“This is the re-United States of America,” said Jamie MacDonald, a Boston dockworker, hugging the trunk of a flagpole at an “interfaith vigil of prayer and solidarity” outside Boston’s city hall. In the face of the unspeakable carnage from last Tuesday’s terror attack, Americans displayed a renewed spirit of togetherness. Amid all the shock and grief, there welled up an even louder chorus of determination, a pledge to stand together in a moment of crisis. National character is an elusive and suspect notion. But Americans–at most times carefree, pleasure-seeking and willfully independent–have a way of rallying in the face of tragedy. A Pearl Harbor, a Kennedy assassination, an Oklahoma City welds the nation together, not in numb paralysis but in fierce resolve. We are an undaunted people, and so we were last week.
Everywhere, in acts large and small, people rallied to help. Blood centers were overwhelmed by would-be donors, even though it sadly turned out that there was not that much demand for it in New York and Washington; in contrast to most disasters, here the injured were far outnumbered by the dead. E-mail networks sprang up in desperate efforts to find the missing. A round-robin message called on Americans everywhere to step outside and light a candle last Friday evening. Military-recruiting stations were jammed. At Atlanta’s Hartsfield airport, Continental Airlines gate attendant Susan Golden looked out at thousands of passengers stranded when their flights were canceled, and was touched by their plight. She called her friends, asking them to bring vans to the airport and offer lodging to the weary strangers. She herself put up seven people in her Peachtree City home. “It was such a joy having these people here,” she said. “It got us all so busy, taking care and being together. It’s that kind of strength that America is all about.”
A similar spirit of solidarity broke out abroad. All through Europe, bells tolled at noon on Friday for a three-minute period of silence. The soccer league postponed European Cup games scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday. The Automobile Show in Frankfurt was canceled. Top political leaders flocked to services of remembrance. In London, Prince Charles was the first to sign a book of condolence outside the American Embassy. Margaret Thatcher signed, too, adding, “Freedom, Justice and Democracy will prevail.” Last week’s attack was also the most deadly terrorist strike in British history: between 100 and 500 Britons are estimated to have died at the World Trade Center. The French brokerage firm Carr Futures had 139 employees on the 92d floor of the North Tower; as of Thursday, 74 had not been heard from. Thanks to globalization, the wars of terrorism know no borders.
Dividing lines of all sorts vanished in the new sense of the civilized world at bay. Gone were complaints of United States “unilateralism”: country after country pledged to stand together with America in hunting down the terrorists, and NATO for the first time in its history invoked Article 5, which states that an attack on any member will be construed as an attack on all. Gone was Washington’s political sniping between Republican and Democrat; the congressional leaders of both parties held a joint meeting on the Capitol steps to pledge their support to President Bush, and then broke into a spontaneous chorus of “God Bless America.” The famous Social Security lockbox, which had threatened to stymie the federal budgetary process this fall, was swiftly unlocked without serious protest, as Congress passed a $40 billion appropriation for disaster relief.
For George W. Bush, a critical part of the test he faces will be to channel the nation’s spirit of defiance. This was not December 1941, when the enemy was clear and war was declared. The crusade to root out terrorists, and punish those who harbor them, promises to be a long and shadowy effort, in which victories may not be easy to pinpoint or to celebrate. The good news for the president is that he has a unified country behind him. The bad news is that the country expects results, and perhaps more quickly than he can reasonably deliver. America is now up on tiptoe. Any sense that he has failed to seize the moment could produce a national frustration that would damage his presidency beyond repair. Bush’s rhetorical skills are limited (though he rose to the occasion with a moving address at a National Cathedral prayer service on Friday, with four ex-presidents in the congregation). That may not be a major flaw, because the country doesn’t require words so much as action. But his actions will have to be very carefully chosen, so as not to sacrifice the unity he now enjoys. The nation, and the world, will find little satisfaction in the angry flailings of a wounded giant.
Americans, too, face a test. First, they must absorb the obvious point that the enemy they face is not the Arab world, or Islam, or even all Islamic fundamentalists. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks there were scattered reports of tauntings, even beatings, of Arab-American children by schoolmates. Fortunately, they were overshadowed by more mature displays. A Muslim cleric joined priests, ministers and rabbis at the National Cathedral service, and two other Muslims helped lead Boston’s vigil, which was attended by a number of Arab-Americans. Hossam Mohamad, a 30-year-old computer consultant from Egypt, e-mailed friends, urging them to go. “I feel as if my own house is burning,” he said. “Muslims have made a conscious decision to make America our home. We are part of the community as much as anyone else. We just hope to be part of the rebuilding.”
There will be a major test of the economy. Already hovering on the edge of recession, it could take a bad tumble now–and some forecasters braced for the worst as the stock market prepared to reopen this week. Clearly the airline and insurance industries have sustained serious damage. But the Fed was already pumping cash into the financial system, and the government will be fueling a major rebuilding effort that could offset these losses. The immediate future may hinge on the consumer: will she act shellshocked and cautious, or will she choose to defy the terrorists with her pocketbook? The early signs from the shops and malls suggested that business was pretty much as usual.
A far tougher test awaits those who have lost family or friends. The grim fact is that many of those killed in New York or Washington may never be found. The searing fire and the crushing collapse of the buildings have obliterated them without a trace. Last week saw a sad procession of supplicants going from hospital to hospital, seeking their loved ones among the injured. Walls and lampposts in downtown New York were pasted with pictures of the missing. For their families, at least for the moment, these people live on in a limbo of desperate hope. But gradually, the survivors will have to make their peace with the fact that their husbands or sisters or children lie in that dreadful, unresolved category, “presumed dead.”
Grief and love, rage and vengefulness, pride and defiance–a volatile set of emotions was let loose in America last week. They can be dangerous, but they can also be constructive. It hardly seems possible, or even fitting, to imagine that some good could come out of such horror. But the best memorial to those who perished would be the achievement of a safer, saner world. And it is not out of reach.
