Author Archive Send to a Friend <% dim printurl Version

September 22, 2001 In Focus Nobody is spelling it “Amerika” now.

here's nothing like a bomb, let alone three bombs, to focus the mind. The fourth bomb was defused in Pennsylvania by heroic passengers who jumped the killers and gave their lives to save the lives of many others. They should receive, posthumously, our nation's highest civilian award, the Medal of Freedom. Or perhaps they were not civilians but warriors, and should be posthumously commissioned as officers and awarded the highest medal of all, the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Some good is emerging from this whole thing — as, somehow, good always does emerge. Certainly there is a void that can never be filled. One thinks of Barbara Olson, and of what Ted Olson, our nation's solicitor general, must have been experiencing when she twice phoned him from the plane. Language falls far short.

But we did gain an increment in consciousness. Remarkably, the term "civilized world" is now being used without politically correct embarrassment. The civilized world consists of the advanced modern nations, mostly of the West. It does not include Rwanda-Burundi or Syria or North Korea.

And it is remarkable how quickly the civilized world came together in response to this assault, an assault that was radical and profound. NATO unanimously, and for the first time, endorsed its proposition that an attack on any of its members constituted an attack on all of its members. That was a message to the former Soviet Union. It is now a message to the barbarians. Even the French — who have been little more than a nuisance since being bled white at Verdun — signed on. Vladimir Putin reportedly will make bases in Kazakhstan available to us for the expected aerial assault on Afghanistan. Perhaps Putin deserves admission to the NATO club of civilized nations.

The fact is that most of the world is not civilized, and that most of the things we call "nations" are not nations in the modern sense at all. Zimbabwe does not have a government. It is run by a thug named Robert Mugabe. It does not have disciplined courts of law, its life lacks predictability, its treasury is empty, and bands of brigands roam the countryside. "Zimbabwe" is merely a geographical expression, not a nation. And the same is true of much of the planet, if you just box the compass. Iraq is not a nation. It does not have a government in any civilized sense. What kind of a wild thing is Iran, with its Ayatollahs? What is the "Palestinian Authority"? Who elected Arafat? Multiculturalists don't take their vacations in these cockroach entities.

The assault on us, on Tuesday, the eleventh of September, brought such reflections into the foreground of the mind.

In New York that week, one wondered exactly how strong or weak civilization actually is. Paradoxically, it is weak and vulnerable but also resilient and strong. The city was immensely disrupted. I will not soon forget riding in a taxi down Fifth Avenue around 9 AM, on the way to work. There, a couple of miles away, I could see the evil column of black smoke billowing up from the World Trade Center. Was this actually possible?

The life of the city henceforth was wrenched askew. The tunnels were closed. No trains, buses, or planes were leaving the city. People were walking miles over bridges to get home to the suburbs. Grand Central Station was evacuated because of a suspected bomb. Businesses and restaurants closed.

Every corner of civilized life was affected. The Muslim suicide bombers certainly succeeded in making a statement.

If we attend to that statement we understand that we need, as civilians, a heightened awareness. The barbarians perhaps will not hijack more planes. But they are as clever as Tim McVeigh. Be alert to suspicious trucks. Iraq is known to be playing with germs. Saddam should be quietly reminded that we have quite a few hydrogen bombs we haven't used yet. And for the time being, it might be a good idea to avoid major public places, especially those with symbolic meanings.

But despite the sense of dismay and dislocation in New York that week — and it was scary — one also felt a great strength. We are Americans and we are not losers. The void left by our losses cannot ever be filled. But we are here and we are not going away.

American flags are all over the place. Nobody is spelling it "Amerika" now.

— Jeffrey Hart is author, most recently, of Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe: Toward the Revival of Higher Education