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It's a word that can mean all things to all men, but it's also a concept used in the current conflict to suit many different purposes
by Mary Riddell

War has a face. It belongs to Hamid Ullah, aged one. He lies in a hospital bed in Quetta, near to his mother, Radigul, whose eyes were burned and arm shredded by the US bomb that struck her hamlet outside Kandahar. Hamid is the only one of her five children to survive the blast. Despite shrapnel burns and facial wounds, he will live. Among the several newspapers which carried his image, one version stood out. 'Can you take a picture like this?' the accompanying wording asked brightly. 'Enter the Times /Tabasco Young Photographer of the Year Competition.'

Obviously, it is good that newspapers seek new talent. It is useful that condiment manufacturers sponsor that search. But would the photo of a sedated and badly injured British child be similarly juxtaposed with the twin icons of aspiration and branding? Would such a child be lumped around in the cause of the varied photocall desired by a Western media? First a long shot, then a profile, then a close-up featuring a teddy bear and drugged eyes staring into a camera lens. This is collateral damage, artfully arranged to twitch the heartstrings of the 'civilized' societies whose agents inflicted it in the first place.

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by Clay Evans

A friend recently went to a movie at the Westminster Enormo-Plex on a cool night. While she stood in line, glowing heaters cascaded warmth over the heads of waiting patrons. How much energy do those things use, she wondered. More than the meager flames used to heat an entire Afghan village for a night?

This is a good time to start examining our propensity, not just for consumption, but for resource gluttony. My line-drying, small-car-driving friend wishes everyone could cut consumption by half.

Me, too. But it's complicated. If they did, the economy would collapse as dramatically as did the World Trade Center towers. This isn't World War II, when Americans sacrificed, because a "war economy" — i.e. shipbuilding — took up the slack. Now we're inseparable from our consumption.

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by Mikhail S. Gorbachev

TWO WEEKS AGO marked the anniversary of the historic exchange of mutual commitments between the United States and the Soviet Union on nuclear de-alerting and disarmament. Together, these commitments amount to one of the deepest and most comprehensive programs to reduce the nuclear threat to date.

I am reminded of the importance of these historic Soviet-American agreements by the tragedies of Sept. 11. My first reaction to the attacks on the United States was to send a cable to President Bush expressing my profound condolences and feelings of solidarity with the American people. These terrible crimes were committed not only against the United States but against all humankind, which is now facing an unprecedented challenge.

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by Polly Toynbee

The little town of Bethlehem does not lie still in deep or dreamless sleep. Instead a Palestinian altar boy was machine-gunned to death in Manger Square when Israeli tanks stormed in and occupied six Palestinian towns, leaving many others dead in their wake. Israeli hit-squad assassinations of suspected Palestinian terrorist leaders have now reached over 40 dead.

But six days into Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, there is still no response from George Bush. A state department spokesman did call for Israeli withdrawal and behind the scenes pressure is being applied. But what is needed urgently is the same thunderous and threatening language the president applies to the war in Afghanistan. Spell it out - no more money, no more support, no sympathy for future attacks until Israel withdraws and talks start at once on building the promised independent Palestinian state.

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by Frank Rich

Welcome back to Sept. 10.

The "America Strikes Back" optimism that surged after Sept. 11 has now been stricken by the multitude of ways we're losing the war at home. The F.B.I. has proved more effective in waging turf battles against Rudy Giuliani than waging war on terrorism. Of the more than 900 suspects arrested, exactly zero have been criminally charged in the World Trade Center attack (though one has died of natural causes, we're told, in a New Jersey jail cell). The Bush team didn't fully recognize that a second attack on America had begun until more than a week after the first casualty. The most highly trumpeted breakthrough in the hunt for anthrax terrorists - Tom Ridge's announcement that "the site where the letters were mailed" had been found in New Jersey - proved a dead end. And now the president is posing with elementary-school children again.

Given that this is the administration that was touted as being run with C.E.O. clockwork, perhaps it should be added to the growing list of Things That Have Changed Forever since Sept. 11. But let's not be so hasty. Not everything changes that fast — least of all Washington. The White House's home-front failures are not sudden, unpredictable products of wartime confusion but direct products of an ethos that has been in place since Jan. 20.

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