Corpus Christi Caller Times Caller.com - A new kind of war demands much of us all

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Brooks Peterson

Monday, September 24, 2001
A new kind of war demands much of us all

Like virtually everyone else in the country, I am still struggling to come to terms with those searing moments Sept. 11 that snuffed out thousands of lives, inflicted indescribable suffering, and changed the history of the nation - and the world - irretrievably.
   There is no way to make sense of it, unless you can somehow get inside the minds of the hate-filled individuals who plotted and carried off this assault. That, however, would require almost superhuman powers of empathy - and, in any case, who would want to go there?.
   What we can and must do is regain our own bearings, decide where we are, and sort out the endless options confronting us.
   Former New York Mayor Ed Koch was fond of asking his constituents, "How am I doing?" The same question now applies to all of us. How are we doing?
   Certainly the heroic rescue efforts we witnessed following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were an inspiration: In New York, firefighters and police officers unhesitatingly sacrificed themselves. At the Pentagon, military personnel and civilians alike worked tirelessly to reach those trapped in the building. And there is reason to believe that passengers aboard the one aircraft that crashed in Pennsylvania made a concerted, and successful, effort to foil the hijackers.
   Smaller things, however, also deserve attention. Consider the restraint shown by the world of popular entertainment: Movies with violent themes - particularly some dealing with terrorist attacks - have been held back from release. And the television networks have also been circumspect.
   'Die Hard' pulled
   That won't last indefinitely, of course. However, this show of self-discipline was at once helpful and shrewd. Consider the Encore movie channel's decision to yank the Bruce Willis vehicle "Die Hard" from a scheduled showing last week. Its theme - a lone cop trying to liberate innocent Americans trapped in a high-rise by a gang of terrorists (who later turn out to be plain old crooks, but never mind) - would have hit entirely too close to the horror that we witnessed scant days ago.
   But there is another, and compelling, reason to give the American public a breather from this sort of fare: These productions, which inevitably revolve around the heroics of fearless, ultra-macho, awesomely muscled-up action heroes, propound a wildly unrealistic view of the way the world works.
   The central notion - that, when confronted with a challenge, our protagonist can confound evil and kick butt (excuse the expression) to such stunning effect that the only question is the final body count - is, to say the least, radically divorced from reality.
   Would that it were so simple: If it were, we could simply draft Messrs. Willis, Van Damme, Norris, Stallone and Seagal (though he might have to lose the pony tail), and send them off to Afghanistan.
   There, over the course of, say, a long weekend, they could hammer Osama bin Laden, bring down the Taliban, and hand the country back to its cheering people: Fade to black, accompanied by a swelling chorus of martial music.
   Nothing, of course, is that simple. Never has been, never will be.
   What we face today is a different kind of war. (Might as well call it a war, though some recoil from the use of the term: Can we call our response to an attack that killed far more Americans - virtually all of them civilians - than Imperial Japan's air strike against Pearl Harbor anything other than war?)
   We will wage this war on a terrain - physical, intellectual and spiritual - not of our own choosing. We must take on an enemy who is ruthless, hate-filled and utterly unimpressed by the prospect of death.
   And in doing all this, we must somehow balance stern punishment with a decent concern for humanity - ours, and that of those who may be caught between us and the authors of this terror.
   We must never forget that "collateral damage" is tallied in the broken bodies and shattered dreams of innocents.

   Brooks Peterson can be contacted 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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