Not Letting the Terrorists Win

In his speech on September 11, President Bush said that if we pull out of Iraq, as some suggest, we will be handing a victory to Osama Bin Laden. Vice President Cheney said that even suggesting that we pull out of Iraq will "validate the strategy of the terrorists." And earlier this week House Majority Leader John Boehner said that Democrats "are more interested in protecting the terrorists than protecting the American people."

It seems like a lot of people in America today want to help the terrorists win for some reason. I think letting the terrorists win is the last thing we should want to do. Perhaps the best way to make sure the terrorists don't win is to figure out what they want and do the exact opposite no matter how difficult, painful or even self-destructive that might be. Lately, I've been wondering if there is anything I'm doing that might help the terrorists win and I've been trying to live my life by doing the opposite of what the terrorists would want me to do. I have to admit it has been very difficult, especially since I'm not always sure what it is that the terrorists do want.

This year on the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, I was feeling a bit down. As if the memories of that day weren't depressing enough, it was upsetting to see that so many liberals apparently want the terrorists to win. But then I said to myself, "Snap out of it!" The terrorists want you to be depressed. Although I had been looking forward to watching the real-time replay of CNN's coverage so that I could relive that day all over again, I thought that would just make me feel worse. Then I remembered the President's stirring words a month after September 11: "People are going about their daily lives, working and shopping and playing, worshipping at churches and synagogues and mosques, going to movies and to baseball games. Life in America is going forward, and as the fourth grader who wrote me knew, that is the ultimate repudiation of terrorism." So I decided I would commemorate 9/11 by going shopping and taking in a movie. I would repudiate terrorism by pretending it was just like any other day. I would remember September 11 by not paying any attention to it at all.

But as I headed to the mall in my SUV, I thought about what some people had said about how our dependence on foreign oil is helping the terrorists. Was I helping the terrorists by driving an SUV with its low gas mileage? I wondered if I should turn around and take the bus instead. But then I thought, What would Osama Bin Laden think of my SUV? He would probably think it was an emblem of American wealth and wastefulness. He might even be a little jealous. By driving an SUV I was saying to the terrorists that they were not going to make me give up my wasteful luxuries even if they did make us dependent on places like Saudi Arabia whose oil money funds the terrorists. That would show them.

As I pulled into the parking lot I was surprised by how many cars were there. Apparently, a lot of people had come to the same conclusion as I did, that the best way to fight terrorism was to go shopping. Some people are supporting the idea of making September 11 a national holiday. I think giving people the day off so that they could shop at September 11 sales might be the perfect way to send a message to the terrorists that they can't change our way of life.

When I got out of the car, I saw what appeared to be a group of Middle Eastern men (though they might have been Hispanic) heading into the Mall. Suddenly, I was gripped by fear. A place like this where a lot of people congregate would be the perfect place for a terrorist attack. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to go shopping after all. Maybe I would be a lot safer if I just stayed home.

Then it dawned on me that this was exactly how the terrorists wanted me to feel. Terrorists want us to be terrified and if we give into these feelings then the terrorists win. And so I calmed down. But then I wondered, isn't complacency also what the terrorists want? Didn't we become complacent after the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, which allowed the terrorists to launch the attacks of 2001? Hasn't President Bush done everything in his power to instill as much fear as possible in every American so that we don't become complacent again? Maybe fear isn't such a bad thing after all. When we are afraid our body manufactures adrenaline, which increases our speed, strength and agility. Reportedly, people have been able to lift cars with adrenaline coursing through their veins. Of course, if this fear becomes terror, then the terrorists have won, but a persistent, gnawing fear humming just below the surface of our psyches can be a powerful defense against those who wish to do us harm. So I resolved to be just afraid enough--not too afraid, but not too unafraid either.

Once I got inside the Mall, I felt a little more at ease--but not too at ease. I went to the food court and bought a hot dog and some freedom fries. What could be more American than that? It wasn't a kosher hot dog, either, and with every bite I imagined how sickened the terrorists would be to see me eating this. Unfortunately, some ketchup squeezed out of one end and got all over my shirt. But that's OK, I thought, I'll just go buy a new one. I headed over to Brooks Brothers and picked out a nice new white shirt. But after I bought it, when I was putting it on, I noticed that the label said, "Made in Indonesia." Isn't Indonesia a Muslim country? By buying this shirt did I contribute a few cents to the pocket of a budding Indonesian terrorist? Sure, he wasn't getting that much money from this shirt but every bit counts. By buying this shirt I might have inadvertently funded terrorism. I vowed to be much more careful with my purchases in the future.

I decided to check the movie theater to see what movies were playing and resolved to find a movie the terrorists would not want me to see. But I wasn't really sure what movies the terrorists would disapprove of. Unfortunately, there is no terrorist rating system and it's not something Roger Ebert usually mentions in his reviews. It seems to me it would be a lot easier if there was a list of Muslim-banned movies like the one the Catholic Church used to have. Then I could deliberately go see a movie that was on this list.

But then I wondered if I was going about this all wrong. I remembered reading about a book that is coming out next year by Dinesh D'Souza, called The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility For 9/11. In this book he says that pop culture and liberals were to blame for the 9/11 attacks by making the Muslims angry at us. D'Souza believes that whatever we do we mustn't make the terrorists angry. "The cultural wars at home and the global war on terror are usually viewed as separate problems," the blurb for the book on Amazon says. "In this groundbreaking book, D'Souza shows that they are one and the same. It is only by curtailing the left's attacks on religion, family, and traditional values that we can persuade moderate Muslims and others around the world to cooperate with us and begin to shun the extremists in their own countries." President Bush said that the terrorists "hate our freedoms," which is why we have to give some of them up, but D'Souza believes that what is enraging Muslims and causing them to become terrorists is not our freedom but "our abuse of that freedom--sexual liberty of women to the support of gay marriage, birth control, and no-fault divorce, to the aggressive exportation of our vulgar, licentious popular culture."

So, in fact, according to D'Souza, the way to beat the terrorists is to suppress the things in our culture that they don't approve of, in other words, to be more like they are, except for the terrorism part. Opposing gay marriage, outlawing birth control and abortion and censoring our pop culture may be the keys to winning the War on Terror. So, seeing a movie the terrorists wouldn't approve of actually increases the risk of making the terrorists more angry and gives them an excuse to attack again. So maybe I should see a movie they would approve of. Then again, if I made sure I saw a movie they approved of wouldn't I be letting the terrorists determine what I should and should not do? Wasn't I, in a sense, letting the terrorists win?

That's when I had a terrible thought: Was worrying about letting the terrorists win, itself letting the terrorists win? Maybe I should try not to think about what would let the terrorists win. But, of course, the more you try not to think of something, the more you do think of something. I stood there paralyzed in my new Brooks Brothers shirt wondering what I should do, if there was anything I could do that would not let the terrorists win. No matter what I did, it seemed the terrorists would win. Maybe I should just stand here and do nothing at all, I thought. Or was that exactly what the terrorists wanted me to do?

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Jon Swift, Iraq, al Qaeda, War on Terror, Terrorism, Bush, September 11, 9-11, Bush, Cheney, John Boehner, Dinesh D'Souza, Politics, Osama Bin Laden, Usama Bin Laden, Foreign Policy, Beltway Traffic Jam, Comedian Jenée: People are Idiots OTA #26, Carnival of Hijacked Holidays