| BLUEPRINT FOR FEAR |
| Published in The Monterey County Herald, November 4, 2001 |
Americans are justifiably jittery. As our nation braces itself for retaliatory attacks from the same deranged cowards who struck the Pentagon and World Trade Center on September 11th, reports of anthrax contamination are sending new spasms of anxiety throughout the country. The threat is very real. From an enemy's point of view, the panic could not have been better timed.
While bin Laden's network of thugs would appear to be the most credible culprits in these deliberate attacks, investigators have not yet drawn any concrete conclusions. What could be more hazardous to our nation's morale than the mayhem the al-Qaida has already wrecked upon us? Perhaps it is the idea that one or more of our own citizens could possibly, just possibly, be behind some of these anthrax attacks. We would prefer not to believe that. I pray it isn't so. But this would not be the first time U.S. citizens have waged war on one another or sent dangerous substances through the mail.
What must our foes think of us when they read accounts of misfits here on our soil (like Theodore Kaczynski and Timothy McVeigh) who have attacked their own establishment by blowing up innocent civilians? I shudder to think of how haters of America must celebrate whenever they see professed worshipers of freedom and human dignity firing upon their fellow citizens from moving cars, murdering their own families, preying on the weak and innocent and spreading terror throughout their own communities.
Even more savagely comical to the warped terrorist mind, I would imagine, is the number of copycats, cranks and false alarmists who emerge from the woodwork during a crisis and fuel the terror for which others have laid the groundwork. Witness the sudden proliferation of bogus emergencies around the country these last several weeks. Virtually everything from cake flour, to talc, to laundry detergent has been turning up in schools, offices and mailboxes and being mistaken for the dreaded anthrax powder. Such is the nature of a panic. I cannot condemn honest citizens for overreacting or taking measures, however exaggerated or ill advised, to protect themselves and their families from contamination. These are, after all, perilous times, and none of us can afford to ignore any substance that looks even remotely suspicious. Rather, I blame those parasites and sociopaths from within our own ranks (and they know who they are) who have exploited people's paranoia by mailing or planting innocuous look-alike substances, filing bogus reports or (God forbid!) infecting people with the toxin itself.
Whatever their motives might be, these pranksters are helping to fulfill our enemies' objectives: They have disrupted schools, businesses, government itself. They have taxed investigators and response teams to the extreme, thereby increasing the chance that a truly dangerous threat may slip through our defenses undetected. They have made Americans afraid.
Why, in the midst of all the heroism and self sacrifice we have witnessed since the initial attacks of September 11th, would any self-respecting individual in this proud land want to serve the interests of the very hoodlums who are plotting its demise? Surely, our nation has produced better role models for us to follow.
Now, more than ever, we Americans need to demonstrate to the rest of the world, and to ourselves, that we stand united in our support of one another. And, for the most part, I believe that we do. While no amount of diplomacy will cause our enemies to love us, our moral fiber should provoke them to jealousy. We are world leaders, for heaven sakes. Let's act like it.