"A Declaration of War"

The Wednesday editions of many German newspapers have sold out. Here's what they're writing

By 3:15 in the afternoon Central European Time on Tuesday, September 11, every major and several minor television programs in Germany had switched to live news feeds and most have still not switched back. Countless kiosks in Berlin and other German cities have sold out of all their newspapers. The newsweeklies "Der Spiegel", "Focus" and "Die Zeit" will publish a day earlier than usual this week. And while at times it's been nearly impossible to access many news-oriented Web sites, Spiegel Online is directing readers to its reporting distributed on six separate servers. Like the rest of the world, Germans are shocked, moved (see Germans Express Solidarity With U.S. After Terrorist Attack) and ravenous for both breaking news and insight from commentators who attempt to make sense of the incomprehensible. Here's a sampling of what some of those commentators are telling them.

The conservative "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" breaks tradition and runs photographs on the front page: two of them, covering nearly the entire page above the fold, the first of Manhattan directly after the collapse of the south tower of the World Trade Center and the second of President George W. Bush, his eyes closed, his head bowed as he observes a moment of silence in Florida before his long, criss-crossed journey back to Washington. "After this Tuesday, nothing will be as it was before," writes Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger. "America's vulnerability has been made visible to everyone." After declaring that the case of those who have in the past argued that the threat of terrorism has been exaggerated, Frankenberger concludes, "Only this is certain: high tech terrorism is not merely a specialized subject for criminologists and thriller writers. It truly exists as a means of warfare in the 21st century."

Adds the "Frankfurter Rundschau", "The world is growing colder, more war-like." The less sober yet enormously popular tabloid "Bild" screams "Great God, be with us!" on its front page and writes, "With the attack on New York and Washington, fanatics have taken revenge on America and on everything for which the leading western power stands. This is a declaration of war from the darkness."

Like many commentators in all media, the anonymous author of the front-page editorial in the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" is reminded by television coverage of the attacks of the apocalyptic imagery of such Hollywood films as "Godzilla", "Mars Attacks" and "Independence Day" and wonders out loud if anyone in America or anywhere else will want to shoot such a film again.

It was always monsters or scary non-humans from outer space who destroyed New York and sought to bring America to its knees. And now we know we don't need any Martians, any monsters: We have the humans for it.

Most papers presume the US will react quickly, but "Die Welt" takes it one step further: "America will hit back - hard and severely. War is now imaginable and it would be fatal for Germany to lean back with compassion yet not take part."

But the "Berliner Zeitung" strikes a more cautionary note. Writes Arno Widmann, "It will be difficult for the USA, for Europe, for everyone in the fight against terrorism not to resort to terrorist means themselves."

Gerd Appenzeller of the "Tagesspiegel" sees one immediate and specific consequence: "The space-based National Missile Defense system will no longer be a matter of discussion. It will be built."

While the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" considers the possibility that the events of September 11, 2001, will lead to a more isolationist US, Terence Roth writes in the "Handelsblatt":

This is the ultimate evidence that the USA can no longer completely control its involvement in international conflicts; it is no longer immune to the reactions of angry opponents.

These international conflicts are given a context by the leftist "junge Welt": "Indeed, attacks such as the one on Tuesday, which approach a declaration of war, have been predicted in theory over decades, especially in the 'third world' - by Franz Fanon, through to Kenneth Kaunda and Nelson Mandela: They have all said, in one way or another, that if the war of the white and rich north against the colored and poor south does not stop, it would return to the very center of industrial states."