Patriots Can Ask Questions

President Bush put it starkly to the nations of the world: You’re with us, or you’re with the terrorists. Some Americans seem inclined to go a step further in their demands on one another. Pick your allegiance, friend or foe, and be quiet. At least that’s how some readers are expressing it to me. I presume they mean, toe the line.

Which leads me to a question of my own: As we narrow our national purpose to combat terrorism, must we also narrow our minds?

Wars are dangerous in many ways. For one thing, we can misplace our wits along the way.

In a letter, Rob of Culver City said I could not defend America’s ideals and rethink them at the same time. “The two positions are mutually exclusive,” he said. His question boiled down to this: “Is Balzar for war or against it? Ask him to decide and write a column on it, please.”

OK.

To repeat: I believe this nation was late in facing up to the threat of terrorism. I wish I could suggest a plausible way to defend ourselves other than as the president says, by all means at our command--including military force. I take Osama bin Laden at his word. He’s out “to destroy America.”

War? We don’t have a choice. It has been declared on us.

This is not a war of intervention, something we can undertake or ignore. It’s self-defense or gradual capitulation. For years and with increasing frequency, terrorists have been killing and threatening Americans, along with their own countrymen and other perceived enemies around the world. Is there something unclear about their aims? Do we ignore indisputable evidence that they are gaining strength? That they are seeking more efficient and terrible ways to kill us? Is there so much as a shred of evidence that appeasement quells fanatics?

In a word, no.

And to make sure there is no room for question, let me add this: America does not bear blame for these attacks against it. Yes, I think we should be keenly aware of the imperfect history that brought us to this dangerous time. Hindsight can only help as we try to see our way clear now. But whatever our shortcomings, we are far more decent than those who sought this war.

So what’s the rub?

It’s this: With the country at arms, is it also proper to ask Americans to reflect on their lives and their values and their approach to the world?

Not just proper, but essential. There is no better moment than when the country is challenged to ponder what it is we’re defending. Scattered in my mailbag and here and there in conversations and news accounts, I hear the ghostly echo of that mindless old taunt: America, love it or leave it. Or maybe it’s the other way around: You cannot question what we believe in if you don’t also doubt what we’re undertaking.

Nonsense. There is no contradiction between defending the ideals of liberty and justice while also asking ourselves whether we are doing the best we can to live up to them. That’s the whole point of U.S. democracy: a quest to make it better. Crises open new pathways in our minds. They demand that each of us, as the cliche goes, rethink what is important and what is not. Have we grown too materialistic? Too self-absorbed? Too isolated? Too coldblooded?

They are foxhole questions for the moment. They are lasting questions for the future. Our enemies are trying to reduce our values to rubble. We can respond by lifting our ideals higher. We can say, hum, this renewed spirit of nation-as-community feels pretty good. What are we going to do with it to make America truer to itself as we mount its defense?

Or we can, as has happened before, demand that Americans leave their good hearts and good senses in the locker room for this fight.

At the root, our war against terrorism is a war against intolerance. I’m against intolerance of all kinds, whether from within or from without. I also believe that it is vital to understand not just what we’re against but what we’re for. By so doing, we’re living up to the ideals that we are out to preserve.