We're at War With Someone

I watched United 93 today.

I wanted to watch it at home. I am still too angry to watch something like that with others, let alone watch it in public.

Knowing what would happen just increased the sense of helplessness I felt more than five years ago as I watched events unfold on a small black and white TV in my office and as I surfed the web looking for more news. The anger I felt then was brought home, too. The anger at our enemies has never disappeared these five years, though it is hardly a constant. I usually don't even really feel it. It only exists as a determination to win.

At one point in the movie, some official--I don't remember if he was an airline executive or an FAA official--is portrayed as saying, "We're at war with someone."

Five years later, I think that pretty much all Americans feel we are at war with someone.

But depending on who the "we" is, the answer to that question varies. For some, that "someone" "we" are at war with is the President. For others, it is the prospect of gay marriage. For others, it is carbon dioxide. Others think it is abortion. Or teaching Intelligent Design. Some of us wage war against flag burning, tobacco, or fatty food.

Some even think the object of their war is to determine who gets to appoint goddamn committee chairs in the friggin' Congress.

I simply don't understand how any of these things can be more than secondary objectives when we face murderers who would kill us all if they could. I have one issue and one issue only at the national level: who will fight and win this war? Who believes we deserve to win this war? I wish I could have the luxury of voting based on marginal tax rates. I wish terrorism was a law enforcement issue. Good God, I wish we were debating shark attack coverage.

But we have to face reality. We are in the world we are in and wishing for the return of our vacation from history won't make it so. We have to fight for that normality.

If we all can't at least agree that we have enemies who must be killed and defeated every day and then pursued and destroyed without mercy, our enemies will continue to kill us in inventive ways. Oh, we might get lucky and have the victims stretched out in small numbers with only the occasional 9/11-scale attack to disturb our morning coffee and get us all weepy in our grief for a month or so, but as this drags on for years and decades without really smashing our enemies--whether we are speaking of specific groups, countries, or ideologies that spawn our enemies--eventually we will lose a city. And if we do, the civil liberties that some falsely argued have been seriously eroded these past five years will truly be erased in large swathes to prevent another fireball.

We need to focus, people. We're at war with someone. Remember?