Although all of us are prone to make chronological mileposts of particularly striking or traumatic events, understandably perhaps, historians are clearly more given to this practice than most. Both shaken and consumed by what happened on the morning of September 11, 2001, I tried to sort out my feelings in the following piece that appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution the next day.
"Americans
Left to Fear Unseen Enemy"
On January 6, 1941, President
Franklin D. Roosevelt promised to forge "a world founded upon four
essential freedoms." In addition to freedom of speech, freedom of
religion, and freedom from want, there was "freedom from fear," which
in Roosevelt's view meant "a worldwide reduction of armaments" so
that "no nation will be in a position to commit an act of aggression against
any neighbor--anywhere in the world." Rather than securing freedom from
fear, however, our victory in World War II soon dissolved into a nuclear arms
race fueled by the Cold War.
The generation that spent
portions of their childhoods practicing for direct nuclear hits on their
elementary schools by putting their heads under their desks or had its
adolescence punctuated by the sheer terror of the Cuban Missile Crisis can
hardly look back with much nostalgia on that era. Yet, even as the Cold War
ended and we breathed a collective sigh of relief at the diminished likelihood
of a global nuclear holocaust, we were already slipping into a new era of fear
and uncertainty, one in which the enemy could be internal, as well as external,
and essentially invisible to boot, one in which extravagant defense budgets and
massive missile stockpiles count for less than the ruthless and calculated
fanaticism of relatively small numbers of unseen and often unknown enemies....
The hysterical reporters and the scenes of
genuine public panic in New York City seemed more the stuff of B-movies or a TV
mini-series than that of live "as-we-speak" reality. Obviously, we are
stunned by the apparent ease with which planes at major airports could be
hijacked and used to demolish what should have been a tightly secured potential
terrorist target. Yet, neither our shock or our dismay at the paralyzing
fallout of this atrocity at all the nation's airports and in its major cities
defines the true significance of yesterday's horrors. That significance lies in
the capacity of an unseen enemy to make not just the residents of New York or
Washington, D.C., afraid, but to implant that fear into the hearts of millions
of Americans who have never been (and probably never intend to be) anywhere
near either place.
This reality came through to me
in a number of ways, including the cancellation of classes at the University of
Georgia and the anxious investigation of a "suspicious" van parked
near the federal building in Athens. However, it was local reaction to
yesterday's horrors here in rural Hart County that I found most enlightening.
Our local radio station, WKLY, "The Voice of the Upper Savannah
River," largely suspended its regular programming (save, of course, for
the obituaries and mid-day devotional) and broadcast the programming of the
Georgia News Network. The mayor of Hartwell, a woman of Lebanese extraction and
the Episcopal faith, urged citizens to offer their prayers for the victims and
their families "in their own tradition." To that end, churches in
town and throughout the county opened their doors to the prayerful. Yet, for
all the sincere expressions of grief and compassion for the victims and their
families that were uttered in Hart County yesterday, I feel certain that
explicitly or not, those prayers also embodied a personal plea for the freedom
from fear that, despite our victories in World War II and the Cold War, seems
more elusive now than it did when President Roosevelt pledged to secure it for
us it sixty years ago.
Ten years later, there are still some what I would call "suspicious" vans chugging about old Athens town, but, of course, there always have been, at least since I arrived here as a student in the mid-1960s. Meanwhile, Americans seem less fearful of terrorists than what appears now to be a protracted, possibly even two-tiered, economic downturn that has put many of them out of both their jobs and their homes. This frightening and frustrating state of affairs is further compounded by our continuing involvement in two massively expensive military operations, both of which were justified as necessary to prevent a recurrence of the events of 9/11/01. It remains to be seen whether, if and when we are able to extricate ourselves from either of these conflicts, we will have succeeded in doing much more than provoking further resentments that are likely to spawn a new generation of bin Ladens.
Certainly, the striking unity of purpose and resolve that marked America's response to what happened on that terrible Tuesday ten years ago is little in evidence these days. Unfortunately, when the overwhelming majority of members of both parties rallied behind President Bush in a time of genuine national alarm, his political strategists could not resist the temptation to exploit that alarm by making it the foundation for an orchestrated climate of fear in which criticizing any of his policies became tantamount to aiding and abetting the terrorists who were committed to destroying our way of life. Thus it was that on the fifth anniversary of the tragedy, I tore into "W." for "shameless fear mongering" when he used the solemn occasion of a visit to Ground Zero to promote wholesale acceptance of his political agenda by warning us yet again that "there's still an enemy out there that would like to inflict the same kind of damage again." I hardly marked myself as a representative of the liberal lunatic fringe by pointing out that the President was telling us that because we were essentially "no freer from fear than we were five years ago," we must continue to support the policies that had thus far failed to achieve that end. At the same time, the notorious pinkos at The Economist were also scoffing at "the idea that it is the West and its values that are everywhere under attack, and everywhere by the same seamless front of what Mr. Bush has taken to calling 'Islamic fascism' as if this conflict is akin to the second world war or the cold war against communism."
Two years later, it was painfully obvious that objections to the Bush administration's strategy of tarring their critics with the brush of disloyalty had fallen on what by then may have been willfully unhearing ears. The accusations and innuendo that greeted the candidacy of Bush's successor both fed and foreshadowed the polarization that has now crippled our capacity to fashion any constructive response to an economic crisis arguably more frightening in its destructive potential than anything that transpired on that terrible morning ten years ago. Indeed, freedom from "fear" and the freedom from "want" no longer fit neatly into the distinct categories laid out by FDR in 1941 As things stand today, it's not terribly far-fetched to suggest that the fallout from the politically motivated manipulation of the anxieties produced by the atrocities of September 11, 2001, may well prove far more damaging to our country's well being than the actual events themselves.
