Commentary
No reasonable person can help mourning deeply for the human and material losses in the recent US terrorist attack, but also for the days to come, for our potential losses in the attempt of the great alliance among states and governments to restore the climate of security which has clearly been upset. This is a mute, tearless mourning and grief that is manifested in the anxious faces of everyday people. Common, ordinary people throughout the world have no doubt suffered the same agony as that which has haunted the people of New York for the last two weeks. It is this mixture of mourning, fear and anxiety over the future that has captured people’s souls from the moment they realized that the airlines that crashed into the Twin Towers were piloted by human hands. No one feels safe anymore and everyone faces the future with apprehension. This climate of uncertainty stems from the extent of the barbarity, from the lack of any restraint before the consequences of an incomprehensible terrorist attack. This is where the human mind stops, for it cannot give an explanation, nor even grasp the thoughts of those who caused the bloodbath. No one doubts that, in the wake of these developments, the world needs additional security measures. No one questions the need to monitor terrorist activity to avert similar strikes and mass murders in the future. This, however, is one thing while resorting to an all-out and indiscriminate war is quite another. The civilized world has to weigh carefully the level and the nature of the response. It must give its response a humanitarian dimension and avoid hitting innocent and impoverished masses. It is an imperative, in these dark days for mankind, that humanitarian beliefs prevail, so that we do not unmake the social and political achievements of the postwar period. Otherwise, there is great danger that the world will lapse into barbarity, leading to an endless action/reaction chain that would have devastating consequences for everyone.
