A bomb went off at a Yale University Law School on Wednesday, May 21. This incident, coupled with bombings in Saudi Arabia and Casablanca, and an escalating Middle-East dynamic, have inevitably led to the reemergence of a culture of fear -- even in isolated Hanover New Hampshire.
Like so many others, I am tired of living in this culture of fear. I am tired of wondering when the next catastrophe will take place, when the next American life will be sacrificed in the war on terror, when or if the next time it will be me or someone close to me who will die tragically. The optimist within me argues that the anxiety of the situation is simply a product of the over-stressed and worrisome lifestyles Americans live. The pessimist within me argues that all this could have been avoided had Americans not been so ignorant and compassionless in the first place. Both the pessimist and optimist within me want this all to end.
Then I look at Israel and the chaos that has become daily social existence. I wonder what it would feel like to live in a world where the terror alert was on red every day. When walking to a local restaurant or going out to a disco meant potentially losing your life or a friend's life. When, in the back of your mind you wonder if tonight, when you say goodnight to your parents, you might never see them again.
Or the West Bank, where you can't walk down the street at night because of imposed curfews. Where civil liberties are discarded for international security, and late-night gunfire has become so commonplace that the sound of bullets ricocheting off your walls no longer startles you. I wonder about the Palestinians and the Israelis. Don't they want this culture of fear to end as well?
Then I look at the Iraqis and Afghanis. Our president claims to have liberated their women and rescued them from gas chambers. America has sent in armies, swift, fast, furious and shock-worthy. I ask myself: Are these people better off? Do they no longer live in a culture of fear? And I can't bring myself to say yes, as much as I would love to do so. I wonder where these countries will be ten years from now, whether their problems will be our problems or whether our intervention in their affairs was only to relieve our fear and not theirs.
Then I look at Cuba, where political dissent is treated like a SARS epidemic. Then I look at the Ivory Coast, where a civil war is threatening to engulf an entire nation in an episode of uncontrollable violence. Then I look at North Korea, were nuclear weapons are being used as trading mechanisms, and communism, though politically dead, seems as strong a threat as ever. Then I look at France, where a wave of anti-Semitism is reemerging, where synagogues have become playgrounds for pyromaniacs and the drawing boards of neo-Nazi graffiti artists. I look at these situations and wonder whether the whole world is not in a state of fear and whether or not they want it to end.
But my mind reverts back to Yale University and the bombing of their law school building. George Stephanapolous talked about, in his book "All Too Human," a bum who he used to see and talk to occasionally on his way to work on Capital Hill. The bum would always ask a question to the people passing by. He would say: "I challenge someone to prove how owning and building nuclear weapons works to prevent nuclear war?" For a bum it was a very insightful and thought provoking question, one that makes me think about Yale University, Sept. 11 and America's role internationally. America has the bombs, the strength, the power, how come we can't feel secure, why can't we prevent "nuclear war?" Books have been dedicated to finding a solution to this question. I have no misconceptions to believe that I can answer it in the length of a column.
I am from New Haven, Connecticut, and hour and a half from New York City and the home of Yale University. Sept. 11 never resonated within me as strongly as it did for others. Yet the Yale bombing, despite the fact that there were no casualties, nor confirmation that it was an act of terrorism, shocked me. I look at the situation in Israel, the West Bank, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ivory Coast, Cuba, North Korea and France and I see individuals motivated by fear, and I worry that soon America will operate in the same way.
The optimist in me says that this is just another instance of overwhelmed, worrisome American panic.
The pessimist in me suggests it might be just the beginning.
