The View from Thayne’s Corner
Thayne Jones

The Enemy of Fear

   If we continue to think of terrorist threats, as some in the Bush administration would have us believe, to be a danger as great as that of the former nuclear-armed Soviet Union, the terrorists will win eventually.

   Civilization is not on the verge of collapse because of scattered cells plotting to do us harm.  Even those well-armed and seemingly powerful are no match for the weight that can be brought to bear by cooperating forces in the rest of the world.  But the key to their defeat depends less on military action and more on psychological initiative.

   We can live in fear and worry that a terrorist is lurking around every corner --- the outcome radical Islamists hope to achieve.  We can strip ourselves of various freedoms in the vain hope of protecting ourselves from all attacks of any sort.  Another outcome these disrupters of normal life expect.  And we can exhaust ourselves financially flailing at every shadow in all the dark corners of the globe --- also a terrorist objective.

   Those we fear do not produce that reaction within us by the show of military might.  They can’t.  They have neither the trained personnel nor the equipment to win sustained battles, so they sneak about planting bombs, assassinating, kidnapping and instilling fear by targeting innocents.  This is a weak foe hoping we might self-destruct.  Often we appear ready to accommodate them.

   We can take the necessary precautions without destroying civil liberties.  We can improve intelligence by working with those speaking the language that offers help, if we can get past the racial bias.  Every moderate Islamist we suspect of being an enemy risks the chance of creating one.

   We can’t be totally safe from everything that might cause harm and confusion.  Life in many other nations resumes normally after sustaining acts of violence.  Fortunately, or unfortunately, we in the US have not been required to develop the resolve others have acquired from experiencing wartime death and terrible destruction on their own soil.  Safety, to some extent, comes from feeling confident one can survive disaster.

   Running scared doesn’t solve the problem.  Neither, we have seen, is peace and freedom established by running halfway around the world to attack whole nations posing no immediate threat.

   We are not in an all-out emergency of WWII proportions, anticipating that strains and sacrifices must be sustained into the unforeseeable future.  We must produce leadership willing to depend more on brains, less on fear and muscle, and stop actions that can cause the death of innocents. (An example of the backlash this produces is evident in the current struggle between Israeli and Hezbollah forces).

   Another 9/11, which those in charge of mayhem may, or may not, be able to pull off, could plunge us into a terrorist trap if we allow our fear, and the reaction to it, to take us there.