"War makes politics real"

This very thoughtful essay by Joan Ryan appeared in the local paper yesterday:

.... The time is past when we can roll our eyes at political decisions and respond to new policies with dismissive jokes, as if the goings-on in Washington were a bad television show whose plot we only loosely followed. America is not some Them over there shaping the future. It is Us, right here, making a million individual, thoughtful decisions -- decisions to pay close attention to what our leaders are saying and doing, to consider consequences, to reason and question and examine.

Maybe the Bush administration is right to go into Iraq. Maybe that would turn out to be the safer path than not invading. Maybe the war on terrorism can be won in some measureable way.

Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.

How can we make decisions whose consequences are impossible to predict with real certainty?

Yet that -- more than recovery, more than rebuilding, more than presenting a united front -- is our most important challenge as we mark the first anniversary of Sept. 11....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 09/15/02 11:29:31 AM
Categorized as Classic.