This is not the end of the world - but it is the end of the world as we have known it in America. Today's terrorist attack not only buried thousands of Americans in a fiery grave of twisted metal, concrete, wires and debris - it buried America's innocence.
This horrific attack will signal an erosion of freedom as Americans have enjoyed it for 225 years. It will usher in a curtailment of the rights to privacy, to personal freedom, to the freedom of association, freedom of speech, freedom to travel etc. This day will be the beginning of an Orwellian world of surveillance, wire tappings, letter openings, fax interceptions and computer hacking by all manner of "security" agencies the likes of which the world has never seen before.
It will all be done ". . . in the interest of national security."
America, the last bastion of freedom, took a direct hit to its core, its nerve center, this morning. Will the America of yesterday survive this direct attack on its cherished traditions - hitherto constitutionally protected and taken for granted for so long?
The shrill and emotional voices for new restrictions, draconian laws allowing all manner of internal and advocating external spying are already being heard. Huge budget increases are already being demanded for hiring an army of "human sources" which can infiltrate any and all organizations, coupled with vastly increased numbers of intelligence analysts to process this avalanche of information gathered. An orgy of paranoia, fanned by an irresponsible press, will end in a witch hunt that will pale the McCarthy era into insignificance.
Emergency will be the cloak the tyrant will be wearing. State power will increase in direct proportion to the decrease in personal freedom.
Who was behind today's attack? The culprit may well be found - and punished. The policies which created the culprit, however, will not be examined - and thus will not be addressed. Take Communist East Germany. It had the most sophisticated, all-pervasive internal and external spy system in Europe. One out of seven East Germans had Stasi (Secret Police) connections. They knew the most intimate details of the lives of their citizens. And yet, in the end, it was their faulty policies - and the terrible results of these policies - which swept the regime away. All the intelligence gathered by all these spies, analyzed by all their intelligence analysts, could not save the East German regime - because the political leaders refused to correct the problems caused by their faulty policies.
Here is a personal note:
Both Ernst and I were children in a war and at a time when planes careened down from the clouds, sent from America, death tucked beneath their wings, to bury our loved ones, our friends and family and neighbors, in fiery graves of twisted metal, concrete, wires and debris. I still remember playing in the ruins of a small village near Berlin in 1945 all summer long that had little crosses on practically every heap and along the rims of many, many craters. In a strange and eerie way, that made me shiver all day long, a circle has come to a close.