In View of Our Nation's Recent Tragedies

A work colleague and I have spent time talking about the ways people have searched for the words to refer to what happened on sept11. The terrible events of last week . . . The tragic events of last month . . . Our nation's recent tragedies . . . These are the catch phrases that are guiding our sentences and, it seems, dictating our thoughts.

As we slip further and further from that day and as we slip further and further into a unity which seems not to have room for criticism of the government, opposing points of view, or anything resembling a search for any of our own accountability, a unity which is played on country radio stations, on scoreboard screens at ball parks, in sentences like It is not a Republican decision or a Democrat decision; it is an American decision, I am looking forward to revival of critical thinking.

I do not live in New York. No one I love or even know was directly hurt by the terrorist actions. And still the enormity of what those people who have been directly harmed have gone and are going through is beyond my ability to understand. So I'm trying to understand the response, the next steps. It's the only thing I can get a handle on.

In view of our nation's recent tragedies, we are being asked, by John Ashcroft, to give up a set of civil liberties relating to the privacy of our communication and actions. It is a great and time-honored tradition in this county, during times of war, to renege on civil liberties and regret it later.

In view of our nation's recent tragedies, we are being asked to prepare for the possibility of future attacks but to continue living our lives. To go out to dinner and to a baseball game. To look at the pictures of hijackers in hopes of being able to offer tips but to realize we would never, never have recognized any one of those men as dangerous unless we labeled all men of that skin tone dangerous.

We're being asked to accept that the new security measures at airports will make flying safe. We are expected to believe in this new safety despite the fact that none of these new measures -- with the possible exception on carry on restrictions -- would have stopped the hijackers from taking charge of those planes.

The entire thing seems a failure of imagination.

We have been able to imagine vast and horrible terror activities on our soil. It's been the subject of Tom Clancy novels and Bruce Willis movies and comic book speculation. We have not, however, been able to imagine that the bad guys would ever win. And despite the heroic and hopeful actions of the people on one of those planes, the bad guys won the battle.

And the only thing that will prevent them from winning the war is for us to imagine them winning, to believe in the possibility of defeat. I do not mean the inevitability of defeat but the possibility. By believing in that possibility, we will put highly paid, well trained people in charge of our planes and our borders. We will look through and study the vast amount of information we collect as part of our intelligence tracking system. We will pay translators who work for the CIA a significant amount of money.

Imagining defeat, also forces us to reckon with accountability. No one who left for work that day, who got on a plane that day, who went into a burning building that day deserved to die. Not one single person deserved fear and terror to be delivered to them. However, in asking how it is possible for people to hate with this much violence, we must ask if we indeed have done something to engender that hate.

I'm ashamed to say that I do not know. I do not know enough about the geography of that part of the world, American foreign policy or the history of conflicts into which we have interjected ourselves.

In view of our nation's recent tragedies, I've decided to learn. To somehow turn the vast amount of information out there into knowledge that I can use to understand this reality -- not new, only new to us.

It is my hope that we can arm ourselves and fight with this knowledge and take actions that do not, necessarily involve guns or missiles. And it is my hope, armed with this knowledge, that our collective imagination will not fail us again.