JOHN DENNISTON
Staff Writer
This past Sunday’s four-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks brings pause to observe another crucial yet silent milestone in America’s response to terrorism. As of June 7, the time elapsed since Sept. 11 has surpassed the span of America’s involvement in World War II, from the attack on Pearl Harbor to the final surrender at Tokyo Bay.
The realization that we have been fighting a war on terrorism for a period longer than it took our grandparents to engage and defeat the Axis powers might cause some to question our progress and reconsider our mission. Discerning our prospects for victory in a war of this new, uncharted nature, compels us to appreciate those we have sent to fight it.
Recalling Doolittle and D-Day, Midway and the Manhattan Project, leaves us in awe as we grasp the magnitude of the 1,365 days our grandparents fought toward victory.
Our own progress in four years, though, should not be underestimated: 55 million Afghanis and Iraqis are now free, Al Qaeda’s state sanctuary is no more, and A.Q. Kahn’s black market of nuclear destruction has been shut down. Closer to home, four men accused of planning terrorist attacks in Southern California were indicted Aug. 31.
Despite these victories, the attacks in London, Baghdad, Egypt and elsewhere remind us that our enemy is not yet vanquished.
In a war undefined by traditional metrics, we are inspired by another measure: the courage and skill of those we have sent to do our fighting. The brave Americans on the streets of Kirkuk and Kabul, Afghanistan bear a strong resemblance to their predecessors who fought from Bastogne, Belgium to the Bismarck Sea.
While these men and women are not much different than those giants on whose shoulders they stand, the more meaningful truth is that they are not much different from you and I. We should be confident of our victory because these brave Americans represent the best our nation has to offer — if they cannot win, we have lost.
In the book “Face of the American Soldier,” author Stephen Mansfield writes of our generation at war, “(Our generation is) not expected to do well … They lived, we were told, in a materialistic, amoral, ‘online’ world that hardened their souls and sickened their minds … They gave us Columbine, after all, and a dozen other symbols of decadence and decline.”
Our brothers-and sisters-in-arms have exploded such pessimistic expectations faster than a “target of opportunity” on the first night of battle. They have postponed college educations, said goodbye to fiancées and best friends, and shunned the familiarity of life as you and I live it. They have traded all they have for a chance to be part of something larger than themselves. And they have fought valiantly.
Their confrontation with the brutal realities of war has brought them to embody sacrifice, the sincerest tenet of any religion. The most popular unofficial emblem carried by deployed members of the military is a small shield paraphrasing the words of Joshua 1:9: “I will be strong and courageous … the Lord my God is with me wherever I go.”
They are not perfect, but they have stood in the gap against injustice from all sides: The whistleblower at Abu Ghraib was 24-year-old Specialist Joe Darby of Waynesville, N.C.
Mansfield wrote recalled reading what an embedded journalist, wrote, “The press back home doesn’t have it right … I haven’t found ‘Animal House’ and ‘Debbie Does Dallas’ over here. What I found was ‘Braveheart’ and ‘Saving Private Ryan.’”
These peers are our nation’s soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen. These are our response to the terrorists of Sep. 11. These, I hope you will agree, are our heroes.
09-15-2005