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first thing that Americans must do when confronting the moral implications
of the attacks on New York and Washington is to stop calling them
a "tragedy." The word is inadequate, having been cheapened
by overuse, and strictly speaking it is inapt. In the original sense,
a tragedy is not simply a dreadful event or terrible calamity but
one that befalls a great man as the result of his own flaw, the
effect on the audience being to elicit pity and terror. But our
enemies today did not aim for a catharsis. They meant to terrorize
America, to dispirit us by fear, to leave us stupefied and paralyzed.
The consequences of these attacks are tragic, of course, in the
broad contemporary sense of the term, but that sense is so broad
as to be morally neutral. If the World Trade Center towers had collapsed
due to an earthquake we would be calling that event tragic, too.
Granted, it's hard to tear oneself away from the terrible human
toll, but to take a proper moral and political view of these attacks
we must focus not merely on their consequences but on the intentions
behind the actions. These were wicked acts; savage, cruel, and evil.
President Bush called them cowardly, which they were. Unprovoked
and unannounced attacks on unarmed civilians and peacetime soldiers
could hardly be called brave. Yet in another sense these death strokes
were anything but cowardly; they were daring and ruthless and, for
the men who took over the planes and steered them into their targets,
suicidal. These qualities amount to a kind of sham courage. We should
not delude ourselves into believing that the foes we face are a
bunch of clever cowards.
In fact, however, that is what they think of us. The terrorists
have persuaded themselves that Americans are a nation of rich, clever
cowards, who are willing to kill but not to die for their country
and its interests. From Hiroshima to Somalia, from Vietnam to the
Sudan, America has sought to conserve its sons and to do its killing
with the most efficient technology possible. This long-range, antiseptic
approach to warfare reached its apogee in the Persian Gulf War and
especially in President Clinton's pinprick attacks on Iraq, Sudan,
and selected terrorist bases; our willingness to suffer casualties
reached its nadir in our panicky withdrawal from Somalia and our
super-cautious deployments in Kosovo.
Leaving aside the merits of any of these engagements, from them
many of our enemies around the globe drew the conclusion that America
was a technological colossus but a moral midget. And so the terrorists
did what shrewd but outgunned enemies always do: They used our strengths
against us, jujitsu-style. They lacked airplanes that could reach
American targets, so they took over ours and used them against us.
They lacked smart bombs and missiles and so they turned our own
commercial airliners into smart bombs and missiles, guided not by
cool machines but by resolute human beings willing to ride the weapons
right into a fiery death. And that was precisely the moral point
the terrorists wanted to drive home: that they were willing not
only to kill but to die for their unholy cause.
America's response
to these wicked attacks must be righteous indignation. It is mainly
up to President Bush to express that indignation in noble and searing
words, and to join with Congress in striking with a terrible, swift
sword against the nation's enemies. Thousands of Americans have
already fallen in today's sneak attacks. Hundreds now risk their
lives trying to save the trapped and injured. Our enemies underestimate
American courage, forgetting that American democracy has ever been
a fighting faith.
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