Are We Tough Enough for Sacrifices Ahead?

Does America really have the backbone for this? I mean, the kind of steely resolve that we claim as part of our heritage, that we glamorize in our movies but which we have been called upon to prove ... well, just when, lately?

I’ll grant that we’ll have to ask with each step ahead, “Are we being wise in our pursuits?” We might not know until we try. And as we contemplate trying, there is the question of character that we must ask about ourselves and each other:

Are we tough enough?

The answer, our collective self-assessment, will determine just what we try and whether we will persevere.

There are, in broad terms, three generations of Americans alive today, each shaped differently by events. The oldest among us are honored for their sacrifice and determination in World War II. The youngest among us, those who now will be asked to venture into battle, have experienced little of sacrifice or collective purpose.

Then there is the generation in between--my generation, the generation that now occupies the White House, much of Congress, the flag offices in the Pentagon. This is the generation that will command this war, whatever it turns out to be. This is a generation of shifting moods--a deeply cynical generation, a generation for which collective doubt ran its course and became Darwinian selfishness. But it is also a generation with a chance for redemption now. Let’s not forget that we once represented the unbounded idealism to make ours a better world.

So is America tough enough?

I believe so.

The baby boomers who endured Vietnam bear the scars of seeing their country lose its way and turn on itself. Some say it’s our own doing. At the moment, it might be more gracious to lower the finger of blame and acknowledge that we boomers are surely wiser for the bitter lessons we learned.

Today, the potential battlefield is fuzzier than we’ve ever faced, but the lines of conflict are clear. Our enemy is shadowy, but he is our enemy, not the enemy of a distant domino on the Cold War game board. The terms of engagement are more uncertain, but the stakes are higher. And for those who do not believe it, I think they will before long. Only dizzy optimists will cling to the hope that we can outsource our safety to the authorities and return our whole attention to weekly bounces of the stock market.

Some have described the dead in Manhattan and Washington as people who “gave” their lives. Not so. These were lives “taken.” And not by a man, but by a cause. I’ve felt this eerie fanaticism firsthand in my journeys to the Middle East. I say “felt” because religious and cultural fanaticism is not something worn on the sleeve as much as a consuming passion of the soul. A cause, when you truly believe in it, gives righteous purpose to life. And in the extreme, a cause provides its believers with a purpose for death. To call today’s anti-West terrorists “extremists” is one of the few instances in which we might be understating the case.

Are we tough enough?

I don’t believe we have a choice.

This week, Americans wave their flags and rejoice in the dear comfort of unity. We wonder, from the sidelines, what the president is cooking up for retaliation.

But we also might give a moment’s thought to what terrorists are cooking up for us. If our airlines are safe, what about our drinking water? What about all that missing plutonium circulating in the world?

We hear that we will have to sacrifice. We also hear doubts about whether contented Americans are up to it. But sacrifice is only sometimes “given.” In difficult times, sacrifice becomes like the dead in the World Trade Center. Sacrifice is “taken.” In World War II, it was not decided by a public opinion poll or a vote to ration the purchase of shoes. It was decreed. Battlefield heroics in World War II, Korea and Vietnam were as apt to come from men pressed into service as from volunteers.

In the Persian Gulf War, Dick Cheney, then-Defense secretary, and the leadership of America worried themselves sick about a domestic backlash in the event of battle casualties. You might recall that Cheney imposed a 24-hour news blackout on reports from U.S. field units when the ground war commenced--a ploy designed to permit the military to seize terrain before any protests could break out at home. This caution, the byproduct of Vietnam, surely remains keen in the minds of Cheney and others in Washington’s leadership--and it will continue, perhaps. But only as long as we believe that terrorists can be cowed and sent to their rooms if we just teach them a sharp lesson or two.

No matter what you think of George Bush, and polls only mask the fact that America remains deeply divided about its leadership, he has voiced the cause nobly. He did not speak back to terrorists in their language of retribution. He spoke to the larger world. He spoke of confronting an ever-stronger global enemy now for the sake of generations to come.

Are we tough enough?

I believe we’ll have to be.