What Would Churchill Say?
The phony silence before the storming.

By Victor Davis Hanson, author most recently of Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power.
October 1, 2001 1:35 p.m.

e are entering a surreal parenthesis, not unlike the brief but phony quiet of the "war" that characterized the French-German border between September 1939 and May 10, 1941. The destruction of the World Trade Center, the downing of four airliners, and the ravaging of the Pentagon — like the ruin of Poland in 1939 — of course will not go away. Thousands of our countrymen are dead; we accept that the world can never be quite what it was.

So, like the French of 1940, we accept that war has been unleashed upon us. Yet the same counterfeit voices of good, but weak and therefore very dangerous men that arose in the false calm between the destruction of Poland and the Blitzkrieg through the Ardennes — "Perhaps if we do not invade Germany…"; "Maybe if we redouble our border defenses…"; "Possibly moderates in Germany can make headway with Hitler…" — are still with us. Like the Greek city-states in the path of Xerxes's terror, or Athens in the shadow of Macedon, they wonder whether there is an escape from the ordeal ahead, through moderation and conciliation. There is none. The hesitancy of France led to the collapse of the last democracy on the mainland, and unparalleled killing of the innocent. Salamis, not envoys and ambassadors, halted Xerxes. Philip II was demanding not alliances or neutrality, but servitude.

But as the ghastly cloud over Manhattan thins, far too many of us hope for a reprieve that we really know shall not — and should not — come, cloaking that paralysis of resolve in the slogans of sophisticated enlightenment ("One could argue…"), religious tolerance ("Let us not…"), or occasional self-loathing ("It is because we…"). The voices of appeasement make themselves feel better by worrying more about purported racial profiling than about the fate of those who leaped into the great void from the Twin Towers — profiled for their murder by virtue of living in America. Pundits are now showing concern about European approval, not about the incineration of our infants in day-care centers. We are bombarded with images of the fanatical in Kabul and Islamabad; less common are words of outrage over our stewardesses who were tortured and murdered. Do our university presidents, anchormen, and theologians say of the Taliban, "What kind of people do they think we are?"

States that a few weeks ago harbored terrorist killers now cry that the operational name of our planned response "Infinite Justice" is offensive to Muslim ears, and it is abruptly changed — even though the name reflected perfectly our American creed to accept responsibility, in the here and now, to right wrong to the bitter end. Our spokesman at the Department of State was asked inanely whether the Taliban were involved in the recent destruction of our abandoned embassy in Kabul — as if we, who have lost 7,000 in our streets, should care much about an empty shell of a building or the motives of our enemies who torch it. The hesitant supreme NATO commander in Europe asks for greater proof of bin Laden's guilt, as if we, the offspring of Normandy and Okinawa, are to be reduced to mere barristers parrying at the Hague.

The voice of pained experts on the screen saturate us with so many worries: germs, small nuclear bombs, nerve gas, crop dusters, and hazardous waste from biological dumps, all of which may obliterate us in our sleep. Apparently, not a pundit is to be found who will recall a beleaguered Churchill's acceptance of the nature of the new war with his Nazi foe — "the latest refinements of science are linked with the cruelties of the Stone Age."

Military experts advise us that Afghanistan is both landlocked and mountainous. Are not caves there impenetrable? Will it not be soon snowing? Worse still, our foes are not traditional enemies and so immune from the laws of war of the ages! Do any of us shrug back, "No one can guarantee success in war, but only deserve it"? Other sirens beckon in the false melodies of Iranian, Syrian, or Sudanese friendship. Few leaders step forth to cut it off with, "We will have no truce or parley with you, or the grisly gang who do your wicked will. You do your worst — and we will do our best."

Rallies on our campuses, in our churches, and on our streets are calling for American restraint — seeking doubt within ourselves, and so with it perhaps escape from further ruin. The vocabulary of courage, victory, and triumph is not in our lexicon, but indeed is said to be more likely proof of brute savagery and ignorance. We have forgotten: "You ask, what is our policy? I will say: it is to wage war, by sea, land and air, and with all our might. . . . You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: victory. . . . Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival!"

Without mass funerals to remind us of our dead, three weeks later, some now worry whether our initial ultimatums were too obdurate. Perhaps the biological arsenal of Iraq has been put away? Or might not be used? Or was but a figment of our imagination? Or is none of our business? They forget that such momentary doubts are inevitable and human, but must be countered always by, "Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never — in nothing, great or small, large or petty — never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense."

So we in this country have forgotten the essence of Churchillian humanity, itself the age-old definition that demands our sacrifice and courage to eliminate the evil that kills the innocent. We must act to end this scourge, without worry about the censure to come from the universities, the Europeans, the moderate Arab nations, and our media. Indeed, we must welcome it all, and always with confidence that these terrorists must fear us far more than we do them. We must be happy that it now our task, not our children's nor their children's, to end this terror:

Do not let us speak of darker days; let us rather speak of sterner days. These are not dark days; these are great days — the greatest days our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable.

And so they are, and so we shall.