appears to lack definition. The murderers are dead, while
there is no punishment on this earth appropriate to those who
planned, authorised and paid for their barbarism.
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Then came the irrefutable realisation that these fanatical attacks,
although located in New York and Washington, were attacks against
all of us, against all who share Western values no matter where
we live. In this grief we are thus united.
Then came the memory of John Donne who wrote four hundred years
ago ~
The President has recognised that we are at war, but the aim of
the war can be neither retribution nor justice. It can only be
elimination ~ the elimination of terrorism as a political weapon
~ and to that end every civilised nation and all who share Western
values must join forces with America.
Terrorism is the use of terror to influence politics. Its practitioners
terrify civilians so that governments, threatened by further atrocities,
might surrender to the terrorists' aims. The difference between
blowing up a shopping mall on a busy afternoon, as in the war
Britain has now fought for several decades, and in destroying
a skyscraper, as in America on Tuesday, is only one of degree.
Terrorism is war.
To understand the nature of this war we must reject much of what
we have learned of conventional war. There is no symmetry here
~ tanks do not fight tanks, nor ships fight ships. Five men armed
with one dollar knives can kill thousands and destroy billions
of dollars worth of national assets. One man with a small bottle
of bacteria can murder millions. Terrorism has leverage undreamt
in conventional war.
Time is distorted. In conventional war a trigger is squeezed and
almost immediately a few hundred yards away a man drops. A pilot
may identify what he seeks, release a bomb, and then within a
few seconds his target is blasted. In unconventional warfare the
bomb is delivered discreetly and triggered weeks or months later.
Much has been written about the military weakness of democracies.
If a decrepit tramp steamer in deep water off New York or Los
Angeles carries a nuclear bomb and explodes it, the consequent
tidal wave will be catastrophic. But how do Western democratic
nations defend against such a possibility? If a truck in central
London has aboard a semtex bomb around which has been wrapped
dirty metal (radioactive waste), its explosion would put Britain's
financial centre out of operation for months and create colossal
economic damage. Again, how are the defences against that possibility
organised in a democracy?
Last Tuesday's atrocities had not escaped the Intelligence community's
schedule of possibilities. All the aircraft above Western countries
are either flying bombs or guided missiles. They have already
been "delivered" and await only triggering. An aircraft fuelled
for a transcontinental or transoceanic flight may have on board
fifty or sixty tons of highly explosive fuel. This can be triggered
by a surface-to-air missile timed to ensure that the bomb crashes
onto a populated area (which is why the IRA's rumoured possession
of Stingers so alarms British governments), or, as on Tuesday, it can be
hijacked into the rôle of a cruise missile.
As democracies we shall continue to abide by the rules, as our
opponents most certainly will not, for to act inhumanely, as they
will continue to do, would concede to them another victory. But
as democrats we shall support our elected governments in the defensive
measures they find necessary to introduce, in the offensive actions
they must take, and despite our grief we each, all of us, will
be vigilant.
For the present we mourn our dead and pray for their families.
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