Action can stop the war
By Gary Younge, The Guardian, September 16, 2002
First believe that you can prevent hostilities, and then do something about it. It may just work: Progressive politics demands a mixture of optimism and realism. Without the optimism you would never believe a better world could ever be built. Without the realism you would never be able to engage with the world as it actually is, in order to build it. Allow too much imbalance between the two and you either undervalue your potential to imagine what might be or undermine your ability to improve what already exists.

Middle East inaction 
International Herald Tribune, September 16, 2002 (originally 'Never Mind. Mr. Sharon', 9/14/02, Washington Post)
Most of three months has passed since President George W. Bush laid out his vision for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and still there has been next to no follow-up by his administration. No cabinet-level officials have visited the region since the president's speech; despite pleas from the Arab leaders whom Bush asked for support, no details have been offered on how to move from the present situation to Bush's vision of side-by-side Israeli and Palestinian states. On the contrary: Despite Bush's announcement of an international effort to reconstruct Palestinian security forces, the CIA has taken only token steps to train new officers; despite the president's clarion call for Palestinian democracy, the administration has quietly joined Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel in opposing the holding of Palestinian national elections anytime in the near future. In effect, what the president cast on June 24 as a major initiative for Middle East peace has all but vanished; in its place is a suddenly all-consuming campaign against Iraq that could soon lead to a new Middle East war. Vice President Dick Cheney, among others, is arguing that overturning the regime of Saddam Hussein will make an Israeli-Palestinian settlement easier; but even if that is true, what is not clear is how a conflict that has cost more than 2,000 lives in the past two years, and is a primary source of Muslim grievance against the United States, can be contained between now and then.

Days of Darkness, Days of Awe: Yom Kippur in Palestine
Jennifer Loewenstein, Electronic Intifada, September 15, 2002
Yom Kippur in Palestine and the Palestinian people are again atoning for Israel's sin of occupation: The lockdown in Gaza and the West Bank is complete: for three days no Palestinian will travel past a checkpoint; no swimmers will be allowed on the beaches, more heavily patrolled by gunboats than ever; the electric fence around the perimeter of the Gaza Strip and the wall already built in Khan Yunis are manned with armed soldiers as are the borders all around the West Bank.

The Iraqi Debacle: The Strategic Uncertainties of a US Attack
By Kareem M. Kamel, Islam Online, September 16, 2002
"Securing Middle Eastern oil flow is one thing, killing the children of Iraq and destroying the fabric of Arab and Muslim dignity and human rights, is another."  - UNICEF: With the 9/11 attacks on the US, the idea of American exceptionalism faded away. The notion that the US is “a place apart, protected by its oceans” crumbled with the twin towers of the World Trade Center.2 More importantly, the new world (dis)order created in the aftermath of 9/11 was one in which the US internationalized its own domestic agenda, and attempted to superimpose its objectives on the world through the use of military and political means.

Remembering September 11 1973
By Tito Tricot, The Guardian, September 16, 2002
Were the lives of those killed at the World Trade Centre more valuable than the innocents murdered in Chile's US-backed coup, asks Tito Tricot
Our dreams were shattered one cloudy morning when the military overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende. Twenty-nine years later, at midday, Chile's's firemen sounded their sirens paying tribute to thousands of men and women who lost their lives without really understanding what was happening. It was a moment of remembrance, not for the victims of the military coup, but for those killed at the World Trade Centre in New York. Sad as that might have been, it is even sadder that Chilean firemen have never sounded their sirens to remember our own dead. And there are thousands of them, including many children, who were murdered by the military.