Posted on 02/04/2002 10:10:24 AM PST by NYCVirago
This may be heresy, but my life didn't change as I know it after Sept. 11.
Not that the terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center and Pentagon weren't horrific, hateful and heart-rending. Not that I didn't cry for the firefighters and bond traders who lost their lives. Not that the day won't live on as a horrible, historic moment. But my life didn't change.
I still had to work, my cats still had to be fed, and my cholesterol was still too high. I still traveled for business, flew to New York for vacation and opened my own mail. I didn't feel one iota less safe. I still don't.
So it was hard for me to join in when President Bush came to town last week and told me and a crowd of 1,000 local Republicans, "Let's go git 'em."
I personally don't want to go git anyone, nor do I feel an urgent need for our military to. Anyone ever heard of the CIA? I thought that was their job.
Bush is right to beef up the country's intelligence operation, which had been allowed to go dangerously lax. Congress is right to place airport security under federal control, because it's essential to safety. But I have a problem with going to war against unknown and unstated enemies in the fuzzy goal of making America safer.
America will never be totally safe, nor has it ever been. An open society intrinsically carries risk. Timothy McVeigh taught us that. So did Ted Bundy. China is safe. But it isn't free. I'll take the risk.
Bush's message of war, of taking the fight further -- perhaps to Iraq, perhaps to Iran -- has resonated with Americans. Wednesday night's crowd in Daytona Beach, crammed cheek to jowl into a sweltering tin airplane hangar, delighted in the president's declarations of might and right, of his gleeful reference to America as the greatest nation on earth, of his assurances of victory over the enemy.
But this is a fake and fuzzy war -- who ever heard of a war where just two soldiers die fighting? Nonetheless, Americans seem to want it. We miss the certainty we lost when the Cold War ended. We want someone to hate. We want someone to fight. Peace does not seem to agree with us.
Much more resonant for me was the president's message of community service and compassion. Bush met with local volunteers Thursday morning to spotlight his State of the Union call for a national volunteer effort. But even there, his thoughts turned to war.
"We all have a role to play in protecting our country," he told a group of seniors who patrol our neighborhoods, praising them for their contribution to "homeland security."
These programs began long before the attack and they'll be here long after. While Bush focused on the good works of our volunteers, he missed the point. They give their time to make our communities better places, whether that means helping someone in need or keeping watch over a vacant home. It's not about war, it's about community.
Bush may be betting he can keep his 84 percent approval ratings by fostering this pretend war for the rest of his term. But it's a gamble. His father fought a real war in the Middle East and won a real victory. But when the economy went flat, he lost the election.
A national poll released last week shows Americans now consider the sorry state of the U.S. economy as the country's number 1 issue. Sept. 11 is over and they're moving on. The president should, too.
Hasterok is a News-Journal columnist and editorial writer. She can be reached at pamela.hasterok@news-jrnl.com.
I don't care about your crappy life.
We want someone to hate. We want someone to fight. Peace does not seem to agree with us.
Liberals always mutter this trite idiotic bromide.
It’s shorthand for “I really don’t have time to expend, what with feeding my cats and all, to look into the issues surrounding our military campaign. I just think peace is nice and stuff.”
I knew right then that this chick wasn't playing with a full deck.
In fact, my dog is taking a movement right now on the News-Journal.
Classic. It is short-sighted attitudes like this woman's that lead to disasters. Well, I suppose if she, in her comfortable little surroundings, isn't worried, there's no threat to her or anyone else. Great thinking, she would have made a great captain of the Titanic.
Of course not, for her...
I still had to work, my cats still had to be fed, and my cholesterol was still too high.
This woman is beyond selfish.
Uh, no, Pammy, it really is the military's job. Trust me on that one.
She could have saved the paper considerable ink by just printing "I am extremely ignorant."
http://www.newsjournalonline.com/column/hastndx.htm
Ms Hasterok:
Your article of 2/3 regarding President Bush and his inability to move on was absurd.
It was a sad reminder to me that cynical post-boomer naval gazers like yourself haven't learned a thing from recent events.
There are moments in history that require nations and their leaders to to summon the population to a calling that is greater than themselves.
Unfortunately, that requires an appreciation of history and a sesitivity regarding almost mystical concepts like liberty, freedom, democracy and the rights of man as an evolutionary ideal.
Fortunately, we have had leadership at key moments in history of mankind, FDR, Lincoln, Churchill and Gahndi to name a few, who were able to grasp these concepts
and were able to rise to the occasion to defend these great concepts and place another brick in the foundation of a more Just world.
I don't know if President Bush will ever rise to the stature of the gentlemen I mentioned previously, but in his State Of The Union address, he made it perfectly clear that he gets it.
Go back to your small life and let the adults grapple with issues that are beyond your self absorbed cynicism.
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