America Declares War

NEW YORK – The United States declared itself on Wednesday at war with the terrorists who launched suicide flights at key centres of US power, killing thousands of Americans and leaving the once-impregnable superpower suddenly feeling vulnerable. The battle cry was issued by Secretary of State Colin Powell a day after unidentified commandos rammed hijacked US airliners into the World Trade Centre here and the Pentagon outside Washington in the world’s worst terrorist assault. “The American people made a judgement: we are at war, and they want a comprehensive response, they want us to act as if we are at war and we’re going to do that,” Powell told US television. Powell, who was the top US general during the 1991 Gulf War, said the crisis would not be resolved by a single counterattack against one individual but is “going to be a long-term conflict and it’s going to be fought on many fronts.” Powell called Tuesday’s carnage “a war against civilisation. It’s a war against all nations that believe in democracy. ... It requires that kind of a coordinated, complete response on behalf of the civilised countries of the world.” There was no full death toll immediately available, but President George W. Bush said in his address to the nation late Tuesday that “thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror.” In the search for the culprits who shocked the world by unleashing a new kind of warfare on US soil, officials said preliminary indications pointed to the work of Islamic extremist Osama bin Laden. The Saudi-born, Afghanistan-based multimillionaire is already sought by the FBI on charges of organising the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. Bin Laden, in remarks to a Pakistani newspaper, denied any part in Tuesday’s strikes. Afghanistan’s ruling extremist Taliban militia also said he was not involved but added it was willing to discuss extradition if US investigators had hard evidence. But Bush issued a barely veiled threat late Tuesday from the White House’s Oval Office, saying, “We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these attacks and those who harbour them.” Senator John McCain, Bush’s main Republican rival in last year’s presidential election, termed the attacks “clearly an act of war and one that requires that kind of response.” In a Gallup poll published on Wednesday, 86 percent of those interviewed agreed that the strikes were an act of war, with 55 percent expressing the fear they marked the start of a sustained campaign of terrorism against the United States. But only 21 percent said Washington should immediately conduct retaliatory attacks, with 71 percent preferring to wait until those responsible have been identified. While US officials tried to identify their assailants abroad, blame was also sought at home. “It’s a failure of our intelligence system,” Republican Representative Curt Weldon told CNN. “It’s a failure that was caused by a lack of resources and by a complacency that set in over the last 10 years - a complacency that convinced all of us that with the demise of the Soviet Union, there were no more threats.” Although members of Congress closed ranks around the president, there was also deep disappointment over the failure to detect and thwart the bloody strikes. Questions abounded, such as how terrorists were able to pull off the virtually simultaneous hijackings of two American Airlines and two United Airlines domestic flights on the east coast with a total of 266 people aboard. Also unanswered was how they were able to direct the Boeing aircraft towards two of the most visible US landmarks without interception, particularly after the first plane slammed into one of the Trade Centre towers. “We can be shocked, but we shouldn’t be overly surprised by what we’re seeing,” Planes are capable of diving into buildings, and there are lots of suicide bombers all over the world,” Senator Robert Byrd, a Democrat, told CNN.” The physical and emotional scars from Tuesday’s carnage, which saw the Trade Centre wiped off the Manhattan skyline and left a gaping hole in the Pentagon, symbol of US military might, were evident on Wednesday. Lower Manhattan’s usually teeming streets were reduced to an eerie moonscape of white dust, soot and debris as firefighters, police and rescue workers sifted through the metal and concrete debris of the World Trade Centre’s twin towers. There was no way of telling how many of the 40,000 people who worked there might still be under the ruins and authorities ruled out a detailed toll before late Wednesday. The staggering casualty toll was only starting to emerge: The city’s firefighting union said at least 200 of its men died when the first, then the twin towers folded onto the streets below in a vast cloud of smoke and flames. The Pentagon, which houses the US Defence Department, returned to work Wednesday even as firefighters continued to put out residual fires in the crippled building where US media said up to 800 people died. All commercial airline traffic remained grounded - a first in US history - as military planes scrambled and aircraft carriers moved into defensive positions off the coast. AFP Ends