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Is the U.S. a decadent nation? On the face of it, the question seems absurd. Ridiculous, most Americans would respond, almost reflexively. But it's an important question to consider because Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh, FBI agent traitor Robert Hansen, and now Osama bin Laden all have justified their hatred of the U.S. largely on this judgment.
That harsh assessment is clear in bin Laden's numerous warnings that he was planning to launch an attack on America. A consistent theme was that Americans are damned by what he considers our moral and political hypocrisy in supporting Israel and pursuing the Persian Gulf War, among other things. Here, for instance, is what he said in a May, 1998, interview in southern Afghanistan with ABC reporter John Miller: "The American government is leading the country toward hell.... We say to the Americans as people and to American mothers, if they cherish their lives and if they cherish their sons, they must elect an American patriotic government that caters to their interests, not the interests of the Jews. If the present injustice continues with the wave of national consciousness, it will inevitably move the battle to American soil, just as [convicted World Trade Center bomber] Ramzi Yousef and others have done."
Bin Laden assumes Americans will cut and run as soon as the horrors of battle start showing up on TV. Here's what he told Miller about America's 1992 involvement in -- and precipitous withdrawal from -- Somalia: "When [bin Laden sympathizers] left Afghanistan, they went to Somalia and prepared themselves carefully for a long war. They had thought that the Americans were like the Russians, so they trained and prepared. They were stunned when they discovered how low was the morale of the American soldier.... [T]hey realized that the American soldier was just a paper tiger. He was unable to endure the strikes that were dealt to his army, so he fled.... [America] rushed out of Somalia in shame and disgrace, dragging the bodies of its soldiers...."
PEACE SIGNS. Bin Laden is not alone in blaming the U.S. for what happened. The Rev. Jerry Falwell asserted that liberals, gays, and the American Civil Liberties Union, among others, brought the Sept. 11 terror down on the country with their secularization of American culture. (Falwell quickly apologized -- sort of -- saying his remarks were "taken out of their context," but didn't retreat from his basic assertion.) Others have drawn unflattering parallels between the self-absorption of the Internet/MTV generation and the selflessness and devotion to duty of the so-called "Greatest Generation" that fought World War II and the Korean War.
It's a provocative assessment, but it's just plain wrong. America has become terribly inattentive on a lot of counts -- but for good reason. In the quarter century since the end of the Vietnam War, we've had a period of nearly uninterrupted peace and prosperity (the main, now ominous, exception was the Gulf War). Americans are happily naive in the sense that we -- unlike the Germans, French, British, Russians and Japanese, among many others -- have no direct experience of war in our own land, other than the attack on Pearl Harbor. It's only natural that America would revel in this period far more exuberantly and unselfconsciously than other nations. I think today's action movies, music videos, and reality TV are largely drek. But their popularity is a sign of peace and prosperity, not of decadence.
Now, though, that era is over and we have little choice other than to enter a concerted struggle against terrorism. The alternative is to be vulnerable to more terrible attacks, possibly involving germ or chemical warfare, or even nuclear weapons.
TOUGH CHOICES. Until now, most Americans probably have never really thought about some of the horrible choices that now urgently face us. For instance, if some future terrorist attacks us with a nuclear bomb placed in a suitcase, should we use nuclear weapons in response? If so, against whom? What about sending women into combat? In his interview with ABC's Miller, bin Laden promised that no special quarter would be given to women soldiers. How will Americans react if downed women pilots are tortured the way male pilots were in Vietnam? Should America reinstitute the military draft? If we don't, won't most of the fighting end up being done by the poor, who see military service as a path to economic advancement? Is that the kind of society we want to have?
Does the fact that we've never been forced to reach a consensus on such issues mean we're decadent? I don't think so. No democratic nation would face up to such awful possibilities unless it had no choice.
In the meantime, there's much to take from the short biographies that America Online and The New York Times have been running of the ordinary Americans who died in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Almost without exception, they devoted their lives to three things in this order: family, work, and hobbies, such as sports, amateur photography, and gardening. They may have been complacent, but there was nothing decadent about them. The Greatest Generation went to war precisely so its sons and daughters could unselfconsciously lead lives like theirs.
Peterson is a contributing editor at BusinessWeek Online. Follow his weekly Moveable Feast column, only on BW Online Edited by Beth Belton
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