Elegy for a September Morning

What is Patriotism?

Nathan Hale was the quintessential patriot who went to his death regretting that he had but one life to give for his country. Among Americans, patriotism has a special flavor, perhaps because America was born out of a belief in principles that were once thought to be innate and inalienable. And so we have something called Americanism and American values. Our House of Representatives once had a committee to investigate Un-American Activities and the Senate had hearings on much the same sort of things headed by the now infamous Senator Joseph McCarthy.

In the sixties, patriotism became less fashionable. The undeclared war in Vietnam splintered the country. Supporters of the war seized the title of patriot and castigated those that opposed it. They argued that fighting in Southeast Asia was necessary to defend liberty at home.  Some 50,000 brave Americans gave their lives in that conflict and many times that number returned scarred physically, or mentally, and often both.

To this day there are those who believe that we could have achieved victory, while others believe, just as firmly, that we had no business there in the first place. Next to the Vietnamese themselves, the biggest victims were the troops, mostly draftees, who returned home and found their neighbors and fellow Americans focusing on pretending or wishing the whole thing had never happened.

For decades, the word, Vietnam, was more a synonym for debacle and quagmire than the name of a country populated with individuals much like ourselves. University professors, government-funded think tanks, and best selling authors went over the whole affair from top to bottom. We would never repeat this. National interest would be the yardstick of all future wars. Objectives would be clearly defined and no conflict without an exist strategy. The draft ended and the day of the all-volunteer army dawned. Of course we continued draft registration. Just in case, they said.

Suddenly, on a clear day in September, 2001, four commercial airliners became instruments of destruction and 3,000 innocents lost their lives.

Then the flags came out. Suddenly the government could do no wrong. Several journalists who departed in small ways from the official line lost their jobs. The President told the nation that the attackers "hate us for our freedom." The threat was met in two ways. Both houses of Congress quickly passed the USA PATRIOT Act, which had nothing to do with the U.S.A. or with patriotism. The name was a carefully designed acronym standing for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism. The second part of the response was an assault against Al Qaeda, the presumed perpetrators, in Afghanistan. That stage ended quickly as top Al Qaeda leaders slipped out of our hands.

What to do? Only the Taliban remained. Although they had nothing to do with 9/11, they were fundamentalist Muslims (read extremists) and they did not permit women to attend school or do much of anything outside the home. So we attacked them and declared victory. Then there was Saddam Hussein. He also had nothing to do with 9/11 but he too was a bad guy (although women in his country could do pretty much anything they wanted). So we attacked him and again declared victory.

Now we are about to celebrate the tenth anniversary of all this and we've added a third notch to our gun in Libya. Again we are victorious and another bad guy is swept from power.

Meanwhile we remove our shoes and allow intimate inspection of our body parts at airports. We tacitly accept violations of the Bill of Rights in the name of homeland security and we are no longer allowed to visit friendly natives across our borders without a passport that is remotely readable. Worst of all, America is now so deeply in debt that there is no way to repay that debt with tax revenues alone. Small countries sometimes ask that their debts be forgiven, but this hardly seems a viable option for America, the world's only superpower. Democrats and Republicans battle over budget and taxation issues, but the dollars at issue are chump change compared to the $14 trillion we currently owe. Add to that all that America has committed to fund future obligations and the pool of red ink reaches the level of $80 trillion.

And now we come to the tenth anniversary of 9/11. While we can be proud of the courage of our veterans and should give them the help and respect they deserve, can we feel the same pride toward the political leaders of both parties who have led us down this long path? Isn't it time to put politics aside and face grim reality? As Benjamin Franklin said: "We must hang together, gentlemen...else, we shall most assuredly hang separately."