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| Thoughts on responsibility and the war on terror |
| 2006-09-11 |
| by blogger "Instapunk" This is the best essay I've seen all week. Go read it all. So it's been exactly five years since we all turned on the TV to watch that second plane strike the second tower and begin the 21st century in earnest. Where were you at that moment? And what were your immediate thoughts? I know there have been a lot of weighty analyses of the fifth anniversary of 9/11 and its meaning. I heard one Saturday on the radio, hosted jointly by NPR and the BBC, with listeners from all over the globe solicited to call in, collect, to offer their own perspectives. Frank Rich was a guest and seemed impressed enough by the dignity of the venue that he actually tried to restrain his Bush hatred and affect an objective point of view. Dorothy Rabinowitz was also on hand as the lone defender of (outmoded) 20th century traditions like patriotism and national security. . . . . . . Still, it was interesting to hear the American pundits trying, for once, to be less partisan and more reflective about the difficulties America faces in trying to fight a war on terror in the current international climate. Even if it was all for show, the prospect of Frank Rich declaring that the policy decisions were extraordinarily difficult and unavoidably controversial was like the experience of rain after a long drought, almost palpably life-giving. What would the past five years have been like, I couldn't help wondering, if debate and criticism had proceeded atop the civil platform of agreement that the President was really trying to do his best in a terrible crisis that almost no one had anticipated? Imagine that everyone had been sober and serious all along, as if the responsibility were theirs and not someone else's. Imagine that the opposition to the administration's policies had been more substantive than personal, focused on alternative proposals rather than autopsies of irrevocable decisions past. Imagine that all of us were dealing with today's reality instead of pet grievances from months or years ago. Isn't it possible that the critics might have had more impact on events, that the defenders of American policy might have listened and responded more thoughtfully? You can decide all these questions for yourselves, but I know I would have been more open to opposing views if their proponents had not insisted that doing the right thing required a first step of denouncing the president as a fool, a liar, an opportunist, and a closet tyrant. If I put aside the partisan emotions such postulates inspire, I have enough breathing room to perceive that my own views have changed again and again over the past five years. On September 11, 2001, I wanted to nuke Afghanistan, I wanted the world to tremble in fear of American military might, I wanted to go Roman Empire on the whole smelly, barbarian world. I wanted bin Laden and everyone he had ever met vaporized into a radioactive cloud. But Bush did not launch the B-52s and ICBMs. I was irate when I asked the question a lot of people just like me were asking at the time, "What is he waitng for? Just go DO it." But you can't nuke a country of 15 million people because some of its residents killed 3,000 Americans. I would have recognized that fact if I had been the one making the decisions in the Oval Office. But I wasn't. I had the luxury of not being responsible for how the nation responded to an act of ultimate depravity and viciousness. Indeed, we have ALL had that luxury. All of us, that is, but the most vilified man on Planet Earth, the one man who has had to be continuously responsible for protecting the United States of America throughout each of the 2,628,000 minutes since the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center. . . . Go read it all, and be sure to do the homework he assigns. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #1 But you can't nuke a country of 15 million people because some of its residents killed 3,000 Americans. Yes, you can. Arguably, you should. As an example to others. |
| Posted by: Rob Crawford 2006-09-11 22:12 |