Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) was on David Letterman’s show a couple of weeks ago when Letterman asked him how long Americans would have to fear new terrorist attacks. “Not all that much longer,” said the former prisoner of war, a man well acquainted with the terrorist mind. “We will soon have them on the run. And when we do, they will be so busy trying to stay alive that they will have little time for plotting new attacks.”
It may be that Senator McCain was overly optimistic and that turning the tables on the terrorists will take much more than the effort we’re now making in Afghanistan. But even if his appraisal is off in its timing, he spoke a simple truth.
For the terrorists, it takes great concentration and effort to wage a war against a powerful foe, especially if that war must be mounted by stealth and indirection. If your resources are scattered and limited, and must be carefully husbanded for each new attack you make, your whole apparatus of war can be disrupted far more easily than if you had the assets of a sovereign nation.
So Al-Qaeda will soon be on the run, as it is now in Afghanistan, Europe and the United States. Yes, its capacity for evil will continue as long as there are depraved minds and the totalitarian political or religious philosophies to feed them. But its ability to commit atrocities will be thrown off the timetable of destruction that Bin Laden and his Che Guevara wannabe cohorts have spent so long carefully planning.
Beyond that is another consideration, one that eludes the terrorist mindset: Terror doesn’t work. Terror has never forced a nation to abandon its identity, or beliefs or sovereignty. Ask the Israelis. Ask the Spanish, or the British or the Filipinos. All of those nations have long been under assault by internal or external political extremists. All the car bombings, all the assassinations, all the attacks on babies and children have not moved any one of them to surrender themselves to dissidents who, if they were ever to seize power, would geometrically increase the pace and volume of their murders.
As free people who treasure their right and ability to travel where we will, it’s important for us to remember two things. First, the terrorist network is now under assault by a powerful nation that, though it has been slow to anger and action, is the home to millions of immensely intelligent, brave and persistent people. As the British did in the 19th century when they patiently dismantled and destroyed the global slave trade, petty satrapies and bellicose fundamentalist religious movements, the United States will do in the 21st century.
Second, the terrorists are delusional. They do not understand human nature or the resiliency of human courage. Like their Nazi forerunners, they do not see how their atrocities can galvanize resistance against them. And just like their fascist and communist heroes, they believe that their irrational philosophy arms them against reality and insures that they cannot lose the struggle.
Each time that we go about our lives, despite our fears, we disprove the evil beliefs of these men. Get on a plane. Take a trip. Attend a concert. Catch a ball game. Eat out. Visit a mall. Buy a stock. Go to Mass or services or temple.
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