Reading Maraniss; thinking of 9-11

Most people who pick up David Maraniss’ new book, Rome 1960, probably will read it as a stirring saga of sports, or possibly as a time capsule of a more innocent time when TV sports didn’t dominate our lives and our 155 channels, or even as a reminder that Jim Crow and institutional racism are not that far in our past. I am sure Dave meant it to be all of those things; he never writes simple stories.

But for me this book brought back vivid memories of the Cold War – most appropriate memories on this eve of 9-11. For those whose memories have faded – or who are too young to remember – those were times of dread, when the threat of the imminent destruction of “the world as we know it” was never far in the background.

I had a flashback to those times on Sunday when visiting some friends who live in an old commercial building. Their basement ceiling is heavy steel I-beams and the walls are lined with deep shelves, which they now use as a kind of pantry and wine cellar. The thought came to me out of nowhere, “this would be a good bomb shelter.” I was reminded of the days when we had bomb shelters. Some of us did. I just had an outline on the basement floor where I wished my parents would build a regulation bomb shelter. Some friends had the real thing complete with radios and batteries and disaster supplies, and probably a shotgun.

In those days we had a real enemy. Not an enemy who flew planes into buildings or bombed subway trains. An enemy who could destroy us in 30 minutes. Not just kill some of us, but turn the vast majority or Americans into dust or vapor and make the survivors wish they’d been so lucky. We fought that war partly with military preparedness, partly with surrogate wars (a strategy culminating in its last mad apogee of Viet Nam), and partly – mostly – in a war of words. It was a war for the hearts and minds of the people of the whole world. We were in a war of ideas and it mattered whose idea won. That’s what Dave is writing about in Rome 1960. It mattered who won Gold in the 1960 Olympics because that was a surrogate for the real war going on.

Contrast that with the attitude of the current administration, illustrated by this story in the NYTimes: 9/11 Rumors That Become Conventional Wisdom By MICHAEL SLACKMAN

CAIRO — Seven years later, it remains conventional wisdom here that Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda could not have been solely responsible for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and that the United States and Israel had to have been involved in their planning, if not their execution, too.

This is not the conclusion of a scientific survey, but it is what routinely comes up in conversations around the region — in a shopping mall in Dubai, in a park in Algiers, in a cafe in Riyadh and all over Cairo.

“Look, I don’t believe what your governments and press say. It just can’t be true,” said Ahmed Issab, 26, a Syrian engineer who lives and works in the United Arab Emirates. “Why would they tell the truth? I think the U.S. organized this so that they had an excuse to invade Iraq for the oil.

That such ideas persist represents the first failure in the fight against terrorism —the inability to convince people here that the United States is, indeed, waging a campaign against terrorism, not a crusade against Muslims.

The arrogance of Bush & Cheney & their gang has allowed our adversaries to wield this most powerful of weapons against us. Rather than seek to use public opinion as a lever to fight extremism, they have thumbed their noses at the moderates, the thoughtful people, the ones who really would like to believe in America. You can almost hear Dick Cheney harrumph at the very notion that the opinion of ordinary people might be considered in the halls of the mighty. Power comes out of the barrel of a gun, he might say, thus joining hands with Chairman Mao in the ultimate left-right gesture of solidarity.

There was a lot wrong with the way the U.S. fought the Cold War. McCarthyism didn’t end with Joe McCarthy; it seeped into every City Council and Legislative race in the country. Rights were violated in the name of national security just as they are violated today. The attack phrase, “Why do liberals hate America?” was born in those days, Rush just revived it.

But the nation also had the courage to not only face down a really scary foe, but to also transform American civil life through the civil rights act, voting rights act, Title IX and other women’s right’s laws, various environmental protection laws, etc. etc.

I wonder if Americans, who face a much less immediate enemy today with vastly less killing power than the old USSR, still have the courage to elect someone like John F. Kennedy, young inexperienced, idealistic and a Catholic at a time when anti-Catholic prejudice ran deep and strong. Do we still have the faith in ourselves to elect someone who can not only lead America, but lead the world? Do we still think the world matters, or have we crawled so deep into our bunkers that we can no longer see the sunrise?

On this eve of 9-11, it might be instructive to revisit the bad old days – by reading Rome 1960 or any other means you choose – to remember what America has lost since those days and what we might regain.