Time, Sept. 11; U.S. News & World Report, Sept. 14
The newsweeklies run special editions on Tuesday’s attacks. Time is dominated by photos. The most harrowing: On a high floor of the World Trade Center, a man is perched at the edge of a hole in the building’s exterior. He looks as if he is about to jump. Five others, photographed in midair, already have. … A piece takes a panoramic view of America on the day of the attack. “On a normal day, we value heroism because it is uncommon. On Sept. 11, we valued heroism because it was everywhere.”… A piece makes the case for rage. “For once,” the author writes, “let’s have no ‘grief counselors’ standing by with banal consolations … to make everyone feel better as quickly as possible. We shouldn’t feel better.”
U.S. News recounts Bush’s handling of the events. To explain the president’s tepid public response immediately following the attacks, the author cites the explanation of some Bush allies: As a behind-the-scenes dealmaker, it’s Bush’s nature to care first about the managerial work of organizing a federal response before focusing on his role as public motivator. … An article says the attacks may send America into recession. Along with the transportation and insurance industries, which are going to be hit hard, economists are concerned that fearful American consumers may leave home less, keeping their unopened pocketbooks with them. (Newsweek also released a special edition, but at press time copies of the mag had sold out. See its Web site for continuing coverage.)—B.C. and J.F.
New Republic, Sept. 24 The editors write that video images of the crash “are the records of a defeat, and of a derangement of the universe. Eloquence is stupid. We have been slaughtered.”… A dispatch from Manhattan rides along with a police officer. The author and officer find a dazed victim and an engine from one of the planes. Later, leaving the scene, they are showered in Post-It notes and memos from the World Trade Center. … An article by R. James Woolsey, former director of the CIA, suggests that investigators should look not just at Osama Bin Laden but also at Saddam Hussein. The author quotes a book that suggests an Iraqi man—not, as American authorities suggested, a Pakistani—was behind the World Trade Center bombing in 1993.—B.C.
Economist, Sept. 15 An article explores how America’s own policies helped create Osama Bin Ladin and the Taliban regime harboring him. The piece explains that during the ‘80s, the United States actually encouraged religious fanaticism as a means of uniting the Muslim world against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. … A piece calls American airport security “appallingly lax.” The magazine singles out baggage screeners as undertrained and underpaid and reports that Boston’s Logan Airport, where two of the planes were hijacked, has a history of security problems. … An article points out that France’s left-leaning newspapers, which are often rife with anti-American rhetoric, expressed unconditional support for the United States following the attacks (“We Are All Americans” wrote Le Monde’s editor). This contrasts with the “horrific rants” of Europe’s anti-globalization left, which preferred to view the terrorism as the inevitable consequence of globalization and American hegemony.— J.F.
To try four issues of Time magazine for free, click here.
