Of Doom and Gloom

by

Michael Prescott

It certainly seems as though civilization as we know it is coming to an end.

But it’s not.

The most important thing to realize, in the face of this avalanche of bad news, is that America's future remains undimmed.

It wasn’t long ago that humanity went to sleep every night with the threat of global thermonuclear war hanging over its head. There were predictions of imminent nuclear holocaust from both right-wing apocalyptic preachers and left-wing apocalyptic peace activists. There were movies like The Day After to chill us with a vision of nuclear winter, and movies like 2010, the sequel to 2001, which foresaw the US-USSR arms race continuing well into the future.

Well, the real 2010 is fast approaching, and the Soviet Union is no more. It collapsed from within, peacefully, without a shot fired. That’s the one scenario nobody seems to have predicted.

Now instead of The Day After, we have the upcoming sci-fi flick The Day After Tomorrow, which imagines the Earth thrown into chaos by global warming. An environmental cataclysm has replaced nuclear war. But that prediction won’t come true, either. It’s just another story we tell ourselves around the collective campfire of our movie screens and TV sets, in the hope of eliciting a pleasant thrill of dread. The truth is, the future has never been brighter for America and for the whole civilized world than it is right now.

We know all the statistics - the longest lifespan in history, the best medical care, the highest living standards, the most freedom, and the greatest opportunities for all, including those who would have had few if any opportunities fifty or a hundred years ago. Most of the conveniences and luxuries in our homes were unknown when our grandparents or even our parents were young. And for all the talk of ecological disaster, our skies and streams are cleaner than they were two decades ago, thanks to unleaded gas, emission controls, antipollution laws, and a general heightening of awareness about things like littering and chemical dumping. (For a refreshing discussion of how much our lives have really improved, see Gregg Easterbrook's new book, The Progress Paradox.)

Not only are we better off economically, politically, and socially, but we’re also better off spiritually. At the midpoint of the 20^th Century this country was in the grip of a raging materialist ethos that made the anti-mind doctrines of B.F. Skinner's behaviorism seem almost plausible. Today there's a spiritual renaissance underway. It doesn't exclusively involve the mainstream churches, although they are certainly part of it. The movement is bigger than any denomination - yet it isn’t a movement, exactly, but rather the spontaneous response of millions of people to a sense of spiritual emptiness in their lives. It has been ridiculed, caricatured, and endlessly criticized, but the attacks have had no effect. People intent on finding a higher meaning and purpose in life aren't deterred by cynics.

But we face enormous problems and unprecedented dangers, the news media tell us while bombarding us daily with speculative scenarios about the next terrorist attack. Indeed, there undoubtedly will be another attack, and it may be every bit as bad as 9-11, or even worse. But 9-11, as terrible as it was, didn't destroy this country. It didn't stop us. It barely even slowed us down.

On 9-11 the terrorists took their best shot. They let loose with everything they had in a long-planned, carefully rehearsed doomsday scenario. And what was the result? We mourned our dead, steeled our nerve, and went about the business of wiping out the Taliban regime, which harbored our enemies. We did it calmly, methodically, efficiently, and with a minimum of US casualties - in fact, with a minimum of casualties on both sides.

While attending to our self-defense, we also took care of other business. The stock market reopened, lost a little ground, and quickly earned back all that it had lost and then some. The recession ended. Jobs were created. Consumer confidence rose. The unstoppable American economy rolled on. No elections (except some local elections in New York City) were postponed. There was no instability in our government. The President was on television hours after the attack, and was addressing a joint session of Congress the next night.

The terrorists gave us their best roundhouse punch, and it hardly fazed us. And they know it.

Take a good look at these terrorists. They are angry, crazy, desperate men. If someone is acting angry, crazed, and desperate, do you take it as a sign that he's winning - or losing? The terrorists - or at least those few among them with any brains - know full well that they're on the road to defeat. They can't beat us. They can inflict a few body blows, stun us, shock us, but they can never knock us down - let alone knock us out. This knowledge is precisely what makes them angry and crazy and desperate. They have already lost the war.

And yet, the experts say, we're stuck in a quagmire in Iraq. But a one-year occupation is not a quagmire. We’ve hit a rough patch, to be sure. There are always rough patches in war. The situation looked grim for the Allies at many points during the Second World War, yet in retrospect, there was never any doubt that America - the foremost technological, industrial, and military power in the world - would prevail. The same is true today.

If we're temporarily bogged down, it's only because we're fighting with one hand behind our back. I don’t say this as a criticism of our military strategy, but simply as a statement of fact. Had we so chosen, we could have defeated Iraq without ever setting foot in that country. We have the nuclear firepower to reduce Iraq to a radioactive graveyard. Or we could have bombarded the country with conventional ordnance, destroying highway interchanges, railroad crossings, airports, and harbors, then imposed a blockade and let the populace starve, with no way for food to reach the cities, and no way for the central government to maintain order in outlying districts.

We didn’t do this, of course - because we wanted to liberate that country, not obliterate it. We have the power to annihilate Iraq and the whole Middle East - but we choose to hold that power in check. Yet even with our deadliest weapons off the table, even with the restraints of conscience and decency to stay our hand, we're still winning. Saddam is gone. The Taliban are gone. Al Qaeda is scattered and hiding, many of its members captured or dead.

Oh, but the next terror attack will be so much worse, the pundits say in their ceaseless attempts to alarm and demoralize us. The terrorists will use chemical weapons ... or biological weapons ... or radiological weapons ... or a nuclear bomb ...

I researched chemical weapons for one of my books, and was surprised to discover that chemical agents are not very good weapons of terror. They're useful for clearing territory on the battleground, but when used against civilians, they are relatively ineffective. The easiest way to escape from a chemical attack is to run away - preferably, outdoors. Though chemical agents can be deadly in confined spaces, they dissipate rapidly in the open air.

How about bioweapons? It’s no easy thing to manufacture a lethal biological agent, and it's even more difficult to deliver it effectively. Any outbreak would likely be identified quickly and confined to a small area. Even a worst-case scenario is unlikely to approach the horrors routinely visited on 17^th Century England by the plague - yet England, during the plague years, gave the world Shakespeare and Milton, defeated the Spanish Armada, and survived a civil war. Life and civilization do not come to an end because of an epidemic.

Radiological weapons are conventional bombs that disperse radioactive material. People have a gut-level terror of radiation, but radioactive particles are not some weird supernatural threat. They're very much like dust particles. Imagine a big bag of lint blown up by a bomb. Most of the lint would settle harmlessly to the ground a short distance from the blast site. Some would travel farther, but hardly any would get more than a quarter mile or so. The danger is localized.

But suppose the terrorists get hold of a nuclear bomb. This isn’t likely; nukes aren’t exactly floating around on the black market like Saturday night specials. Still, nothing is impossible. Should America suffer this kind of attack, we will be hit hard. We will stagger - but we won’t fall. A single nuclear bomb cannot destroy this vast country or even a single city. And woe to the terrorists in the aftermath. We will not be fighting with one hand behind our back then - and none of our arsenal will be off the table. And they know it.

The world, we are told, hates America these days. We're the pariahs of the globe. But the world that hates us so much still buys our fast-food hamburgers, listens to our CDs, buys tickets to our movies, and reads our books. And people continue to cross deserts, mountains, and oceans to come here.

There will always be resentment of the biggest player on the global stage. This is natural. To some extent it's even healthy. We shouldn't want to live in a world of slavish toadies. But neither should we take international carping very seriously.

By any reasonable historical standards, America is the most benevolent nation ever to hold unlimited power over its neighbors. The ancient Assyrians conquered all the lands within their reach, imposing their will by impaling men alive by the thousands along their roadways. Centuries later, Rome behaved likewise, substituting the cross for the stake; the famed Roman roads were lined with the crucified. America is not like past world powers. We don't line our highways with the dead and dying. We wring our hands over inhumane acts carried out by a few members of our military in a single Iraqi prison. We hold hearings and schedule courts martial. We apologize to the world. We hold ourselves to higher standards. We have no cause for shame - or fear.

Ignore the media drumbeat. Ignore the predictions of pundits who've been wrong before. Ignore the guilt-mongers and the fear-mongers. The terrorists are fleas. They can only bite us. They can't bring us down. Nothing can.

****

Copyright © 2004 by the author