Putting The War On Terror In Perspective

Joseph Ellis had a great editorial in the NY Times over the weekend offering historical perspective to recent events, posing the question- "[W]here does Sept. 11 rank in the grand sweep of American history as a threat to national security?". He looks at previous conflicts he feels were more threatening "to the survival of the American republic" (Revolutionary War, War of 1812, the Civil War, WWII, and the Cold War/Cuban Missile Crisis) and the believed-to-be-justified abuses of power they spawned.

Finding a Place for 9/11 in American History

Regarding abuses of power (like Bush's use of torture, domestic wiretapping, etc), he concludes-

In retrospect, none of these domestic responses to perceived national security threats looks justifiable. Every history textbook I know describes them as lamentable, excessive, even embarrassing. Some very distinguished American presidents, including John Adams, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, succumbed to quite genuine and widespread popular fears. No historian or biographer has argued that these were their finest hours.

Bold added by me.

In his final conclusion, he further states-

What Patrick Henry once called "the lamp of experience" needs to be brought into the shadowy space in which we have all been living since Sept. 11. My tentative conclusion is that the light it sheds exposes the ghosts and goblins of our traumatized imaginations. It is completely understandable that those who lost loved ones on that date will carry emotional scars for the remainder of their lives. But it defies reason and experience to make Sept. 11 the defining influence on our foreign and domestic policy. History suggests that we have faced greater challenges and triumphed, and that overreaction is a greater danger than complacency.

I concur.

If only some of our nation's more vocal politicians and pundits were old enough (post WWII/early Cold War) to grasp this perspective. Or at least have studied American history well enough to have found it there. Vigorous, strong war on terror? Most definitely. Acting as if we have never faced (and defeated) such threats before and sacrificing the basic tenets of our democracy in the process? Definitely not.

Also- Tom Tomorrow has a good blog about a perilous era Americans lived in... and lived through:
Wide eyed innocents