Ha'aretz

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 375.

Los Angeles Times

There's a new panoply of alerts: national security alerts coded by color from red (severe risk of terrorist attacks) through orange, yellow, blue and green (low risk). Cable TV is fond now of news alerts, even if the news isn't all that new. We have chemical alerts, energy alerts, Amber alerts, collision alerts, forest fire alerts, high alerts, low alerts and heightened alerts. We even have West Nile alerts about a little insect. Some days we could use an alert to sort through which alerts are important.

How very much has changed. Today and in the months to come, as easy and as tempting as it will be to forget much, we need to be alert not to.

During the months that passed after September 11, the definitions were sharpened. The enemy was understood to be all those who threaten to use weapons of mass destruction against peaceful populations. The planes that were hijacked and turned into guided missiles are such a weapon, as are viruses under cultivation in hidden laboratories. That is the essential, horrifying link between Osama bin laden and Iraq and other countries on Bush's list of the axis of evil. The crucial question is not which specific terrorist met with which Iraqi official, but the one that Bush constantly reiterates, asking all those states with a terrorist record: are you with us, or against us?