Corpus Christi Caller Times Caller.com - Now we must face evil -and defeat it

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Brooks Peterson

Monday, September 17, 2001
Now we must face evil -and defeat it

As I write this, all of us are still struggling to come to terms with something we have managed to keep at arm's length for decades: the enormous power of pure evil.
   Even after the jetliner hijackings and suicide attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, it requires an effort of will simply to think about this. Living as we do in a relativistic age, we find it jarring, disorienting and, most of all, deeply frightening when we bump up against evidence of the terrible things we can do to one another.
   This almost certainly had something to do with a call I received Thursday: The caller urged me to check CNN's web site. In a photo of one of the World Trade Center's stricken towers, he said, there was an image of a skull - a death's head - in the smoke and fire.
   I tracked down the photo: Sure enough, if you looked at it just right, there seemed to be . . . something.
   But whether it offered us a glimpse of cosmic evil, or was simply a random arrangement of shapes and hues captured in an instant, was beside the point. The evil was there, and it was palpable.
   We are not strangers to evil. It is around us, in the form of indiscriminate acts of violence, hatred and distrust of our neighbors, rampant greed, and a self-indulgent culture that exalts self and dismisses duty.
   But as bad as all these things are, they are, or seem to be, more or less manageable. Many of us ignore them; the best of us combat them.
   But this . . . this is not comprehensible, let alone manageable. We look at one another blankly, asking: What do we do? What can we do?
   The enormity of those questions is staggering - not just to you and me, but to any American who values and believes in this society.
   And George W. Bush, you may be very sure, is every bit as heartbroken and anguished as the rest of us.
   That, I suspect, is why in his first brief appearances Tuesday immediately following the attacks he seemed hesitant, tentative, almost overwhelmed.
   This may have earned him low marks from some observers (though few, understandably, have piped up just yet): Franklin D. Roosevelt, surely, would have known how to buck us up. The imperturbable, grandfatherly Dwight D. Eisenhower, no stranger to cataclysms, would have eased our angst. Ronald Reagan, the Great Communicator, would have inspirited us. And so on.
   However, as I looked at our hunkered-down chief executive, it was not invidious comparisons that came to my mind. It was something else: Here is a man who has been hurt as badly by this as all of us have. His world, too, is reeling.
   Bush, whose very right to the presidency is challenged by some, is now the one to whom w e look to for leadership in this grim hour. He wanted the job, fought for it, and now he's got it.
   A solid, serious team
   With the passage of time, he has shown more animation, seemingly beginning to shake off the shock we all felt. Particularly in unscripted public utterances, he has insisted, passionately and correctly, that such an act of war cannot go unpunished. He is surrounded by serious, solid counselors - some of whom stood by his father during the Desert Storm ordeal. These people may be uncongenial to some of us - politics has not gone into hibernation - but they are all grown-ups, and they are committed to this country. We have no reason to think any of them, Bush included, will give us anything less than their best.
   Finally, one more point: There has been consternation that passions aroused by the enormity of these assault may lead to reprisals against some among us - Arab Americans in particular.
   We have seen a little of that. We may see more: There are always knuckle-draggers out there ready to seize on any opening. We must resist them with all our strength.
   But - call me a cockeyed optimist - I don't see us being caught up in such baseness. And I don't see George W. Bush standing for it. Naïve? Perhaps. However, as columnist Tom Teepen wrote last week, we are, for all our faults, a good nation. It is not too much to expect that goodness to shine through in this desperate hour.

   Brooks Peterson can be reached by phone at 886-3772, or by e-mail at petersonb@caller.com


Brooks Peterson can be reached by phone at 886-3772, or by e-mail at petersonb@caller.com

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