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Jewish World Review Sept. 12, 2001 / 23 Elul 5761
Philip Terzian
The United States has been attacked in the recent historic past. The
battleship Maine was blown up in Havana harbor, probably by Spain, in 1898.
The Mexican bandit/revolutionary Pancho Villa crossed the border in 1916 and
murdered several citizens in New Mexico. The Japanese sank an American
vessel, the U.S.S. Panay, on the Yangtze River in China in 1937. In 1941 the
Japanese bombed the naval base at Pearl Harbor in the U.S. territory of
Hawaii, killing some 2,300 Americans.
There was, in a sense, a certain clarity about those events. The United
States and Spain were on the verge of conflict over Cuban independence.
Mexico was in the midst of a brutal and protracted civil war. The Japanese
were ravishing China, and seeking to establish a Pacific empire.
But in the years since World War II there has been less clarity.
Individual Americans were killed in the course of the Cold War --
intelligence agents murdered by the KGB, soldiers shot in the Korean
demilitarized zone -- but the world's nuclear arsenals deterred such
incidents from sliding into conventional conflict. In the past decade there
have been attacks against U.S. targets -- on servicemen in Europe, on
American embassies, against the U.S.S. Cole docked off Yemen -- but it has
not been so easy to retaliate effectively, or even to know what to do. Some of the men who bombed the World
Trade Center in 1993 were brought to trial and convicted; but those who gave
the orders and supplied the weaponry remained unscathed -- may even, indeed,
have orchestrated this week's final destruction of the Manhattan landmarks.
It is easy to understand the anger and horror that attend this
catastrophe. The United States has been injured, and left gasping for
breath. Americans are unaccustomed to the sort of carnage that has been
visited upon much of the rest of the world at one time or another, and
believe themselves, thanks to geography, largely immune from lethal attack.
Now we know better. "It is a fearful thing," as Woodrow Wilson once said,
"to lead this great peaceful people into war." But the great, peaceful
people of America, when aroused, will do what they must.
The question is, what? It will be remembered that when the Murrah
Federal Building in Oklahoma City was bombed in 1995 (168 killed) the
authorities grabbed the first Arab they could find at the local airport. He
was lucky not to be lynched. The fact that the perpetrator in Oklahoma City
turned out not only to have been a native-born citizen named Timothy
McVeigh, but a "decorated veteran" of the Persian Gulf war, must give us
pause. It is entirely too easy to ascribe guilt to the less popular, or
least amenable, among us in the family of nations. Or, for that matter, to
use this tragedy to advance political interests. Six years ago a connection
in the media was drawn between McVeigh and the new Republican majority in
Congress, a connection President Clinton deftly exploited.
Now, the stakes have been raised. It is evident that whoever is behind
this attack enjoys considerable resources and, perhaps, the protection of a
sovereign state. It is no small achievement to have killed so many blameless
people, to have paralyzed the nation's financial capital, to have shaken the
U.S. military establishment, and to have shattered the nerves of Americans.
If and when the author of this outrage is identified, he should suffer the
full consequences of American fury. That is President Bush's responsiblity,
and his reputation will rise or fall on his actions.
But anger cannot distort whatever lessons we learn. When the United
States retaliates, we must be certain about the identity of the target, and
not strike out in haphazard rage. Enough innocent blood has already been
shed. This is a moment to exercise resolve, not indulge an emotional
convulsion. Moreover, this remains a free society, and one of the realities
of freedom is that concerns about security cannot supersede our basic
liberties. An infinite number of consultants, metal detectors, background
checks, hidden cameras, armored checkpoints and no-fly zones cannot
guarantee that a suicidal killer can be stopped, or that harm cannot be
inflicted when we least expect it.
There is a certain risk in an open society, but the greater risk is
succumbing to fear. This wound that has been inflicted will heal. If we
summon the strength and resources to bind the wound, and to punish the
guilty, we will have struck a blow from which no terrorist can recover. But
if we find ourselves imprisoned by dread, and determined to change the way
we live in the interests of security, then the terrorist -- alive or dead --
will have won a great
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