Our world will never be the same.
We’ve heard that sentiment countless times since September 11.
But it may be some time until we completely comprehend just how much
our world has changed.
As I write these words, Kabul has fallen and the Taliban’s days
are numbered. We don’t know, however, how long it will take to
find or defeat Osama bin Laden. We also don't know how his followers
— or any enemy of the West — will lash back. But they will
— by biochemical or other means. Even if bin Laden is eventually
captured or killed and his mountain fortress toppled, one or 10 or
10,000 will replace him, hidden throughout other impenetrable regions,
with access to similar resources of money, arms and chemical weapons.
And bin Laden or his followers may unleash some terror on us today
or tomorrow, or within a year or five or 10. In the best scenario,
the extremists will be marginalized from the mainstream of the Muslim
world. But although we can cripple their efforts, we can’t easily
defeat them, because their numbers are too great, their mission too
sacred (to them), their demands too unacceptable (to us), their economic
disparity from the West too vast, and their hatred of our secular,
modern world too fierce and ingrained.
And their reach, as September 11 showed us, too long. That’s
a frightening and saddening thought, one which some have had trouble
coping with. For me, what’s most difficult is accepting that
my young children will likely have to live with this reality their
whole lives.
My father, born in Poland in 1925, was one of the few Jews from Europe
to come out at the other end of the Holocaust with his life. Thousands
of Canadians of that and earlier generations died defending our country.
I have always been aware of how fortunate I am to have lived in peaceful
times, in one of the safest and most privileged nations in history.
But my kids likely won’t ever experience that feeling of utter
security as they grow older. The terrorists have succeeded in bringing
fear to North America. We now share the spectre of real danger long
familiar to most on the other side of the world. Welcome to globalization.
Stemming from that danger, another casualty of September 11 will be
our civil liberties. We will be forced, as a society, to decide what’s
more important: our physical safety or our belief in justice and equality.
Do we give up the very things we’re supposed to stand for? Yet
if we don’t, our enemies will be quick to abuse, violently, our
respect for freedom.
The good news is that the great majority of the more than 300 million
Canadians and Americans remain out of harm’s way. And life goes
on. Years ago I lived for six months in Israel, and I still have family
and friends there. The threat that today may be your last day hovers
constantly in the background, yet people keep on with the mundane:
they go to work, eat at restaurants, watch TV and take vacations.
As we must. Yes, we need to be concerned and vigilant; we need to
try to bridge the political, economic and cultural divides between
people. But we also still need to check out magazines, laugh at editorial
cartoons and read about banalities like the shenanigans of the Concordia
Students Union. Alas, we must do that too.
