From the editor, Charles Robideau:  Are we better? What have we learned?
    Nine months past 9/11– and 226 years after the Declaration of Independence – where do we stand?
    What have we as a nation done to redeem the lives lost in the terrorist attacks on that terrible day? Have we, as a people, and as a government, taken the disaster as an inspiration to make the United States, not just a safer nation, but a better one, more caring of our own people, and more considerate of other peoples in the world?
    Have we taken a good look at ourselves, to understand why terrorists would want to attack us; why we are not universally loved and respected?
    The answers to these questions are not comforting.
     We bombed the Taliban and Osama bin Laden out of Afghanistan, but to what avail? According to "senior government officials," quoted by The New York Times:
    Are we a better nation?
     "Classified investigations of the Queda threat now under way at the F.B.I. and C.I.A. have concluded that the war in Afghanistan failed to diminish the threat to the United States. . . .Instead, the war might have complicated counterterrorism efforts by dispersing potential attackers across a wider geographic area."
    To meet this metastasizing threat, President Bush proposes a bureaucratic shuffle, creating the Department of Homeland Security, which no one understands, while his attorney general chops holes in the U.S. Constitution, which few in Congress — Republican or Democrat — have the guts to defend.
    Congress’s main concern in response to 9/11 is not why the terrorists wanted to hit us, but why the FBI and CIA didn’t know about it. It’s the old blame game– an updating of the question why FDR didn’t head off Pearl Harbor.
    And while the FBI and CIA sport their bungler badges, President Bush directs the CIA to remove Saddam Hussein, even killing him if that can be accomplished "in self defense."
    In Palestine, Israel starts building a 225-mile fence around the West Bank, while Bush proposes a peace plan that pins the whole conflict on Yasir Arafat, which presages no peace to either Arabs or Israelis. Bush doesn’t ask the Israelis to give up the settlements that have gobbled Palestinian land; he asks only that they stop building new ones. He doesn’t even ask them to take down the fence. No wonder Bush’s plan makes the Israelis ecstatic and leaves the Palestinians shell-shocked.
    Meanwhile, at home, the government is beggared by Bush’s tax cuts, social programs founder, the poor get poorer and the rich get richer, while Enron-like scandals blossom among the corporate apostles of the free markets we’re trying to impose on the world.
    Give Bush credit for one thing: he knows how to cow the Congress, especially the Democrats.
    After he addressed the nation to announce his hastily conceived new Cabinet department, members of both parties rushed to applaud, with only Ted Kennedy getting quoted about "shifting deck chairs on the Titanic."
    And after the Washington Post disclosed the CIA’s newly public mission to get rid of Saddam, it was chilling to hear Democratic leaders Tom Daschle, Dick Gephardt and Joe Biden agreeing (on National Public Radio) that, indeed, Saddam has to go, as if the United States has the right to make that decision for any country we don’t like.
    In the early days after 9/11, along with the desire for punishment and revenge, there was a strong sentiment, not just to fight terrorists, but to address the factors that breed terrorists. There was some serious introspection, attempting to understand — in the words of a Newsweek cover — "why do they hate us?"
    In its purest form, this sentiment was expressed in a letter to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette by Eileen Reutzel Colianni, just days after the disaster: "As the disorientation lifts a bit, I plan to honor the victims by loving more. I plan to practice peace in all my encounters. A refrain from a hymn keeps playing in my mind: ‘Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me."
    Elsewhere in this issue are articles that take up issues raised by 9/11.

• The British journalist Robert Fisk tells why President Bush got it all wrong in his recent speech announcing his "peace plan" for Palestine.
• janet jai, the Pittsburgh-based poet, address the question why others hate the United States.
• The preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick, who lives now only through his books, sheds bright light on the roots of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
• Pitt student Ramin Skibba discusses environmental issues that underlie much of the United States’ problems with the rest of the world.
• Mark Ginsburg tells how our anti-Castro mania has victimized five Cubans languishing in U.S. prisons.
• Michael Drohan, historian and economist, tells how our misdeeds in Haiti exemplify our dealings with many other countries.

    This issue is not easy reading. But these are not easy times. And as we celebrate the Fourth of July, we should resolve to make this country the beacon of justice and peace that it should be and can be if we make it so.