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12-16-03 Those were dark days for America in December of 1941. That Sunday afternoon I sat with my mother and father listening to the news on our almost new Philco radio. The potbellied coal stove in the corner couldn’t warm the chill in our hearts. Even to a nine-year-old boy, it was a frightening time. The German war machine had steamrolled across
Europe unchecked, with only the tiny island of Great Britain holding
them back. The Japanese had
marched across Asia unchecked. That
Sunday, December 7, they attacked Pearl Harbor and World War II was
underway. Americans had
confidence in their country, but was unprepared for war.
The Nazi and Japanese military had a proven record of battlefield
successes. How would a
peacetime military in America match up against seasoned armies? There was one consolation. We knew who the enemy was and where he was.
You could look on the map. There
was Germany and the Nazi party. There
was Italy and the Fascists. There
was Japan. You knew your enemy. Some hysteria prompted our government into
ruthless measures. Anyone
with a German name or accent was suspect.
Especially on the West Coast, a yellow skin and Japanese ancestry
was punished. American born
citizens of Japanese heritage were rounded up and sent to concentration
camps for the duration of the war. But we had an enemy we could identify.
There were countries we were at war with—Germany, Japan, Italy. There have always been terrorists, people who
conduct their own war against social order, philosophies and
governments. The attack on
the World Trade Center was the peak of hatred and terrorism in a
fierceness the world had never seen.
And it ushered in a new kind of conflict.
There was no nation to blame.
Not Afghanistan, not Somalia, not Iraq, not even North Korea. The enemy is an idea, a fanatical ideology.
Its headquarters is in the minds of zealots who hate anything
different from their beliefs. The fighters are the brainwashed pawns who will launch a
suicide attack against those they are trained to hate. You can’t spot the enemy by the color of the
skin or nationality. They
can be the young man and woman waiting to catch a bus.
They can be the two elderly men carrying brief cases. And the tension has caused a national paranoia. Four times in our history, Americans were robbed
of their civil rights in the name of “security.”
John Adams used the sedition act to silence critics of his
presidency. Abraham Lincoln
suspended habeas corpus and jailed editors and others who wrote or spoke
against him. Specific
peoples, particularly the Japanese, were arrested and incarcerated
because of their skin color. And now we have the frenzied acts passed to
provide us protection while taking away the very rights we want
protected. People are
arrested on suspicion, held without due course of law.
Is that going to stop the crazy man intent on dying as long as he
can carry someone with him? Now the policy makers are talking about trying
the Israeli hardline approach to the guerillas in Iraq. The Israelis have been sending over tanks and the
Palestinians have been sending back suicide bombers for a generation.
It would seem Washington could realize this tactic won’t work. In a way these days are more menacing than those
bleak days that began in 1941. We
don’t even know who or where the enemy is. Maybe at some point the geniuses in the think
tanks will realize if you throw gasoline on a fire it makes it worse.
When you drop a smart bomb on hatred, it spreads it even farther.
Theodore Roosevelt said we should speak softly and carry a big
stick. We have the big stick. Perhaps
now is the time to try to understand the enemy and dilute the hatred at
its sources instead of spreading it. Macho rhetoric like “bring ‘em on”
doesn’t help. We need
smart people, not smart bombs.
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