"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

This post has been simmering inside my mind for a while now. It started coming to the surface when a friend of mine talked about how the United States has to be willing to "get their hands dirty" if we're going to win the war on terror. That sounded remarkably like what my fellow Iowa blogger Homercles wrote in response to a question I put to him in his comments. Despite being far off the original topic, he was gracious enough to answer it.

My question:

So tell me because I truly would like to know - how can you, a Christian, support [Bush]? Or do you not see that he has no right to the moral high ground that he claims?

Portions of Homercles's response:

First, you need to understand my one fundamental assumption: that Islamic Fundamentalism must be stopped now, and that any price we pay now will be less than the price we pay if we do not confront immediately and aggressively....

Going back to my fundamental assumption, you have to understand that I feel we're in a time where we may have to do a great many shitty things to come out of this alive. You're worried about moral high ground, and I'm worried about Americans everywhere still being able to suck oxygen.

Any temporal, ethical, or spiritual price we pay will be terrible, but it will be infinitely less terrible than the price we have to pay if we continue to ignore the wolves at our door. All in all, it would seem that my willingness to do the exact opposite of what I was taught would make me a pretty poor Christian. I'm not happy about that, but I accept it. If it means that the next generation can finally have a chance to grow up in an era without fear, then I'll support any number of ruthless deeds without hesitation.

I don't think Homercles is alone in this opinion. I think this country is gripped with a paralyzing fear of terrorism. And because we were so afraid, we are willing to allow our country to do things we'd have never agreed to before September 11. I understand this fear because I absolutely felt it too after 9/11. I was in favor of the attack on the Taliban in Afghanistan. I didn't worry about torturing terrorists. I wanted them dead, all of them, or in as much pain as possible. That's a normal reaction to the trauma that we all faced on 9/11. And when I was told by Colin Powell that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction and needed to be stopped, I supported the invasion of Iraq. At the time, I was scared of what might happen to us if we didn't strike first. And at the same time, I was fearful of this policy of pre-emptive war. It is a policy based in fear. But I was too afraid to not support it. And I think my fear was the same that was felt by an overwhelming number of Americans. No one wants to admit to being afraid; we mask the fear with anger or cloak it in justice, but at the root of it all is an overwhelming dread that we might see airplanes crashing into our cities again. We may not admit the fear aloud under the bright sun of day, but in our bedrooms in the dead of night, we feel it crawl into our hearts.

If I were a pyschiatrist, I'd say our country has an acute case of post traumatic stress disorder.

Whether this fear has been encouraged by the current administration is immaterial. I don't care to argue politics when our nation's soul is at stake. We are responsible for allowing fear to grip us. If we do not speak out, we are responsible for the actions this country has made in response to the fear we all feel.

Homercles says that while I'm worried about a moral high ground, he's worried about surviving. It's an old question, I suppose. Do the ends justify the means? As each year passes by, as I strive to provide for my daughters a clear path to follow, the more I believe the means are everything. The fact is, nothing ever ends. We won't get rid of fear. All we'll do is show our children the wrong way to deal with it.

"...if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."

I say tear your eyes away from the abyss. Look into the eyes of a child. And then tell me that we don't have a duty to find a better way.