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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: FaultLine who wrote (42062)	9/5/2002 7:27:08 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

WE SURVIVED SEPTEMBER 11 -- IT IS TIME TO MOVE ON By Richard Reeves Op/Ed Wed Sep 4,10:02 PM ET news.yahoo.com WASHINGTON -- Is your life fundamentally different than it was before Sept. 11, 2001? Is your country fundamentally different? I would guess that, despite all the rhetoric about "the day that everything changed," most Americans would answer "no" to those questions. I would. "While the attacks of Sept. 11 aimed at the heart of the international order of the 21st century," writes Michael Mandelbaum in a book published last week, "their effect was more like that of a badly stubbed toe. "They caused shock and pain. They led to a pause for checking and treating the injury. They produced heightened caution and vigilance and effort to make sure that nothing similar happened again. But in their wake the world went on much as it had before." It was a great tragedy. Thousands of lives were ended or ruined, not all of them American. Not only were people from 80 different countries killed in the collapse of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, but many more innocents will die as the United States, justly if not always wisely, retaliates around the world. But back here, in Washington, which also suffered greatly on that terrible day, it is pretty much business as usual again. The FBI ( news - web sites) and the CIA ( news - web sites) act as if they were agencies created on Sept. 12, 2001, and few rise to question their competence in allowing the country to be hurt. Democrats in Congress are looking for ways to embarrass the White House before the elections this November, and President Bush ( news - web sites) has managed to re-divide the country by using the hurt to promote a new war on Iraq. In fact, both sides in the politics of the capital city are trying to use Sept. 11 to push their agendas of the day before. Cynicism and hypocrisy are in the saddle here. The Democrats are now trying to distance themselves from the pain of the nation, intending to do as little as possible on the chance that voters will punish the Republicans for beginning inconclusive action in Afghanistan ( news - web sites) and failing to bring Osama bin Laden ( news - web sites)'s head home on a pike. And the Republicans seem eager to create some kind of democratic police state, where foreigners are arrested in secret and citizens are watched openly. Dissent if you dare! One example of the way people think hereabouts is a syndicated column written two weeks ago by Cal Thomas, who came to public attention years ago as the spokesman of the Moral Majority. Thomas interviewed Paul Weyrich, president of the Free Congress Foundation and a talented political thinker, asking him what Republicans should be doing to win in November. Then he wrote: "Weyrich says ... only a war of liberation in Iraq can reverse Republican fortunes. 'An October surprise will completely change the dynamic of the election,' he says. 'The public will rally around the president and Republicans if it is well thought out and Saddam is ousted. We can't have a situation like we do with Osama bin Laden where he hasn't been located and victory in Afghanistan is not clear.'" Going back to Mandelbaum, who is a professor at Johns Hopkins University: His book, "The Ideas that Conquered the World," is not a Sept. 11 anniversary book. It is a thoughtful and powerful telling and analysis of the triumphant and ongoing impact of the ideas of peace, democracy and free markets, as articulated by Woodrow Wilson more than 80 years ago after World War I. The quotes above are from the introduction, where Mandelbaum concludes that terrorism is hardly the greatest threat to life in the 21st century, ranking it below the possibility of continued inequality in wealth distribution, environmental upset, and the destinies of Russia and China. What he is saying is that as bad as Sept. 11 was, it was not a mortal wound, and we may already have moved on. The world is becoming a better place for more and more people -- except, possibly, in Washington.