Thoughts on Renewed Beginnings

During his inaugural address, President Obama said:

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals…

Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake.

There was only the one terrorist attack during the Bush administration, in 2001. The Bush supporters claim victory: there were no other attacks. Despite numerous other discovered plots, the Bush administration prevented any further direct attacks. No argument: there were no other attacks.

Is this a victory?

I'd say that the terrorist organizations won not just Round One, but Round Two and Round Three.

In Round One, they successfully hijacked four airliners, and successfully crashed three of them into specific targets. In Round One, despite evidence we now understand, America did not prevent the attack. Round One involved a specific set of events on a specific day with specific targets. Did it succeed? Certainly. Did it succeed beyond the attackers' expectations? Quite probably: the collapse of both towers of the World Trade Center was, most likely, an outcome well beyond their expectations.

Round Two began on September 12, 2001. Round Two did not entail a direct attack, thwarted or otherwise. Round Two did not have so specific and obvious a target (a set of targets) as Round One: its target was the U.S. economy. The economy had a pretty rough time in the aftermath of those attacks. The terrorists won Round Two—even though the economy recovered, it's easy to argue that the recovery was delayed and attenuated.

Round Three has an even less obvious, less specific, more general target—yes, has. Round Three began almost concurrently with Round Two. Round Three began when our government—our government—began to choose the illusion of safety over our ideals. Round Three continued as we, the people, accepted that choice, applauded that choice, demanded that choice. Round Three entailed the violation of civil liberties, the violation of principles in our Constitution, the violation of our own long-held national moral codes. It was not the enemy who violated our civil liberties, our Constitution, our moral codes: it was we who violated them.

Of late, we have begun to awaken to what we have accepted. We have begun to demand that our principles, our ideals not be exchanged for an illusion of safety. We have begun to understand that it is not our buildings nor our money nor even our lives that have been attacked. We have begun to understand that it is our way of life that is at risk.

The terrorist organizations cannot attack our way of life directly. No enemy can take our way of life from us, unless we help it do so. And this we have done, by acceding to more than just needless expense and needless inconvenience: by acceding to needless sacrifice of a foundation built through the decades and the centuries, by acceding to torture in our names, to abdication of responsibility on the part of our leaders, to the dismantling of important safeguards, to the separation of "the other" from "us."

Has Round Four begun?

Will we, the people, be willing ourselves to accept a decrease in the illusion of security, of safety to return to our ideals? Can President Obama lead us to reclaim those ideals that still light the world? Will we, as people, as the people, and as a nation "pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America"?