Most of the time when I’m up at ungodly hours because of my work schedule, Fox News Channel doesn’t have live programming — but this morning (Thursday, Sept. 13) it did.
One item that was mentioned during the wee-hours live coverage of developments in the terror war story was that during the closing days of the Clinton Administration, the government learned where Osama bin Laden was lurking — and considered mounting a strike mission to put down that mad dog, but decided not to do it.
There was some low-key tut-tutting from the assembled reporters about that decision, and to my surprise I was actually just a little bit annoyed at them for it. Because Bill Clinton being what he is, and valuing what he values, there could not have been any other outcome to the deliberations.
Let’s not forget what happened the first time Clinton went after Mad Dog bin Laden. The first downside to that effort was that it failed. The second was how it failed — with the destruction of abandoned desert encampments and an alleged poison-gas factory in Sudan that was in fact a maker of legitimate pharmaceutics. The third downside was when it failed, which was during a time when the Lewinsky scandal was getting particularly hot. Given that (job approval ratings notwithstanding) most Americans had soured on Clinton’s personal attributes by this time, it’s possible that even had the effort succeeded it would not have brought glory unto the sainted brow of The Man From Hope, except in the eyes of Geraldo Rivera and Bryant Gumbel and a handful of others.
Now along comes this second opportunity — but with a presidential campaign going on during which most Americans still thought Clinton might like to help Al Gore get elected. A successful strike would have been great for Gore, and sort of okay for Clinton except that there would be snide comments about “wagging the dog” for political purposes. A second failure, especially a spectacular one, would have been great for George W. Bush but a disaster for Gore (even more so than the debates) and would overshadow any positive aspects, such as there might be, of Clinton’s legacy. Given what matters most to Bill Clinton, this lopsided risk made it a no-brainer. The mission was scrubbed before it could even be planned.
If we had had at the time what some of us had come to refer to as a “real” president — one who put doing the right thing ahead of personal aggrandizement — the chance to do the world a service by killing a rabid varmint would have overshadowed any political risk. Not to mention that a “real” president wouldn’t have timed that reckless and ill-fated first mission the way Clinton did, so that such baggage would not have figured into the second decision. Heck, if we’d had a “real” president at that time you’d still be scratching your heads staring at that fourth paragraph and asking yourselves, “Lewinsky scandal? WHAT Lewinsky scandal?”
But, we didn’t, so you’re not.
So now I’d like to turn away from that regrettable period in our recent history and discuss another regrettable period in our nation’s history: last Tuesday. As most of you have no doubt heard or read, it now appears that the reason one of the hijacked airliners crashed in the woods of Pennsylvania instead of the White House or Camp David, is that some of the legitimate passengers learned, or figured out, what the purpose of the hijacking was. And having concluded that their lives were already lost, they took action to stop the scheme from claiming any more lives. With that decision, they went from victims to warriors, and went on to win what they could in their part of the war their captors had started.
Heroes do not merely win victories, they don’t merely achieve things that are of great importance. They also inspire. Jeremy Glick and his comrades in that daring act of counter-terrorism displayed courage that many have begun to think no longer exists in America. Yet the occasional passing mentions in the news about a storekeeper who fights back when a criminal threatens him with a gun, the motorist who removes an armed carjacker from the gene pool, the neighbor who rushes into a burning house to wake and rescue the residents — these stories are still told, because they are still true. And then there are the police officers and firefighters who live lives of courage every day because it’s their job, and men and women in military uniform who go when sent, to be the targets of their nation’s enemies because that is what “service” means to them.
Those stories are told every day, and we become so used to them that after a while they stop meaning anything. Rightly or wrongly — okay, wrongly — the everyday just isn’t very inspirational. Suppose God performed some great miracle every day — at first we’d be all ooh’s and ahh’s, but after a while it would just be another part of the scenery of our daily lives. Like a sunrise, or a rainbow, or the birth of a healthy child. Hmmmmm…
The New York police officers and firefighters who risked — and in all too many cases gave — their lives at the World Trade Center, are heroes. Their heroism of last Tuesday and since, though performed on a vast canvas of violence and destruction, is simply a natural extension of the heroism they had all displayed in their jobs the day before, the week before, the decade before, and will in many days, weeks, and (please God!) decades to come. We have come to rely on their courage so much precisely because it is there all the time.
Jeremy Glick and his fellow passengers seem all the more inspirational because what they did was not in the context of a career of steadfast courage and constant heroism. A terrible moment found them, and they found it in themselves to meet it head-on. This is the kind of courage that reaches into the hearts of the rest of us and tells us that we, too, can be heroes even though we do not wear badges or ride fire engines.
Yes, there are cowards among us — wherever, whenever there are people, there will be cowards. And there will be heroes. Both will have their moments, but only the hero’s moment will ever be a worthwhile legacy.
