by James Carroll

WHEN I FIRST LAID eyes on a B-52 bomber in the mid-'50s, I was struck by the motto of the Strategic Air Command emblazoned on the fuselage: ''Peace is our profession.'' Such words on a fearsome warplane were a consolation, and I wanted to believe them. Even as a boy, though, I was instinctively attuned to the moral complexity of bombing, and I wasn't that surprised when, during Vietnam, that motto was revealed to be a big lie. The profession of those planes was to wreck havoc, period.

Last week, B-52s were sent into action over Afghanistan, a first exercise in ''carpet bombing.'' The unleashing of this crude ghost plane, which drops imprecise ordnance from 40,000 feet, is a chilling harbinger. Whatever the broad justifications of the US-led war against terrorism, the way in which that war centers on an increasingly brutal bombing campaign cries out to be reconsidered.

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by Heather Wokusch

In 1964, Kitty Genovese was murdered in New York City; for over half an hour she put up a desperate fight against her assailant, and 38 neighbors later reported hearing her ongoing screams for help. But no one helped - not one witness even so much as called the police. Neighbors later said that they had felt powerless and confused during the attack, and certain someone else would do something to stop it. So they had gone about their business instead, closing the windows to keep out the screams.

Kind of the way many of us are coping with the war these days. The media bombard us with anthrax paranoia, patriotic military shots, and spokespeople who BS well but provide no coherent information. Cameras flash and pundits cheer as Bush attends a baseball game, bounces off Air Force One with his dog or delivers a canned speech, but intelligent discussions of the deeper implications of bombing Afghanistan are a mainstream news rarity. Unconscionable new domestic "collateral damage" developments float by each day - tax breaks for the rich, decimation of civil liberties, potential Arctic Refuge drilling, fast track trade agreements, what have you - but the sheer speed and enormity of the societal restructuring breed confusion and apathy. So we shut our windows and thoughts, absorbing the Emmys rather than the ugly reality of war.

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by Robert B. Reich

The White House is working with other nations to fight global terrorism. It also should be working with them to stave off a global economic meltdown.

There's no longer any doubt that we're in a recession. More than 400,000 jobs were lost last month, the biggest job loss in two decades. Meanwhile, national output is shrinking. Consumer spending is dropping. And consumer confidence is plummeting.

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by Daniel Cook-Huffman

With most polls showing that well over 80% of Americans support thebombing in Afghanistan, I recognize that my position is indeed notpopular. Nonetheless, I am obliged by my conscience to oppose thisaction.

Clearly the work of the terrorists on September 11, 2001 was shockingand horrific and whoever is responsible should be brought to justice. I have always believed, however, that the pursuit and capture ofmurderous criminals should be accomplished with the least amount ofviolence possible. We Americans rely on that principle every day incities and towns across our nation. We generally do not accept thebombing of an entire building or city, and the death of scores ofinnocent persons, in the pursuit of a criminal. Fortunately, our lawenforcement professionals do not have policies that allow for that typeof "overkill" either. The incidents at the MOVE house in Philadelphiaand at the Koresh Compound in Waco are two exceptions where lawenforcement did use massive force to capture a wanted person orpersons. In both cases, massive property damage and the death of manyinnocent men, women, and children were the result. Most people havecome to see both of those events as examples of law enforcementoverstepping its reach and failing to be patient and creative in theireffort.

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by Joan Ryan

HOW MUCH of our national resources -- money, research, work hours -- would you have been willing to spend if it meant saving the thousands of Americans who died from terrorist attacks on September 11?

And what resources would you now allocate to lift the anxiety that those deaths, and the subsequent deaths from anthrax, have generated across the country?

Most of us, I imagine, would spend whatever it would take. What is more valuable than the lives of fathers and mothers and best friends and sons and daughters? What is more precious than living free from daily fear?

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by Marc Cooper

For more than a decade, Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega was in the nightmares of U.S. policymakers. As leader of the Sandinista revolution of 1979, and then as president of Nicaragua, he was a lightning rod for Washington's fears of hemispheric subversion and anti-American rebellion. The Reagan and Bush administrations spent hundreds of millions of dollars--to finance a "Contra" war and various campaigns of political destabilization--to rid Nicaragua of Ortega and his Marxist Sandinistas. In 1990, the U.S. won when Ortega was voted out of office and replaced by pro-American rivals. But in presidential elections taking place today in Nicaragua, the same Ortega, now 55, has an even chance of being voted back into power.

Ortega's return to prominence--and possibly to the presidency--is more than an irony of history. It is also a cautionary tale about the type of nation-building the U.S. may intend for Afghanistan.

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