A Test of Will
"Our grief has turned to anger, and anger to resolution."
"This country will define our times, not be defined by them." George W. Bush
We have not been asked for our blood, or sweat or tears, though all may flow in abundance in the months ahead. We have not been asked to dial down or scale back or do without. We have been asked only for our patience and resolve. Rarely has a president asked so little of his people in preparation for such a titanic struggle.
When a calm and forceful President Bush addressed Congress on Thursday night, he said, "I ask you to live your lives and hug your children. I know many citizens have fears tonight, and I ask you to be calm and resolute, even in the face of a continuing threat." All that Americans will have to summon up, the president said, is "patience with the delays and inconveniences that may accompany tighter security and . . . your patience in what will be a long struggle."
It was the new vision of a wartime president, one who realizes that resolve at home is as important as victory abroad. "A stiffening of national resolve is essential," says military historian Paul Fussell. "At the opening of the Vietnam War, there was a vast amount of dispute and dissent. But there is no dissent this time that I can see."
Bush got his first inkling of this after his 34-minute speech, when he left the House of Representatives and hurried to his motorcade for the quick ride home down Pennsylvania Avenue. Along the route, well-wishers stood, waved flags, and flashed the peace sign. At least they used to call them peace signs. Now, they're "V-for-victory" signs.
Ironies abound. A president who, in his first months in office, specialized in sticking his thumb into the eye of our allies, on matters ranging from the Kyoto treaty to missile defense, now is building a worldwide coalition of allies against terror. Just 10 months ago, the presidential campaign was an endless wrangle over who could best oversee America's peace and prosperity. Today, the peace has been shattered. Prosperity is imperiled.
Fear factor. Bush harbors no illusions that continuing public support depends only on his military effectiveness abroad. Today, Americans are probably less fearful of losing their lives than their lifestyles. Since the September 11 attacks, the Dow Jones industrial average has lost nearly 1,400 points; $1.4 trillion in wealth has simply been erased. In a survey before the attacks, only 13 percent of economists thought the economy was in recession; now 82 percent do. Fear, and not the economy or corporate profits, "seems to be the biggest factor weighing down investors," says Chris Orndorff, head of equities for Los Angeles-based money manager Payden & Rygel.
Wars can be good for the stock market, since wars can use up vast amounts of materiel, which has to be replaced. But nobody knows what a war on terrorism--especially one featuring hit-and-run attacks by U.S. Special Forces--will look like or how long it will last. Bush has dropped the word "crusade" from his rhetoric, but he clearly sees his war on terrorism as a monumental struggle and one that could well outlast his presidency. "Our war on terror will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated," he has vowed. To put it mildly, that's a long-term commitment without a predictable exit date, and Wall Street does not like what it cannot predict.
Still, the selling in the trading pits has been more orderly than panicky, and if Wall Street is nervous, Main Street seems less so. In fact, America seems willing to invest its most precious treasure in Bush's war effort: its children.
The September 11 attacks initially scared off Lakiecher Murphy, 23, a junior at Loyola University in Chicago, from going through with her plans to join the Army Reserve. Her friends warned her she might be shipped off to war. "Girl, you might be on the front line," one of them said. But the attacks made Murphy want to help her country. She tried to donate blood, but the lines were too long. She gave some food to a food bank, but she decided she needed to do more. So she called Army Reserve recruiter Sgt. 1st Class Billy Williams and asked him about the war. He assured her she would fight only in a capacity for which she was trained; since she wants to become a transportation-management coordinator, it's unlikely she would be on the front lines. On Thursday, Murphy passed her physical and signed up. "I want to do something to give back," she says. "The best way was to show my loyalty." True, she is looking forward to the Army paying the last two years of her college tuition, but the World Trade Center attack "did push me over the edge. I felt I needed to do something."
The need to do something, from buying American flags to giving blood to leaving messages of tribute at the attack sites, has swept the nation. Americans, eternally looking for the bright side, are also looking for heroes to praise along with bodies to bury. At a drab white-brick, two-story firehouse on the Upper East Side of Manhattan's 85th Street, the firefighters of Engine Company 22 and Ladder Company 13 have been under virtual siege by well-wishers dropping off food, money, and flowers. Since 1952, just four firefighters from the 50-member stationhouse have died in the line of duty. On September 11, the firehouse lost nine men when the north tower of the World Trade Center collapsed. Now, more than 75 floral arrangements and lighted candles bedeck the front of the firehouse. The wall along the sidewalk is blanketed with thank-you notes, testaments, drawings affixed with tape. Inside are tray upon tray of fresh-baked lasagna, brownies, and chocolate chip cookies, and new supplies of snow shovels, socks, flashlights, and shaving cream. More than a dozen psychologists have come by to offer free grief counseling sessions to the firefighters, while two masseuses have dragged their tables to the back of the firehouse to give free massages. All day long, people, many with tears streaming down their cheeks, walk up and hug the firefighters. "You are our heroes," They say. One amazed member of Ladder Company 13, numb from shaking hands, says, "It's half therapy for the neighborhood and half therapy for us." Another firefighter says: "Compared to some other companies, we were lucky. They found the bodies of two of our guys, so their families will at least be able to have funerals."
Drain the swamp. Some people, of course, take a colder--they would call it a more practical--view. "If the politicians had been willing to risk lives in the war against terrorism in past years, we wouldn't have 5,000 civilian casualties today," says retired Lt. Gen. James Terry Scott, commander of the Army Special Operations Command from 1993 to 1996. Scott believes that the organizing principle of American military engagement over the past decade has been not strategic victory but casualty aversion. This philosophy, he says, has handicapped past efforts to fight terrorism, such as when the Clinton administration chose not to use Special Forces to hunt down Osama bin Laden. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has said that in this new war on terrorism, Special Forces--including units like the Army's 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, whose motto is "Death Waits in the Dark"--will "drain the swamp [terrorists] live in."
Public-opinion polls show solid support for retaliation against terrorists, but nobody knows how the public will react if the September 11 attacks turn out to be only the first phase of a multiphase war on the United States. "I am very worried about that," historian Fussell says. "Let's say we introduce U.S. marines into Afghanistan, and then they set off an atomic bomb in the United States in retaliation. The other thing that troubles me is if we go into Afghanistan, when do we get out? It seems to me that this will be another South Korea: We will keep troops there forever."
General Scott says: "We have to understand that wars are long and bloody. There will be successes and failures," and as for politicians, "I'm not sure there are any new true believers when it comes to riding out all the difficulties." In this war, some military experts point out, the frontline casualties may not be American soldiers but American civilians.
Hurt and embarrassed. To ensure that doesn't happen, President Bush sent scores of B-1 bombers, F-15 and F-16 fighters, and support aircraft from their home bases to American bases in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia last week. From Norfolk, the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier battle group, with 14 ships, 75 warplanes, and 15,000 sailors and marines, sailed for the Mediterranean against a backdrop of muffled sobs from loved ones and the jauntily defiant strains of "New York, New York" blasting from dockside loudspeakers.
Just before the USS Shreveport, a troop transport, shipped off last week from Morehead Beach, N.C., Marcus Mason, a 21-year-old lance corporal from Carrollton, Ga., said: "I've been in the Marines for 31/2 years [and] I'm ready to get some action." The terrorist attack, he said, "hit hard. I felt hurt." He watched it on the news, then called his family to get their reaction. "They felt embarrassed," he said. "They thought we had more protection as a country."
At Camp Lejeune, N.C., some 40 miles from Morehead Beach, another group of marines was preparing to ship off on the Shreveport's sister ship, the Bataan. Families came down to an expanse of soccer fields, where helicopters were waiting to take their loved ones away. Danyelle Crum leaned on a stroller carrying her 11-month-old daughter. Her son, Jacob, 6, played with the dog tags that his dad, Nathan Crum, a 22-year-old sergeant, gave him. "Yesterday was worse," Danyelle said. "We were running last-minute errands, and I was crying." She's planning to do plenty of E-mailing--the ship has a computer room for the crew--and scan pictures of their children to her husband. "My daughter will be a toddler when he gets back," she said.
Not everyone, it should be noted, is giving unconditional support for the war, even if it's a war on terrorism. Peace demonstrations, though small in size, have sprung up at some college campuses. Shaz Kaiseruddin, 20, a senior at the University of Illinois-Champaign-Urbana, is an executive board member of the Muslim Student Association, which has about 200 members. Kaiseruddin was at the Central Illinois Mosque and Islamic Center just a few blocks off campus when she answered the telephone and received a bomb threat last week.
"Unfortunately, a lot of people are really ready for a war," she says. "I'm afraid we don't know what we are getting into," Kaiseruddin continues. "I can in no way justify acts of terrorism; I condemn them. But I wouldn't want us to ignore the fact that the men who instigated this must have felt they had nothing to live for, and they must blame America for that. To prevent this from happening again, we need to understand why they came to feel that way."
Others, however, see this war not only as a necessity but as a family tradition. South Carolina State Rep. James Smith, a Richland County Democrat, is a 34-year-old captain in the National Guard. His father served as a naval officer during the Vietnam War, and his paternal and maternal grandfathers served respectively as Navy and Marine Corps officers during World War II. "Our resolve stems from the fact that we know what the previous generations of Americans sacrificed for us, and we're not willing to give that up," Smith says. "People wonder if generation X-ers have what it takes to protect America and our way of life. I'm sure they won't have to wonder that much longer. I'm also sure we will make them proud."
Smith's father agrees. His son and other gen X-ers are ready to defend America and her interests, the elder Smith says: "In my generation, we had the draft to help us along, but this generation is serving because they want to serve." But the senior Smith also agrees that the job is fraught with difficulty. "It's easy to mount the operation and have the support of everyone now because of the emotion stemming from the attacks on our soil," he says. "But to maintain the resolve Americans have now may be difficult with no visible enemy. We can do it. But our leaders must steel themselves to that end."
On that point there seems to be nearly universal agreement. Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of state, is now a founding partner in a global consulting firm. "There may never be a clear-cut victory," she says. "You can cut out some of the cells and they recreate themselves. So there are lots of people who have compared this to cancer. Have you rid yourself of the disease, or is it in remission? The hard part about this is this is not a standard war and it's not going to have a standard victory."
Last week, President Bush chaired the National Security Council meeting every day at the White House. He realizes that should the war against terrorism fail, or should the economy fail to revive, he will bear the brunt of the blame. Still "the president is determined not to go and fire for the sake of firing and showing pictures on CNN," says one senior administration official. "We should not be overemphasizing the military role. Cutting off the mother's milk--like the financial flows--may be the most important thing you can do."
The enemy is formidable. It is scattered, elusive, and clever. But in the movie Tora! Tora! Tora! (though perhaps not in real life), Japanese Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto says after the bombing of Pearl Harbor: "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."
Now, America is awake, resolved, and judgment day has yet to come.
With Linda Kulman, David F. Whitman, Mark Mazzetti, Kevin J. Whitelaw, Anna Mulrine, Paul J. Lim, Terry Atlas, Jeff Glasser, Sheila Thalhimer, Nancy L. Bentrup, Ann Wakefield, Wes Smith and W. Thomas Smith Jr.
This story appears in the October 1, 2001 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.