Last Call
Pleszczynski, Wladyslaw
"Last Call" By Wladyslaw Pleszczynski Enough Already—We're Ready Can there ever be too much of a bad thing? Not if the anniversary commemorations of Nine-Eleven are any indication. In some quarters...
...We've taken the full measure of our new enemy, such as he is, who is powerful only if we do not pay attention...
...It was also an odd debate, because a year ago everyone knew something had changed and the assumption was that whatever had changed would be permanent...
...The Muslimists have virtually no way to attack us, at least on a repeated basis," he said in a recent e-mail...
...I will not yield, I will not rest, I will not relent in waging this struggle for freedom and security for the American people...
...Bush confirmed we had made up our minds...
...Bush himself noted, "It is my hope that in the months and years ahead life will return almost to normal...
...A year ago no one would have questioned why he intends to be in Iraq...
...Today it's clear he was laying down markers...
...But time can play tricks, according to its own logic...
...With God and American might on our side, it's really no contest...
...Seen another way, the excess is a sure sign we've recovered very nicely indeed...
...A friend's thinking captured my own better than I realized...
...And they need expert leadership, and we have killed, captured or scattered the very few real leaders the movement has...
...Wladyslaw Pleszczynski is editor of Our Brave New World: Essays on the Impact of September 11 (Hoover Institution Press...
...Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them...
...As Bush said then: • We will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terror-ism...
...His stunning address to Congress that Thursday evening will remain his greatest moment...
...From now on we'd protect ourselves...
...They need sources of money...
...So long as danger remains a possibility—and how can it seem otherwise, in the midst of daily preoccupation with Nine-Eleven--that understanding won't disappear...
...It's just that we're also an immensely powerful and prosperous free country...
...Another one-year anniversary will have passed on September20, though without fanfare...
...For some, year-ago feelings will surge again," The New York Times confidently predicted...
...The gist was that we'd learned to distinguish the important from the immaterial, and not allow the latter to dominate public life and leave us weak...
...we've put a serious dent in that...
...Throughout the anniversary proceedings there was much debate between those who insisted Nine-Eleven had changed us and those who'd concluded it hadn't...
...This is civilization's fight...
...In context, however, it all made sense...
...A sovereign nation, determined to beat them, can destroy more than 90 percent of their capacity in short order...
...The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain...
...In some quarters they may still be ongoing even as you read this, weeks and months later...
...But listen to some of the language that's missing from recent discourse...
...We'll go back to our lives and routines and that is good...
...From now on he'll be judged not by whether he could live up to the letter of his bravura, but by whether he can live up to its spirit...
...All it took was making up our mind to do it...
...We must give enormous credit to Bush, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft, who stuck to the job despite the quacking of the groundlings...
...Defiant, consoling and confident, he struck all the right notes, telling the nation exactly what it needed to hear...
...Terrorists need stashes of arms and other supplies...
...Freedom and fear are at war...
...Every nation in every region now has a decision to make: Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists...
...This is the fight of all who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance and freedom...
...82 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR • SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2002...
...But no one can accuse the United States of no longer being vigilant...
...LAST A By Wladyslaw Pleszczynski Enough Already—We're Ready Can there ever be too much of a bad thing...
...Terrorists may fling themselves worldwide, but they necessarily [are] spread very, very thin...
...The advance of human freedom, the great achievement of our time and the great hope of every time, now depends on us...
...We are bound to remain forever more alert than we were before Nine-Eleven...
...This is the world's fight...
...That was the date a year ago when Mr...
...The only way to defeat terrorism as a threat to our way of life is to stop it, eliminate it and destroy it where it grows...
...we regularly capture and destroy those caches...
...This was either good or bad, or the other way around, or both bad and good, depending on how you looked at it...
...The quibbling and kvetching over Iraq are the product of a politics that has returned to its routines...
...It's as if a country that had never been violated in such a fashion didn't want to lose touch with the sensation that came with being violated that way...
...so, too, execution of foreign policy can't depend on a momentum no longer there...
...Just as today we cannot genuinely re-experience "year-ago feelings...
...Even then, some were struck by the outlandishness of some of his rhetoric, committing the United States to endless, unremitting war against a new enemy...
...A serious effort to hit back immediately paid off, creating significant deterring effects...
Vol. 35 • September 2002 • No. 5
