The extent of the damage is still, at the moment these lines are written only a few hours after the explosions, to be determined. But for the American people the simple shock of television pictures provokes the feeling of a sudden point of no return, what we immediately intuited at the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
The dominant reactions are open rage against those who perpetrated the attacks and extreme compassion for the victims, dead in stupefying circumstances. Usually the country is avid for numbers, for sensationalism: How many dead in this catastrophe we want to know? This time Americans are terrorized at the idea of finding out the number of victims.
Everything has suddenly changed for America and Americans. The worst, in one of its versions, has occurred. A future full of incessant dangers looms before us. And what is true for the United States is true also for other countries. A taboo has been broken. All the world's capitals are in principle threatened, from Moscow to Beijing, Berlin, Paris, because a small group has succeeded in striking New York and Washington. No great city of the world can think itself safe from such an attack in an epoch when feelings of ethnic, religious and national injustice grow more numerous and more intense.
At the same time what has just happened in New York constitutes a radical transformation of the nature and methods of war. It has been demonstrated that even without weapons of mass destruction the weak can inflict unimaginable damage on the strong, using conventional, even modest methods of attack that leave the strong with no sure defense. And the weak are not even a State; they are an armed terrorist network taking on a large country.
It has also been demonstrated that the National Missile Defense project of the Bush Administration, following the initial "Star Wars" enterprise of President Ronald Reagan, in no way by itself, even if successful, would deal with all the most dangerous threats to national security-American and, eventually, those of America's partners.
Finally, there is something yet more profound, a matter of civilization itself. The destruction in New York is a symbolic destruction of New York. It is an attack on the idea itself of the City, an attack on the idea of living together, of life together.
It was the French philosopher Simone Weil, commenting on the meaning of the destruction of Troy in her essay on the Illiad, who spoke of "the greatest calamity that can befall humanity, the destruction of a City."
During the Cold War, many Americans believed that the strategy called "mutual assured destruction" was an insane idea, barely worthy of Dr. Strangelove. Those who have sown destruction and terror in New York and Washington have dared more than they understand.
The French newspaper Le Monde asked Professor of Political Science Ronald Tiersky to write this commentary last Tuesday for the issue dated Sept. 12, 2001. This is his translation into English.