are you terrified? I sit here drinking coffee from a purple mug my chiropractor gave me eight years ago. Until this past Christmas I thought the cup was black, due to faltering eyesight in my one sighted eye. I gratefully relate that cataract surgery was satisfactory.
For those who have failing eyesight, it is easy to live in a virtual world, being careful never to step on cracks–remember, break your back? Maybe that’s the reason, in my virtual world, I believed that the United States was in a Constitutional crisis since December 2000. It was hard to tell with all the superstition of the new millennium still on the airwaves.
Then came September 11, 2001. When I saw pictures of the World Trade Center in flames, I said out loud to myself, “The damned fools. Why?” The early attempt had not pleased the perpetrators and they promised to come back and finish the job. Just to drive home the threat, they bombed a couple of our embassies. In the old days, embassies were considered part of American territory and called for retaliation. And when a sea vessel was hit, with loss of life, still no action. I guess it took the biggie.
As biggies go, history was involved on the day Japan annihilated our navy. In 1941 there was no doubt what our government would do. A nation and its allies had trampled on our well-being. Then, 60 years later, it happened again. This time our nation responded by taking out a group of religious fanatics who had co-opted Afghanistan. It worked. A new Afghan government was installed and all that was left to do was help it get on its feet.
But. It turns out that we weren’t fighting a rogue nation. Our president said we were fighting a war against terror. As we all know, fighting a war and being afraid is a sure recipe for failure. Somehow–blame the press, explain the horrible devastation over and over again, call Saddam Hussein evil–we just couldn’t get our heads around the idea that it takes a nation if we want to fight.
So we ended up in Iraq to rearrange its landscape and to tell it how to run a democracy. We haven’t got the job done yet. Maybe it’s because pundits have sold us on the notion that a war against terror is like the Cold War. We wish! We had a super-nation to work against then and we spent lots of money on bigger and better bombs, but we were careful to tell the USSR to be wary of how they proceeded. During Papa Bush’s regime the Wall fell. Was that the moment of Morning in America? I’m of the opinion that it was, at best, an eclipse. Why else could Sonny Bush scare a whole nation into believing he had the answers after the great devastation of that morning in 2001?
I leave it to others to pontificate, triangulate or just plain whine. As for me, I believe we succumbed to false premises and fell for actions of bravado right up there with the little boy who whistles in the dark.
“We are not afraid” is the song in my head. Let’s celebrate the 6th anniversary in that spirit.