We do have a powerful, dedicated, regulated, well-armed military. The men in my family have served in every war since the Revolution and through Viet Nam. My own father was killed in the Korean War. I respect our military, arguably the best in the world. And, not the least importantly, we pride ourselves in being a nation of laws. We have a constitution and a military code of conduct. Why is this a bad thing? Why a liability? I refuse to believe that I am idealistic--or worse yet, unrealistic--to believe that the U. S. should set the example and keep the ethical bar set high. I shudder to think of our sinking to the depths of inhumanity we disparage when others are savagely inhumane to us.
In December of 1949, the U. S. became a signatory of what we now refer to as the Geneva Convention. This set of protocols was established to avoid some of the horrors seen during World War II. Since then, we have believed that these Rules of War (even though those words juxtaposed are indeed oxymoronic) meant something. And many of us, non Cheney-ite Republicans included, have either decried or at least cringed when we became a nation that tortured, imprisoned people without due process, practiced rendition--a terrifying act belied by the innocence of the term--and swept people off the street and threw them into prisons in unknown places and unknown prisons without their families or friends knowing what became of them. What have we become? These are the practices of governments we have condemned while basking in our own moral superiority in the past.
Have we forgotten the righteous indignation we felt while condemning the use of gulags for political prisoners in the USSR? The sorrow we felt for the families of the "disappeared" in Guatamala, Argentina, Buenos Aires and other South American countries when ruled by cruel dictators? Weren't we major players in the Nuremberg Trials at the end of World War II when we tried Nazi and SS war criminals? Didn't we try and convict Japanese soldiers for.....wait for it....water-boarding our prisoners of war?
Who and what has fear made us? This nation? If we don't stop to think about who and what the United States of America is and on what principles this nation was founded, Al Qaeda will win. We will have let the fear 9/11 engendered destroy us utterly.
Those men who flew planes full of innocent people into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon--or crashing into a field in Pennsylvania--killed many more innocent people. They did so because they followed an extreme and fundamental tenant of Islam and were directed and trained by a lawless and power-hungry group proselytizing converts by killing unbelievers. They were able to train and arm themselves because they established their bases in countries with failed governments. I, like anyone who saw the events of 9/11, will never forget that day and those horrific acts of terror. We here in the U. S. had naively believed that those things just didn't happen here. We now know differently.
Despite the terror if 9/11, we came together on 9/12. We had a feeling of oneness, quite unlike the anger at our government recently co-opted by Cry-baby Beck in the name of 9/12. That spirit of "How Could This Happen to Us?" has metastasized into an overwhelming dread and anxiety that has led us to forget the dictates of our Founding Fathers and the U. S. Constitution they wrote to be our guiding principles. Al Qaeda only wins if we let them.
I, as much as anyone, want to feel safe. I spent my early childhood hunkering down under desks during air-raid drills because we feared the Soviets would drop the Big Bomb on us at any moment. My freshman year in college saw the ramped up fears of World War III after the Cuban Missile Crisis. I can't ever forget the assassinations of JKF, MLK, and RFK that scarred the rest of my college and graduate school years. I want to feel a safety and security that I, too, lost a bit more of after 9/11. But, I want us to beat Al Qaeda by doing more than using guns and beefed-up security, both of which are important as well. I want those who want to destroy this country because of what we represent to see us for what we say we are: a nation of laws. Like Pandora, the magical land seen in Avatar, the U. S. is a nation blessed with beauty and spirit. We cannot let our fear destroy the vision of who we are to the rest of the world. We dare not lose the vision and essence of who we are to ourselves.
