As President Bush encourages Americans to get back to business as usual after the terrorist attacks two weeks ago on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, he is simultaneously warning that a long struggle lies ahead and that more terrorist attacks are possible. Delivering these extremely disparate messages is a challenging balancing act for the president. Yet the carefully calibrated dual message appears to be working so far.
Um ... OK, I admit, I just don't get what they're not seeing. Or what they are seeing. Whatever. It's only realistic to tell people to get back to normal, that this will take a long time, and that more terrorist attacks will come. What's so challenging about telling people the truth? (Assuming that he is telling people that more terrorist attacks will come -- and the only things I've heard from him on that topic have danced very carefully around that point.)
If the challenging part is that he's not calling for sacrifice ... what sacrifice could he call for? This isn't your normal war effort, with a clearly defined enemy in a specific place; it's not the sort of enemy that you can just throw people and munitions at and that will win the war. What sort of sacrifice could he call for that would be appropriate?
In terms of calling for heightened daily vigilance or alertness ... well, he's rather hamstringed by the nature of things at the moment, isn't he? You can tell people to watch out for strange packages or odd objects or whatnot, but typically, what you would ask is for people to watch out for other people behaving strangely. And these days, that would immediately devolve to, "Help! It's a brown person in a turban or a headscarf! Doing ... something!"
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
Archives before February 5, 2001
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12/19/2001: vive la france
12/19/2001: princess, redux
12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
12/18/2001: interesting donation
12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!