WHAT’S NEW ABOUT THE TERROR OF SEPT. 11 xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" ?>

                Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld says that this is a new kind of war. That in some ways it will be INVISIBLE--with fewer classic battles that are seemingly won or lost. This war will have many fronts: from cyber money flows to secret commando raids, to bombing runs. Some of what is done we will not be told so as to protect the very war the government is fighting. On the other hand, covert operations, like the destabilization of the Taliban through funding the xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" ?>Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, will be put in full view. This is all quite troubling to me. We are told much of this war will be invisible, and I first want to know: invisible to whom? To us in the U.S.? Or invisible to Afghani’s and Pakistani’s? To their children? Or to the Taliban and/or bin Laden? It cannot be invisible to all of us. So what exactly are we being told here? Afterall, we were told that the Gulf War was a bloodless war because it was mainly 100,000's of Iraqi’s who died, and not us.                  As well, Rumsfeld has put his covert policy of destabilization in full view when this kind of politics has been repeatedly used across the globe by the U. S., as in Guatemala, Angola, Chile, and so on, and been denied. In other words, this covert politics was not made part of overt policy. If this is being done so now, we must wonder what the new forms of covert power are that are being deployed. By definition, power, in order to be effective in protecting itself, is always in part invisible; the very dynamic of powerful forces is that they privilege ways of seeing that do not put the whole picture in focus. The precious words of democratic enlightenment theory were articulated right alongside the African slave-trade; the start of America buried the civilizations of the Tainos and other Native-Americans. Now, Bush and Rumsfeld, and Powell tell us that there will be much that we do not know, the necessary invisibility of this war, and yet they reveal the already well established covert tactics of U.S. foreign policy. This newly-old twenty-first century policy reveals a shifting in the established discourses of power. One must wonder what the actual power shifts are that have instigated this. 
                When politics is described as new, I wonder what part of it remains old. Politics is defined in and through power relations which are always in the process of change. The essence of any change is that it remains new and old simultaneously. Although Sept. 11 is said to have changed the world forever, this is not wholly true. For many living outside the U. S., although horrified by the Sept. 11 tragedy, they say that they have lived with the effects of North American terror-filled foreign policy for decades. There is no shortage of examples: Chile, Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea, and so on. The newness in this instance is that the terror is experienced on U.S. soil, so it is seen for this first time from this vantage point. For many refugees and immigrants who left their home countries to escape terrorism, they experienced a special horror all of their own when the terror found them once again, but here. 
                Sept. 11 changed the way many in the U. S. see themselves and the world. It is our obligation to see even more and to take responsibility for the ways the world system damages too many lives. For those privileged individuals who have allowed themselves to be blind about U. S. policies toward Iraq, and the West Bank, and Afghanistan, and Pakistan, this is the moment to change this. It does not make sense that the U. S. government supported and used bin Laden in their fight against the Soviets, and now combines with Russia to fight bin Laden. If U. S. policies have supported bin Laden’s terrorist activity in the past when it suited these ends, then it is not o.k. to turn around and speak of terrorism as horrific only in this instance. Obviously, Bush has a particular form of terror he wishes to dismantle: that which is used against U. S. interests.  
                The U. S. public needs to have an earnest dialogue about the different kinds of terror-politics. Are we against all terrorism or just the kind that hurts us, the kind that comes inside our borders? The issue of terror politics must be opened for dialogue both inside and outside our borders. Many black men see the police inside our borders as terrorizing. Terror must be addressed in all its forms or isolated attempts to end terror will not work. If U. S. policy creates new terrorists it will not matter if the existing ones are destroyed.  
                Terrorism has no one agreed upon meaning other than to terrorize. Beyond this the word shifts and changes to meet the expediency of the political moment. In the 1930's the Jew ish underground in Palestine was called terrorist; by the early 40's they were called freedom fighters. Eqbal Ahmed asks us to wonder whether Columbus Day itself connotes the terrorist take-over of the Americas from those who came before.¹⁰ Too often terrorism is simply masked and legitimized by calling it ‘war’. Governments never name their own actions as terrorist.  
                Whose terror is being named when the term is used in the first place? September 11 was a terror filled day. But were these Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorists? Or Anti-Capitalist Globalization Terrorists? Or Anti-Western Democracy Terrorists? Or Anti-Secular Terrorists? Or just plain Terrorists, with no specified target of hate? It matters to know this if there is to be some effective resolution of this aftermath. Terrorism, in general, blurs the very specifics we need to know. Focusing on terrorism, per se, "detached from any purposeful agenda only confuses matters".
Rather, Stanley Fish says to name its location and purpose, rather than assume its everywhere and thereby nowhere.¹¹ 
                There are a million refugees trying to flee Afghanistan at this moment. The bombs we are dropping are killing and terrorizing Afghani’s. The U.S. government tells us the refugees are fleeing the Taliban, but others outside our borders say they are also fleeing in fear of what is to come if the Northern Alliance, who we wish to install as the new rulers of Afghanistan, replaces Taliban rule. There is much debate elsewhere about whether the Northern Alliance will be an improvement, after their display of horrific murder and rape in Kabul in `96.¹²  
                An anti-terror politics calls forth people’s sense of a universal humanity, despite cultural differences. It is this universal love of life free from bodily harm that united the world for a brief moment against the Sept. 11 massacre. Amidst the rubble the human spirit spoke against the wanton destruction of human life: firefighters ran upwards into the flames, friends dragged injured colleagues down sixty flights of stairs, known enemies of the U.S. spoke out in immediate denunciation of the atrocity. It is in part what is so painful about that day. That almost all of us, here, and elsewhere, and everywhere, were united in horror. Even people in war-torn countries who live with daily destruction wept for us. Our administration destroyed this unity almost immediately by an unchecked bravado and arrogance.  
                Bush is being praised by many in the U.S. for his restraint but I cannot join these voices. Supposedly the U.S. has attempted to build a multilateral coalition against terrorism; but we insist on our hegemony within this arena. Bush has repeatedly stated that "You are either for us or against us." The us is the U.S., not humanity in general. He uses false universals like ‘good’ and ‘evil’ and isolates us from most of the rest of the world when he does so. He speaks without acknowledging the complex mix of human life which lives within the borders here; that global humanity died on Sept. 11. He speaks in the overly general language of terrorism: you are either for terrorism or you are against it. He refuses to engage in real dialogue with the parts of the world that see us as terrorist. Instead Bush praises ‘our way of life’ and smugly says there is no negotiation about the present bombing. This terror-filled policy used against Afghani’s is legitimated while the American public is told to look toward the flag.  
                In place of the present militarist strategy--supposedly bombing the so-called network of terrorist cells while actually hitting real towns and civilians--the U.S. should with the assist of a transnational tribunal hear the case against U.S. foreign policy especially with regard to Palestine and Israel. Alongside these discussions and negotiations the U.N. should establish global standards which prohibit all use of terror: state, religious, individual, etc. Once these initiatives are completed countries might agree to dismantle whatever terrorist network they harbor and turn over bin Laden and his accomplices to an International Court for trial. The countries that might not at first agree would face global economic sanctions and/or embargoes. One might think this could never work, but the present ploy will not work either. It will just create further vulnerability for the citizens of the U. S. and the rest of the world.  
                Meanwhile the U. S. public is deluged with information of anthrax contamination, first in Florida, then New York City, then Washington, D. C. The news is filled with special reporting on bio-terrorism. People are told to be careful and not open mail items from unknown sources. The focus is all on here, while bombs fly over there. Very little is said about whether the anthrax events are the doing of Al Qaeda. It is quite amazing how little is said about what these repeated assaults might be. Instead, there is just a lot of repetitious discussion about anthrax itself. We are expected to adjust to this new level of discordance; absorb it as part of everyday life while not expecting to understand what it all means. And, at the very least it means that no matter how powerful and rich the U.S. is, we, its people, are vulnerable and at risk.  
                It is also significant to note that anthrax contamination is nothing new to the president of Planned Parenthood and to hundreds of workers in women’s reproductive and health facilities across the country. As noted in the Boston Globe, abortion providers have dealt with the fear of biological attack for years, long before anyone had heard of bin Laden. During this recent anthrax scare 110 letters claiming to be laced with the deadly bacteria arrived in abortion clinics in 13 states. But clinics have received such threats since 1998 although no one in the F.B.I. or the attorney general’s office saw fit to see this as terrorist then.¹³  
                I am thinking backwards to the befores--and how they inform the afters of Sept. 11.¹⁴ We are asked to have amnesia, to forget memory. But there will be no peace, now for any of us, without memory. Anyone who knows any history knows this. Sept. 11 created the global village that the global capitalists have touted for two decades. But in the aftermath, the U. S. militarized government demands its privileged status again, in the only way it knows how, with its military might. This macho bravado is old and worn and cannot breed anything but more terror. The U. S. by Sept. 30 had 28,000 troops, more than 300 warplanes and two dozen warships in the area surrounding Iraq and Afghanistan. On October 6, at 12:30 U.S. air strikes began to hit Afghanistan. Bin Laden tells the world that the U.S. will suffer until the rest of the world is freed from us.  
             I was in New York City when the strikes began. Although a poll of 500 people says that the American public is completely behind these actions (93 percent of us),  I see no relief on New Yorkers faces; no jumping for joy; no sense that we are headed in the right direction. I had run down the bike path that travels along Riverside Park and the Hudson River to the site where the Twin Towers used to stand with a dear friend. All along the way there were signs of grief and mourning; yellow ribbons are tied to fences along the piers; signs with names of the dead are rain-soaked but still readable; the people we passed along our route just seem quiet. New York felt quiet and deeply wounded. 

RETRIEVING THE BEFORES xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" ?>

                I woke to NPR news Sept. 28^th, to hear recounted the senate’s debate on oil drilling in the arctic refuge, known as ANWAR, that ‘our’ strength and security as a nation and the health of ‘our’ economy depends upon this oil drilling. I’m not sure what I want to do with the information I read earlier this week in the book Taliban that there has long been pressure on Afghanistan by oil companies to cede the rights for a pipeline to ease the cheapest flow of oil reserves in central Asia.¹⁵ Supposedly, bin Laden has been a major obstruction to building the pipeline. Once again we are in the mid-east and oil is an issue. I know this is part of the present moment and yet it seems too simplistic to fully explain the horrific massacre. The politics of the moment cannot be reduced to oil reserves and these economic interests. This is also about xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" ?>U. S. power--which is bigger than oil-- and how much of it the rest of the world wants to continue to choke on. And, it is also about women’s lives and the way that they are changing. 
                U.S. power is tied to the way it exports freedom: from lipstick, to porn, to films about affluent life-styles. Part of this package is how ‘western’ women are marketed by ‘western’ media: they are free and sexy. No coverings to veil the desire. Forget that this "feminism for export" has little to do with women or feminisms inside the U.S.; or that anti-racist feminisms believe deeply in equality alongside freedom which disallow the sexual or racial exploitation of any woman.¹⁶ Elsewhere on the globe there is a battle brewing over the meaning of traditional vs. modernized forms of patriarchal privilege. It is no mistake or happen-stance that a key focus of the Taliban is to control its women by pushing back the gains made by Islamic feminists in Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Algeria, etc. Islamic feminists have been calling for greater democracy in their countries for the past two decades; right alongside the growth of global capitalism. Oil is key in this present struggle and so is the meaning of patriarchy, for both the so-called West and East, on the globe. Feminists of all kinds have our work cut out for us. It is why we must become more vocal on this issue of terror politics. Because there are many kinds of freedoms, and democracies, and feminists across the globe are committed to discovering what they might mean for them. These questions need answering, especially for those who see ourselves as progressives committed to developing a politics which is against terror-filled tactics and absolutely and completely democratic towards all peoples; men and women, believers and not. 
                I was teaching my political theory course yesterday and we were discussing historical constructions of national security and war in Hobbes and Hegel. Hobbes valued the preservation of life and securing it above all else; Hegel thought that war could actually create important unity in that it requires that we move beyond the self. I asked my students whether they thought security was a sufficient political goal, especially as civil liberties and individual freedoms are being narrowed in the U.S. just now. I also asked them what they thought of Hegel’s notion of war. They were very vocal about their confusion of what exactly they thought at this particular moment. They then turned the questions back to me. It was one of those clarifying moments.  
                I told them that I thought security was not a good enough goal; that it mattered what you were securing in the first place. I also took the opportunity to say that I thought much of the present day discussion about security was more imaginary than real. Too much of life is not secure to begin with, and if the entire agenda of the U. S. became securing our borders, protecting our streets and airports, while violating, in part, each of us to do so, it makes little sense.
                So the National Guard will be deployed, but to what purpose? So plastic knives are no longer in airport restaurants and one spreads cream cheese on their bagel with a spoon, but to what purpose? Police ask for I.D.’s randomly on street corners near subways in New York City, but what does this actually do? Our bags are searched more carefully at airports. But most probably the next act of terror will be of a different sort. Much of these actions feel like a ‘pretend’ war strategy because the truth is that security from a terrorist who is willing to die does not exist. One cannot truly be free from harm on these terms. Real peace will have to be negotiated with a different agenda for world peace. This too is part of living in a global world. Bush seems to be playing the wrong war game here. This is not the old west where you are ‘wanted dead or alive.’ This is the globe where lives are lived across borders, through airports, via satellite. The U.S. can’t be turned into a fortress even if it really wanted to be. Remember Jimmy Carter--and the Iranian hostage crisis-- when the U. S. was made impotent for the world to see? After this debacle we lived through the Reagan-Bush decades along with the rest of the world. After almost a decade of Clinton and his irresponsible global strategies, we now are back to the Bush family again. We need to use our memory here. 

OLD SILENCES 

                We are told that there are no longer Democrats and Republicans in Congress, just the Red, White and Blue party. The idea of U. S. support for an International Criminal Court is scoffed at by Jesse Helms; he sneers and calls it an International Kangaroo Court. He has done this before; why not after. The AFTER has solidified an agenda that was already in play. But now there is no debate. The red white and blue party has silenced any mainstream and visible critique. Billions are being spent on this so-called new war and no one even asks where the funds will come from. The lock box seems to have been opened and social security will be quietly emptied.  
                Before Sept. 11^th the economy was faltering, Bush was losing popularity, airline bailouts were in the works. After, Bush is gaining popularity, the economy is still faltering while hundreds of thousands more are losing jobs, and the Senate agrees to a $15 billion bailout of the airline industry. The airlines say this does not mean that they will necessarily call back any of the laid-off workers. 
                The Towers fell and the Pentagon was smashed and thousands lost their lives. Multiple hundreds-of-thousands have lost their jobs. For those who were content to listen to the Gary Condit story all summer and think that nothing else significant was going on in the world--they have also lost their innocent ignorance. 
                After the Towers fell, and the Pentagon was aflame, and the plane crashed in Pennsylvania Bush promised the American people that he would get bin Laden. Forget that ‘we’ did not have proof at that time of much of anything. Forget that terrorism had become the enemy but with little clarity about whom they were, what they wanted, where they were. We were calling up reserves, sending troops, readying our military might. Bush talked tough; and acted like safety could still be retrieved. 
                I did not know enough here. I knew the actual thousands who were killed on Sept. 11 were not the real enemy. Given the symbols attacked (the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon) it seems clear that global capitalist power, along with its secularism, are the true targets. So, the wrong people were killed here. They were real people; not symbols of global capital. The system of global racialized capitalist power was not dismantled here. Instead, individual men and women, brown and black and vanilla, were pulverized. Dishwashers, and window cleaners, and secretaries, and mail clerks, and firefighters, not a powerful global capitalist ruling class, were murdered on Sept. 11. The terrorists of Sept. 11 got it very wrong. They attacked symbols of U.S. power instead of dismantling power. They massacred thousands of people in every shade of color from across the globe, many of whom also suffered the unfairness of capitalist greed. 
                The Towers embodied people from sixty-seven different countries and the racial and class and gender hierarchies of the globe. There is no simple East/West divide here. Life today is just too complex for these simple dichotomies. Or as Edward Said says: "Labels like Islam and the West mislead and confuse the mind, which is trying to make sense of a disorderly reality". The “interconnectedness of innumerable lives" defines "us" and "them".¹⁷ Men and women died in all colors, from all classes. The aftermath of their deaths continue these unfair inequities for the families they left behind. The dishwashers who worked at Windows on the World had little to leave their families. Firefighters were more financially protected by their contracts; although this is little comfort for long. Unequal opportunities exist for finding new jobs and picking up the pieces for the people who survived.¹⁸ Meanwhile, the rich of the world remain rich. There were ALREADY plenty of poor people in our country who needed help and assistance before Sept. 11. Their needs are simply diverted for the time being as New York City attempts to rebuild its shattered self.

CONSTRUCTING THE POLITICS OF ‘AFTER’  

ON SEEING WITH Feminisms 

                As an anti-racist feminist we need women’s voices spoken more loudly here: for peace, for our cities, for our schools, against prejudice and discrimination, for protecting the environments across the globe, for the needed freedoms to speak and think and discuss and find new ways of finding coalitions across the differences which make this hard. Women are of all colors and classes, just like the people who died on Sept. 11 and who die daily from terror-politics. Yet, men dominate public space just now. Rivera Live spews out macho bravado, while whole heartedly endorsing Bush and his advisors. The xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" ?>U.S. media appears more masculinist in this aftermath than usual. 
                If the women of the world were given a space to be heard what would we be saying? Many of us are already asking for negotiation rather than aggression. We are looking to understand the provocation for the heinous act of Sept. 11 in order to see what might be done differently to try to prevent this from happening again. Many feminist activists have been asking for food and clothes to be donated to Afghanistan, rather than bombs.²² Feminists in countries throughout the world are asking how we can come to recognize a notion of a global public good which counters the nationalist rancor of hatred and death.  
                Central to the crisis of secular as well as religious governments is the place of women in both the public and private sphere. These once so-called separate spheres have been assaulted by the privatization of first-world states and third-world economies. As women in poor countries are dragged into the sweat-shop factory, as women are called away from their families in this country as reservists, as women hold high office in the Bush administration, as images of women are sold abroad as western-feminism for export to build new markets for cosmetics and porn, as girls and women are sold into prostitution in Thailand and elsewhere, as women drop their chadors as soon as they are in the privacy of their homes, as women protest their subservience in myriad acts of defiance, as more and more women become refugees and migrants, as Islamic and secular feminists demand human rights, women remain, and become anew both the terrain and symbols of political conflict.  
                The Taliban knows it must curtail women’s lives if they are to stem the tide of change, and blames western-style democracy for the demands of Islamic feminists. Yet, this is no simply straight-forward story. There is the romantic legend surrounding the origins of the Taliban and their leader Mullah Mohammad Omar. Supposedly, in early 1994, Omar heard of the abduction and rape of two women by local Mujahideen commanders. He went to the local madrasas (religious school), collected sixteen of the students, and went and freed the girls and hanged the commanders. The burqas followed thereafter as a protection for all.²³
                        On the one hand, the traditional despotism of the Taliban is represented through continual imagery of the confined and passive woman; on the other hand it is women’s activism in public arenas that has focused the Taliban against women’s progress right here. Pre-Taliban, Afghan women were participating in government, as well as schools and other civic institutions. Pre-Taliban Afghan women were active in most parts of life, much like women in Iran and Algeria, before the take-over by traditional Islamic Fundamentalists.²⁴ This moment uncovers the similar and yet specifically very different patriarchal politics of Islam and ‘the’ west towards girls, and women. This is about the politics of patriarchy and masculinist privilege and the way it comes up smack against the contradictions of global capitalism’s promise of democracy for all--for women in Islamic countries AND women in ‘the’ west. And, it also reveals an enormous contradiction in U. S. foreign policy in that the Taliban’s restrictive policies towards women were in place while the U. S. supported their activities during the Afghan war against the Soviets. It was Afghan and U. S. feminists, especially the Revolutionary Afghan Women’s Association (RAWA)-- in large part who brought critical attention to women’s abuse; not our government.²⁵ 
                Neither capitalism nor patriarchy are democratic regimes for women. Traditional patriarchy has less freedom for women than more modern forms; while equality is elusive in both. Global capitalism continues to negotiate the relationship between ‘western’ AND Islamic patriarchal forms of freedom. The Taliban response towards women is clearly rooted in their belief that if women are allowed certain freedoms, Islam as they choose to interpret it, will be undermined. The Taliban is a symptom of the complex 21^st century definition of male privilege. I despise the hate-filled politics of the Taliban towards women AND the new levels of exploitation of women by global capitalist patriarchy. ‘The’ west is not off the hook here either.
                Women’s activism must become a larger part of this political moment. Much of the discourse of human rights across the globe has been brought center stage by women’s groups demanding equality as well as freedom, specifically for women. This has been done in the context of women’s growing consciousness of themselves in war, as refugees, as laborers in the fields and sweatshops of the global economy. War rape, acid burnings, honor killings, sex trafficking and prostitution, should put terrorism towards women on the global map.²⁶ Women’s demands for their rights and their freedom from oppressive religious fundamentalist regimes is very often blamed on the west and its excessive self-indulgences. It is important to be critical of the U.S. for its excesses while recognizing that women’s rights is not a western plot. Women from across the globe demand their rights on their own terms, from their own understandings of what Islam means. They do not need ‘the’ west for an assist. The true subversiveness of women’s rights discourse is that it speaks from the needs of women’s humanity, which is transnational even if culturally experienced in different form. Women’s bodies demand freedom from war rape, freedom from unwanted pregnancy. One does not need to learn this from someone other than oneself. 
                The Taliban chooses to curtail women’s lives because this is what they see as the way to secure the life that they want for Islamic men. Global capitalism endangers this positioning. The policies of the Taliban towards women reflect the centrality of women’s lives in defining culture. The Taliban declares itself as the sole interpreter of Islam against women’s changing demands. If Afghan women were not changing and demanding recognition of their rights as they understand them for themselves, there would be no need to re-articulate repression. It is the dynamism of women today, not their passivity, which instigates this struggle.  
                Leila Ahmed asks us to think whether or not there may be at least two Islams; one of men, another of women. Men’s Islam--an official textual Islam--demands that they know the meaning of Islam by interpreting the text as they do. The mullahs cling to a medieval version. Women’s Islam evolves in practice through the oral tradition, as women sort out the meaning of life with the Islamic beliefs they have been taught. This is always changing, and renewed to find the meanings of justice, fairness, compassion and truth.²⁷ xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" ?>

BY WAY OF CONCLUDING A BEGINNING 

                The horror of Sept. 11^th is that more than 5000 individuals were killed en masse as though they had no identity. They simply became a symbol of something other than who they were. Their individual lives were smashed with no justice, much like when one is treated simply as one’s color, or race, or gender, with no allowance for who one might really be. Yet, in denying each person’s unique story; their complete human oneness is put in horrifying relief. Almost anyone connects to this moment of sadness. No one wants this for themselves, to be treated as a symbol, and not as a self. This is in essence what it means to grieve for the innocent victims; to be a victim of a symbol which you have not been responsible for creating. This underlies the human commitment towards anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-globalism. The terrorists exposed this truth on Sept. 11 and it must guide us in the search for peace. A peace that cannot be reduced to securing safety without regard for our shared humanity. There is REALLY no clear divider of east or west, north or south, Christian or Islamic or Jew, when it comes to humanity. Humanity is all of us in a complex mix.
                People across the world mourned the tragedy of Sept. 11^th because it already is or could be any one of us, anywhere or elsewhere. The U. S. must make good use of this painful consciousness.  
                But we will have to work hard because the most conservative forces in our country are taking hold now, as well as before Sept. 11^th . The Taliban may represent the most conservative forces in Islam, but we have our own right-wing politics to deal with at home. Bush wasn’t popularly elected president, but we pretend he was. Blacks did not vote for him and know they didn’t, but it seems hard to not pretend especially with Colin Powell as the first black Secretary of State and Condoleezza Rice the first Black woman national security advisor. People don’t expect much of Bush so it’s easy for many to say he is doing better than they expected. Dick Cheney and John Ashcroft appear to be running the government, but whatever.... 
                The U. S. pulled out of the U.N. Conference Against Racism early September `01 in order to silence discussion about slave reparations and Israeli policy as a new form of racism. Instead of dialoguing and discussing we just walked out. Bush had also just said no to the Kyoto treaty on global warming and yes to going forward with a nuclear shield project. Of course, plans for Sept. 11 were developed long before these particular acts. However, U.S. arrogance and global irresponsibility has been fueling hatred for decades now. And women’s lives have been changing for both the better and worse in ways that complicate this process.
                I am critical of the U.S. for exploiting other countries unfairly, and for taking the environment for granted, and for dropping bombs, and for the embargo against Cuba, and for our support for terrorist regimes in South America, and....Yet, I also embrace secularism and women’s right to freedom and choice, as do most women across the globe. It is therefore crucial that we figure out ways to think through the complex politics of global capital with its racist and sexist formations AND the promissories of an anti-racist feminist democracy that allows us to build a socially just globe. 

A SEPT. 12 MANIFESTO

Written for all anti-racist feminist humanists: 

Say yes to global peace
Say yes to the secularism
Say yes to religious freedom
Say yes to freedom for atheists
Say yes to sexual freedom
Say yes to gay rights
Say yes to a living wage
Say yes to women’s rights
Say yes to civil rights
Say no to exploitation
Say no to excessive greed
Say no to ALL terrorism
Say no to excessive wealth
Say no to bombing
Say no to enforced prostitution
Say no to forced veiling
Say no to ruining the earth’s resources
Say no to sexism and racism
Say yes to international law
Say no to hegemony
Say yes to humanity
Say yes to differences
Say yes to similarity
Say no to war. 

Footnotes
1.Mona Eltahawy and Kalpana Sharma, "Commentary: U.S. Should Heed How Our Allies Treat Women", at http://www.womensenews.org/join.cfm
2.As quoted in Alessandra Stanley, "Walking a Fine Line in Showcasing Women and Dealing With Muslim Allies", New York Times, October 27, 01, p. B9.
3.Ibid., p. B9.
4.I use the term Islamic feminist hesitantly because this term encompasses a variety of interpretations of both the meaning of Islam as well as feminism. For further discussion of the multiple meanings see: Leila Ahmed, "The Women of Islam", Transition, Issue 83 , vol. 9, no. 3 (2000), pp. 78-96, and her A Border Passage (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, l999); Fatima Mernissi, Beyond The Veil (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1975); Khalida Messaoudi, Unbowed, An Algerian Woman Confronts Islamic Fundamentalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, l995); Valentine Moghadam, ed., Gender and National Identity, Women and Politics in Muslim Societies (London: Zed Books, 1994); Amina Wadud-Muhsin, Qur’an And Woman (Malaysia: Penerbit Fajar Bakti Sdn. Bhd., 1992); Nawal el Saadawi, The Nawal El Saadawi Reader (London: Zed Books, l997); and Nahid Toubia, ed., Women of the Arab World (London: Zed Books, 1988). Related and important discussions can be found in: Reina Lewis, Gendering Orientalism (xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" ?>New York: Routledge, l996); Uma Narayan, Dislocating Cultures (New York: Routledge, 1997).
5.As quoted in: Tony Judt, "American and the War", New York Review of Books, vol. XLV111, No. 18 (November 15, 2001), p. 4.
6.Ahmed Rashid, Taliban, Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), especially chapter 8.
7.See: Jean Jacques Rousseau, "Letter to M.. d’Alembert on the Theatre " in Allan Bloom, ed., Politics and the Arts (New York: Cornell University Press, 1960).
8.For an important exegesis of the Quran by a ‘believing woman’ see: Asma Barlas, Believing Women (Dallas:University of Texas Press, forthcoming, 2002).
9.Barbara Kingsolver, "No Glory in Unjust War on the Weak", Los Angeles Times, October 14, 2001, p. 22.
10.Eqbal Ahmad, "Terrorism: Theirs and Ours", delivered at the University of Colorado, Boulder, October 12, 1998. Available from David Barsamian, Alternative Radio, P.O. Box 551, Boulder, Co., 80306.
11.Stanley Fish, "Condemnation Without Absolutes", New York Times, October 15, 2001, p. A19.
12.I am indebted to discussions with my colleague Naeem Inyatalluh about the complicated politics of the Northern Alliance. Also see: Ahmed Rashid, "U.S.-British Bombing Raids Seek to Cripple, Not Rout, Taliban Forces in Kabul", 10/09/01 at http://www.eurasiasnet.org; and Robert Fisk, "Just Who are Our Allies in Afghanistan?", October 3, 2001, at http://argument.independent.co.uk
13. I am indebted to Stewart Ayaush for pointing out, Eileen McNamara, "Welcome to Gloria Feldt’s Nightmare", Boston Globe, October 17, 2001, p. 8.
14.For an important discussion of relevant history see: Arundhati Roy, "The Algebra of Infinite Justice", The Guardian, September 29, 2001, at http://www.guardian.co.uk
15.Rashid, Taliban, especially chapters 11, 12, and 13.
16.For a discussion of ‘feminism of the west for export’ see: Zillah Eisenstein, HATREDS, Racialized and Sexualized Conflicts in the 21^st Century (New York: Routledge, 1996), especially chapter 5.
17.Edward Said, "The Clash of Ignorance", Nation, vol. 273, no. 12 (October 22, 2001), pp. 12, 13.
18.Jim Dwyer and Diana Henriques, "Money For Families Of Attack Victims Could Vary Widely", New York Times, Sept. 20, 2001, p. A1; and Terry Pristin and Leslie Eaton, "Disaster’s Aftershocks: Number of Workers Out of a Job is Continually Rising", New York Times, Sept. 26, 2001, p. B8
19.Robert Reich, "How Did Spending Become Our Patriotic Duty?", Washington Post, Sept. 23, 2001, p. 12.
20.Richard Stevenson, "Bush Proposes Extending Aid To the Jobless", New York Times, October 5, 2001, p. B1; and "Comment: Calling All Keynesians, Nation, vol. 273, no. 11 (October 15, 2001), pp. 4-5.
21.Donald H. Rumsfeld, "A New Kind of War", The New York Times, Sept. 27, 2001, p. A21.
22.Katha Pollitt, "Where are the Women?", The Nation, vol. 273, no. 12 (October 22, 2001), p. 10.
23.Pankaj Mishra, "The Making of Afghanistan", The New York Review of Books, vol. XLV111, no. 18 (November, 15, 2001), pp. 20-21.
24.Kalpana Sharma, "A War...By Men", The Hindu, October 21, 2001, at: http://www.hinduonet.com/stories/13210618.htm; and Jan Goodwin and Jessica Neuwirth, "The Rifle and the Veil", New York Times, October 19, 2001, p. A19.
25.For statements by Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan see: www.rawa.org
26.For important information on discussions for peace among feminists and women’s human rights activists in New York, Asia and Latin America see: www.whrnet.org
27.Leila Ahmed, "The Women of Islam", Transition, p. 93.xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" ?>