Notes on America At War

Even sceptics had to concede that last Thursday's address to Congress by president Bush was a turning point in his presidency. Those of us who have seen him grow as a leader immeasurably since his near-loss in the New Hampshire primary a year and a half ago were nonetheless shocked by the man we saw. The speech was the most eloquent in presidential history since Ronald Reagan's first term. It was measured without being weak; it was moving without a trace of melodrama; it was stirring without being jingoist. By linking the threat that terrorism poses to freedom with the totalitarianisms of the past century, Bush did more than rally a nation to arms. He called on a bipartisan consensus in foreign policy that survived the Second World War and narrowly avoided collapse during the Cold War. The phrase that desrves to last is "the unmarked graves of discarded lies." The lie that was Nazism; the lie that was Communism; and now the lie that is the perversion of religion behind the evil of September 11.

We should make no mistake about this president's words. He is no Clinton. He means what he says. All the evidence suggests that he sticks to a policy through thick and thin. Look at his tax-cut. Derided by Democrats, supported only modestly by the Republicans, pilloried by the media, it is now law - in almost exactly the same form as Bush's first proposal. The categorical nature of his intent to despatch the Taliban regime and to end states that harbor terrorism suggests we are in for an ambitious war. He hugged everyone warmly afterwards - except, interestingly enough, Colin Powell, who is already counseling the same restraint that led Saddam Hussein to stay in power in 1991. The younger Bush remembers that error. He will not likely repeat it.

And the unanimity in the Congress is unseen since the 1940s. The only thing that came close to it was Lyndon Johnson's ascendancy in 1963. What followed was a period of legislative activity of extraordinary depth and scope. The same could happen now. Bush's alliance with Senate Majority leader Daschle is intensely close. The relationship Bush enjoyed with Democrats in Texas never quite replicated itself in Washington - until now. The real short-term effect will not simply be a large diversion of resources to New York City and the military - but an end to budget squabbles. Washington is going to spend the social security surplus and then some. Paying down the national debt makes no sense in a time of war and incipient recession. And so the debate that raged bitterly in the first week in September is now over. For good measure, the administration withdrew a couple of minor nominees who faced resistance in the Senate. No time for that kind of fight either. As for the blame for a recession, Bush has been relieved of that burden by the massacre of September 11. A Bush softish landing will now be renamed the bin Laden recession. And recovery is likely to be swift. Although the airlines are teetering on the brink of financial collapse, wars and economic growth tend to go together. The time to buy stocks is surely imminent.

Some are already thinking of using this moment for radical domestic steps. If a Supreme Court vacancy opened up soon, it would be a perfect time for Bush to appoint an apparent moderate with conservative leanings. Similarly, if the deficit soars in the wake of a steeper recession and heftier spending, the Democrats might take the opportunity to rescind some of the projected tax cuts in 2002 and 2003. Or the Republicans might counter with an anti-recession package of further tax cuts - in capital gains, for example. None of this is likely to happen soon. But in the medium term, the temptations might be too great for either side to resist.

Both sides will be testing the waters of public opinion. There is little doubt now that support for the president is higher than anyone could have imagined ten days ago. But the critical question is whether support for military action will endure the months and years this war may take. Much of that depends of course on the success or failure of the campaign itself. But the Islamo-fascists have broken one post-Vietnam taboo. If Americans have been squeamish about casualties in previous wars, the terrorists have made that squeamishness moot. There are already several thousand civilian casualties. The military death-toll will have to be very high for nerves to fray. Who will be counting the military body-bags coming back from the Middle East when the body bags in New York City are already too many to count?

The fringes of American political life, however, are gearing up for action. The far right despises American pluaralism almost as much as the Taliban. Jerry Falwell's comments last week baldly stated that God was behind the massacre as a response to America's tolerance of "feminists," "abortionists," and homosexuals. Another far-right writer opined that, "All that is evil in the world can be found in New York: MTV, the United Nations, the U.N. abortion programs, the Council on Foreign Relations, New Age Church of St. John the Divine, Wall Street greed, Madison Avenue manipulation and of course more confirmed AIDS cases than the rest of America combined. Let's remember the filthy sodomite gay parade last summer in New York. Let's remember all the New York politicians falling all over themselves to praise this sick spectacle." Charming, no? But what has been interesting has been how mainstream conservatives have decried this intolerance. From the White House to National Review to Fox News, these American fundamentalists got a stern conservative rebuttal.

I wish the same could be said of the far left. Here, the deranged need to blame the United States for everything - even in the wake of the bloodiest assault on civilian life in American history - took nary a breath for reflection. Susan Sontag opined in the New Yorker that American and British pilots policing the no-fly zone in Northern Iraq to protect the population from more gas attacks from Saddam were more cowardly than the murderers of 6,000 innocents in Manhattan. For Sontag, courage is a "morally neutral virtue." Thus moral relativism has become an ally of evil. The memorial service for some of the victims in San Francisco was crashed last Monday by a leftist cleric's tirade against America. The speech forced the spouse of one of the heroes on Flight 93 to walk off the podium in disgust and rage. The anti-globalization forces have quickly segued into campaigns for "peace," as if peace still existed after the murder of thousands of civilians. One email making the rounds made three demands: to a) stop the war; b) stop ethnic stereotyping; and c) global justice. No mention of terrorism anywhere - except to accuse the United States of it. The only thing that can be said about this response is that it is pathological. The Left is now coming to the defense of a sect that enslaves women, murders Jews and wants to wipe homosexuals from the face of the earth. Oh, well. As long as they don't have to stand up for America.

But beneath all this, something more profound has happened. You can feel it in your bones. This country spent much of the last decade squabbling bitterly about group rights and ethnic grievances, when it wasn't caught up in such absurd spectacles as a congressman's relationship with a missing intern. How distant all that seems now. On the website of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, there is a simple and eloquent statement of solidarity with the dead and commitment to the living. Even Louis Farrakhan has decried the attack and defended Islam from those who would pervert and blaspheme it for the sake of terror. The ban on openly gay people in the military was suspended last week, and news came in that one of the heroes who helped overcome the terrorists on Flight 93 was a gay rugby player. We also learned that the extraordinary priest who died while ministering to firefighters in the blaze was also openly gay. The differences of race and faith and gender and sexual orientation have receded. Identity has given way to citizenship, grievance to duty, division to bonds of trauma and resolve. In this hideous event, there may perhaps be hope - hope for America's dramatic re-engagement with the world for the foreseeable future, hope for a deeper unity among its own citizens, hope for a new sense of perspective of what matters. I can't help recalling the strangely prophetic words of George W. Bush's Inaugural address:

"After the Declaration of Independence was signed, Virginia statesman John Page wrote to Thomas Jefferson: 'We know the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong. Do you not think an angel rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm?'"

-- Anonymous, September 28, 2001

Answers

Very good article.

-- Anonymous, September 28, 2001