THE GREATEST CHALLENGE TO THE AMERICAN PSYCHE

The United States has a penchant for being victorious over its foes, or at least for creating the illusion of never capitulating to them. This time, the struggle will not be quite so easy, and its toll will not be merely geopolitical. The war, too, rumbles deep within the American psyche.

Terror has certainly proven to be a debilitating state-of-mind, as dire as its flesh-and-bone carnage. Conversely, the renaissance of empathy, compassion and charity in the American psyche, is a long overdue awakening of the sleeping giant of basic decency. May it only endure.

Futility and fear of defeat certainly threaten the American psyche, as we wage a battle of unprecedented nature and indefinite duration. We prefer our wars to be like our sound-bites and burgers – chick-chock.

But, the ravages of neither terror nor futility on the American psyche concern me anywhere nearly so much as jingoistic revelry and hoopdy-doo in the anticipated downfall of our foes. I confess that this is a precarious moral observation for someone who believes that: (1) War against Osama and his supporters is entirely justified. (2) Osama, Saddam, and henchmen, like Hitler, are genuinely evil people who will never be placated by sweet-talk and appeasement. (3) Hate-obsessed, bloodthirsty hordes in Third World countries will never “see the light,” but will only be pacified by a sustained show of insurmountable strength.

So, I am prepared to argue that America should, and ultimately will, gain a military victory. It may not leave the world in perfect health, but it will have at least excised a raging malignancy that had come precariously close to ravaging the entire body.

Yet, I am equally prepared to argue that Americans will relinquish the moral high-ground the instant that they preen in their delight at the destruction of our foes. In embracing that psyche, we become no better than the frenzied mobs ala CNN, who salivate and celebrate the downfall of folks like you and me.

The ultimate moral distinction between the victor and the adversary is in the solemnity and reticence with which the victor engages in battle and processes its aftermath. The American heritage of heroism is written in the dignity and reverence of men and women who hated the necessary task of killing to avert some far greater evil. Warriors who whoop it up and urinate on the bodies of their enemies have not established a victory. They have merely made a “killing.”

So, please, no sick jokes about Talibans, or Afghanis, or Iraqis, or Muslim hordes, at least not in my presence. No moronic parroting of “USA! USA!” No revelry. No bloodlust. No bubba-talk about “them goddamn A-rabs.” Let there instead be heroic restraint and solemnity for performing an act of distasteful necessity. This is the only ethos and mindset that spare us from becoming as bestial as our foes. If their bloodlust and hatred are to leave any ennobling lesson, it will be in written in our ability to eschew bloodlust and hatred.

Heed well the sacred words: “When your enemy stumbles, do not rejoice.” Prayers for deliverance. Prayers for safety. Prayers to cleanse the blood from the hands of those heroes who were obliged to shed it. And prayers for you and me at home that we, too, be cleansed of a lust for blood that eclipses our hunger for peace.