What I've Learned

In the September 11, 2006 issue of TIME, Nancy Gibbs has a column, "What We've Learned."

She writes:

An American businessman, traveling in India when the planes struck the towers, made his way back to the U.S. the following week as quickly as he could. That meant hopscotching across the Middle East, stopping in Athens overnight to change planes. He spent the evening having supper in a local taverna. No one else in the restaurant spoke English, but when the owner realized he had an American in the house just two nights after 9/11, he asked his guest to stand up, face the other diners and listen to a toast.

And indeed, the entire room stood up, raised their glasses and said, as one, "Shoulder to shoulder, until justice is done."

Really? The "entire room" said that "as one"?

Is that a common Greek toast?

I can't think of a similar toast in English that on cue an "entire room" could recite "as one."

I know that's being sort of picky, but it makes me think that Gibbs is embellishing a bit for dramatic effect.

Five years later, after an invasion of Afghanistan and an occupation of Iraq, and amid talk of war with Iran, it is fair to ask:

Would they say it again tonight?

Would we say it to one another?

This has become the loss with no grave, no chance for mourning, because we still live it every day--the loss of that transcendent unity, global goodwill, common purpose born of righteous anger that wrapped us like a bandage those first months after the attacks: a President with a 90% approval rating, a Congress working as one, expressions of sympathy and offers of help from every corner of the planet. WE ARE ALL AMERICANS, said Le Monde.

I agree with Gibbs on her point that we have lost that post-9/11 unity that was so comforting in the first few months after the attacks.

However, I disagree about the loss having no grave.

The grave can be found in every hateful anti-Bush administration screed posted on the Internet.

It can be found in every newscast and print piece that has attempted to undermine the President and the administration's efforts to keep us safe, by spilling secret counterterrorism programs and aiding the enemy, by Isikoffian fabrications that inflame the enemy.

The grave is the floor of the U.S. Senate when disgraces like Dick Durbin compare the U.S. personnel at Guantanamo Bay to "Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime—Pol Pot or others —that had no concern for human beings."

The loss of unity is visible. It can be seen. It can be touched. It has an ugly grave.

I also disagree with Gibbs about "no chance for mourning."

May I remind Gibbs that just because "we still live it every day" does not mean we have no opportunity to mourn?

Thousands and thousands of family members and friends of the nearly three thousand murdered on 9/11 live with their loss every day. Nothing can ever change that and they most definitely mourn for their loved ones.

Similarly, we can mourn what we've lost as a country since 9/11 even though we are still in the midst of it.

I know that I mourn the sense of unity and purpose that's been lost. In a time of overwhelming grief and then lingering fear, it was so reassuring to be united. There was strength.

Now, divisiveness and bitterness pervades the nation and we're weaker because of it.

Gibbs is wrong. There is ample chance to mourn. There are no restrictions on mourning.

As far as the global goodwill goes, I don't think it was squandered, as Dems love to say.

John Kerry said it during the 2004 campaign. Jimmy Carter said it. Bill Clinton, Howard Dean, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton -- they've all said it.

The global goodwill was a temporary thing and not because of what America did. The fleeting goodwill was grounded in shock at the horror and the enormity of the attacks.

The "WE ARE ALL AMERICANS, said Le Monde" was that initial response one expects at a time of sorrow.

It's much like mourners going to a funeral, promising to assist the widow, and then never following through, not staying in it for the long haul.

The global goodwill wasn't deeply-rooted. It was shallow. The expressions of condolences were sincere enough; but let's be honest, there were limits to how faithful the world community would be to their "shoulder to shoulder, until justice is done" promises.

The nations that have remained true are the ones that are our true allies. Others, like the French, naturally would withdraw, not because of what we did, but because of who they are.

Furthermore, it certainly is a sad reflection on some in our nation that they choose to put personal political gain ahead of the common purpose and resolve necessary to prevail in the War on Terror. They are opportunists, pure and simple.

A weakened America is advantageous for their political goals. So, selfishly looking out for #1, they weaken America, without concern for the consequences.

That unity was never going to last. The world more easily prefers a superpower when it's wounded and weakened than when it rises and growls. But we have not merely returned to the messy family arguments of Sept. 10. We are divided at home, dreaded abroad, in need of a hard conversation about America's vital interests and abiding values but too bitter and suspicious to have it.

Gibbs seems to be saying that it was a mistake to "rise and growl" after 9/11.

The world didn't like our response, preferring the U.S. to be on its knees. In other words, Gibbs is saying that if we maintained victim status, we'd be likable. If we responded to the attacks forcefully, that meant that the global goodwill she spoke of earlier would evaporate.

So what should we have done?

Should we have kept the world happy by claiming a permanent victimhood?

Of course not.

It's a catch-22. Other countries expect Americans to be strong, to protect them, to come to their aid.

On the other hand, when the U.S. acts, we're criticized and lose that "all-important" goodwill.

The fact is appeasers don't free people or protect them. Appeasers enable the bad guys to make things worse.

All wars, even the noblest, bring a reckoning of means and ends. The war on terrorism has long since lost its crisp moral lines. Who foresaw that the battle would require a national seminar about when it's O.K. for Americans to torture prisoners and whether near drowning counts? Or a debate over which clauses of the Constitution might be expendable? We may agree that terrorism is wicked, but we're still unsure about how to answer it.

Yes, who foresaw that?

Such "national seminars" and "debates" weren't part of World War II. They weren't a part of the Civil War.

Note to Ms. Gibbs: NO CLAUSES OF THE CONSTITUTION ARE EXPENDABLE. This administration is acting according to the powers given to it under the Constitution.

I think Gibbs is a good writer, but she erred when she didn't scratch those Lefty Russ Feingoldisms.

Presidents make their hard decisions and then abide forever with their mistakes and regrets. Since the decision to commit soldiers to battle is the most fateful he makes, it is here that a President--his instincts, his judgment, his pride and his purposes--is most exposed. If he succeeds, the errors are footnotes; if he fails, the best intentions are just dust. "I guess not many Presidents have been understood in their own time," Lyndon Johnson said, reflecting on all the good he'd tried to do for people, who despised him nonetheless. George W. Bush swats away the judgments that anniversaries invite. "There's no such thing as short-term history, as far as I'm concerned," he said last week. We can't know how the story ends, but we know that there was a time five years ago when every day was Memorial Day, when we never would have imagined that we'd care what Brad and Angelina's baby looked like, or dread air travel more for its inconvenience than its dangers.

True, at this point, "we can't know how the story ends." But we can make some good predictions.

If the Democrats regain control, they will enact policies that will prove to be disastrous for our future. They've told us their plans -- kill the Patriot Act, redeploy to Okinawa, set arbitrary troop withdrawal deadlines, tie the hands of the government in their pursuit of terrorists.

Terrorism on the level that we are confronting is not a law enforcement matter.

It's war. Not cold war, not UN peacekeeper war.

We are fighting for our homeland and for our lives.

What I like about President Bush is that he is doing what needs to be done, not what's popular. He acts on principle as opposed to politics. Libs can't begin to comprehend that.

Americans cannot afford to look weak again. We can't have another Somalia. We can't follow Bill Clinton's Mogadishu strategy.

Why would we follow such a failed policy, a policy that served to embolden Osama bin Laden, and encouraged him to strike America, according to HIS OWN WORDS?

Is that good news, a return to normalcy, a mark of resilience? Or does it too mark a kind of loss? In the weeks after 9/11, out of the pain and the fear there arose also grace and gratitude, eruptions of intense kindness that occurred everywhere, a sharp resolve to just be better, bigger, to shed the nonsense, rise to the occasion. And yet five years later, more than two-thirds of Americans say they are unhappy with how things are going--exactly the opposite of the weeks after the attacks, when people were crushed, but hopeful. We saw back then what we were capable of at our best, and now find ourselves just moving on, willing to listen to our leaders but not necessarily believe them, supporting the troops but disputing their mission, waiting, more resigned than resolved, for the next twist in the plot.

No, we don't know how the story ends. The idea that history is written by the victors has been wrongly credited to Winston Churchill, but he did say, "If you are going through hell, keep going." But you wonder whether years from now--5? 10? 50?--there will come a day when the victors actually know that they've won, that the battle is over and they can set about the writing. And whether even then, we will be sure that we have got the story right.

Gibbs has a rather static view of events.

The writing doesn't start when the battle is over. Writing has the power to shape the battle, to direct it while it is ongoing.

It's difficult to answer her question about whether the victors will realize that the war is over because she doesn't really define the war.

If we're talking about disarming terrorists and holding the perpetrators of the murder of innocents as a religious calling, in the name of God, then I think we'll recognize the victors. We'll know the winners.

If we're talking of war in more general terms, the battle of good over evil, then I suppose "the writing" in Gibbs' world will never begin because the battle will never end.

Evil exists. It always will, and good people have to fight it. In that sense, periods of peace are merely brief ceasefires in human history.

What I've learned since 9/11 is not that the Bush administration has botched the War on Terror, as Gibbs suggests. I haven't learned that Bush is a war criminal, or that he lied, or that he's trampled on our civil liberties.

I've learned that evil will win if we let it.
What's scary is that there are U.S. politicians selling policies that will permit evil to be victorious, and they are finding buyers among the American people.