We have all become veterans

KENNETT, Mo. -- Like scores of other columnists, blessed with the constitutional guarantees of free speech and a free press, I attempt, most often vainly, to provide readers with enough facts and background to reach their own conclusions about the pressing problems of the day.

It hardly serves our representative democracy if only one view, one argument, one philosophy is presented without providing the opposite case while encouraging readers to make their own judgments and conclusions.

As this column is being written, Americans are observing Veterans Day, and in this instance I use the term in what I believe is the proper and correct text. All of us, as of Sept. 11, became veterans of America's most violent aggression, an attack so shocking that its full impact is only beginning to be felt.

And whether we like it or not, we will be influenced by this desecration for the rest of our lives, perhaps the rest of our children's lives. So we are all veterans. And like those who returned safely after two world wars, Korea, Vietnam and countless other smaller but still deadly conflicts, we have adjustments to make.

When I say adjusting, I'm not referring to the difficulty I shared with millions of others who returned to school at the end of our service and found our minds hardly focusing on the subjects at hand, but rather remembering events that occurred during our days in uniform. I'm speaking of an adjustment that is surely mandated for all of us veterans of the Sept. 11 attacks.

You see, before we became veterans, we lived in a world that was divided by rich and poor, liberals and conservatives, judges and the judged, the guilty and the innocent, the happy and the sad, the conscientious and the carefree, the haves and the have-nots.

When we used the word "united" in this context, we were referring primarily to geography, some resided in cities or in rural areas, and some were easterners and others westerners, and some lived in gated communities and others lived in low-rent housing units.

But the times, as well as the designations, have changed. For one thing, we now share the trauma of the World Trade Center towers and Pentagon attacks, and we have all weighed our chances of contracting anthrax or some other horrible plague, and we have shared with total strangers our shock, our anger and our desperation as a result of the awful destruction in New York and Washington.

In a word, each of us became veterans. And this designation was shared by those who previously were not like us, even though they were Americans or even if they lived in our same neighborhood.

Suddenly, we had a common heritage that included not only a constitution that was so incredibly intelligent that its words seemed to be a prologue dictated not by man but by God, and a bond of both equality land dependence on one another.

It is this second quality, relying on each other, that I believe and pray will guide us in the weeks, months and even years ahead.

Before Sept. 11, we seemed to be growing farther and farther from each other, separated by divisions that seemed to increase rather than diminish. If the rich were getting richer, the poor were either getting poorer or making no discernible progress at all. The disparities that crowded into our daily lives were joined by a seemingly growing separation of how we viewed our governments, with louder and louder demands that it do more for us or less for us. Take your pick.

Can you remember hearing anyone say a few months ago that Washington or Jefferson City seemed to be on target and was meeting its goals with an acceptable schedule toward progress? I can't. It seemed we either wanted more or less, with no ground in the middle left for compromise.

I love Lincoln's wisdom on this subject:

We should have all the government we need but only the government we need.

The problem has been that we could reach no consensus on the word "need." Some of us needed more. Some needed less. And if you don't agree with me, then we will disagree forever.

I don't remember this question being asked before New York City firemen responded that Tuesday morning to the inferno on the lower side of Manhattan. They simply responded, no questions.

And here is the important part: While millions of Americans -- and many more millions of other friendly, compassionate citizens -- responded almost universally with the same degree of compassion and understanding to suffering humanity, other nationals living all around our world reacted much differently. The separation of ideals and goals that once permeated out own country now took on an international manifestation that once separated us from those whose religious and cultural beliefs were far different than our own. It was a separation that caught us unprepared to deal with the consequences.

Could there really be, we asked, those who did not view our national tragedy as a legitimate cause for grieving? Could there be others who desperately want to destroy our civilization to advance their own causes? Our naiveté was shattered as we tried to make peace with the dichotomy that once seemed more philosophical than realistic.

In a sense we crossed the line from puritanical dispassion to pragmatic reality, and the transcendence will influence our lives in far greater measure than did our lines of division before Sept. 11.

We have all become Americans-Without-Adjectives with far fewer differences than once separated us. As veterans, we share the dangers that threaten us, but we must now be firmly committed to finding ways that unite all of us as a force for decency and humanity.

It will happen -- if we make it happen.

Jack Stapleton is the editor of Missouri News and Editorial Service.