It was hard to watch the scenes from Paris this week and not think of 9/11. The ways the news came out, the pictures of panicked citizens, followed, of course, by a steadily rising body count.
The initial news was followed quickly by the equally familiar response: the lockdown, the worldwide expressions of sorrow and solidarity, and lots of official saber rattling.
It was all too depressingly familiar.
Depressing too has been the predictable fallout along party lines in this country with Red Staters screaming about threats from abroad and Blue Staters whining about Red Stater intolerance.
As always, the truth is somewhere in the middle.
There are, of course, Muslims committed to violent jihad. For those so inclined, there is no shortage of potential grievances to fan their flames and, for them, dying is a small price to pay for eternal glory.
It is also true there are a billion some Muslims in the world and the actions of a few do not speak for the beliefs of the many. To condemn the entire religion because of a small sample is wrong and we do so at our peril.
As we navigate these treacherous waters we need to be prudent, cautious, and decisive, three things our current political climate does not generally encourage.
If it means anything, we have been here before, as some have pointed out. Right up until December 1941, when Japan mooted the question, there was serious, significant domestic opposition to getting involved in what was seen then as a European conflict.
Nowadays it is easy to downplay such reluctance. With victory in hand, we get to write the history and our history of World War II plays up how right we were to get involved.
In the years since 9/11 our national paranoia has given rise to the kind of surveillance state George Orwell described in “1984.” For all of the billions we have spent, we are just as secure as we ever were, which is to say not very.
Nothing in life is guaranteed.
