Don't Tell William Langewiesche to "Have a Safe Flight" (and Other Ways to Avoid Self-Destruction in the War on Terror)

The very first reader of my previous HuffPost piece interpreted some quotes I used so differently than I'd intended that I worried I'd been criminally clumsy in the way I'd framed another person's words.

Three facts made my worry more sickening:

1) The person I'd quoted is a writer I've admired for years: William Langewiesche of Vanity Fair.

2) The point of my piece -- that President-elect Obama could fortify America immeasurably by talking to us like grownups about terrorism -- means so much to me. I hated to think I might have bungled the job.

3) That very first reader of my piece was my wife. We were about to go to lunch. Together. So I didn't have the luxury of shrugging off my possible screwup. What's more, my wife loved Langewiesche's writing before I did -- especially his reporting from the wreckage of the World Trade Center. So she wasn't predisposed to think of him as naive. Which is what she was doing.

Here's the quote that messed up my lunch. Langewiesche spoke the words in 2007 during a speech about his book on the spread of nuclear weapons:

"Wouldn't it be wonderful to live in a world where the United States would do the completely unrealistic and say in advance, 'If you hit us, we will take the hit. We don't want to be hit. But we'll take it and we'll not complain. We will not overdo our reaction. So we will diminish the effect of what you want to do to us. We will mourn our dead. And there will be possibly several hundred thousand. We will rebuild the city as quickly as we can and we will accept whatever level of radiation poisoning without complaint. So go to hell.'"

My wife read that quote and thought it was tantamount to advising a battered wife to just sit back, take the beatings, and hope her husband eventually would get bored and disappear from her life. Langewiesche's phrase "radiation poisioning without complaint" particularly bothered her.

I defended Langewiesche's position. I argued that he'd surely want America to hunt al Qaeda -- not just literally sit back and accept a massacre. But my defense made it more and more clear that I was guessing at the details of what Langewiesche believed. This was no good.

Two days later -- after a kick in the butt from my newspaper-editor aunt who reminded me that journalists ask questions instead of guessing at details -- I got Langewiesche on the phone.

"Of course, bin Laden should be pursued," he said Friday in answer to my first question. "In the Middle East, which is an area I know well, you definitely don't turn the other cheek. That's seen as a weakness."

It's about calibrating our response, he said. Get al Qaeda? Yes. Use 9/11 as a pretext for going off on a tangent and invading Iraq? No.

Now, if my interview with Langewiesche had merely settled a misunderstanding in my marriage, I wouldn't be writing this post. Langewiesche did more. Much more. He guided me to a trailhead.

Yes, he's pessimistic. Yes, he thinks we Americans would punish Obama or any other leader who dares to talk to us like grownups about terrorism. But he pointed to a spot on the map where a president could start to steer us away from our default reactions to terrorism: shock, panic, and a lust for scattershot vengeance.

That spot on the map is marked "safety."

Our problem, according to Langewiesche, is that we have "embraced safety as the highest value." He said you can see this in everything from the laws passed after 9/11 to the words we use to see each other off at the airport:

"'Have a safe trip. Have a safe flight.' It's deeply embedded in our culture right now. If that's our highest value or one of our highest values, then we are doomed to self-destruct ... after a terrorist attack."

Langewiesche argued there's a direct link between our indulgence in "huge public displays of grief" and the "famous massive failure of the American press" in the months before the Iraq War.

America is not supposed to act like this. Langewiesche noted that America only rose to its spot in the world's hierarchy by embracing risk -- in everything from economics to everyday life.

As he spoke, I thought of the American Revolution, of the fact that our country only exists because our forefathers stuck a thumb in the eye of the most powerful empire on Earth.

Not safe.

I thought of the reason my own unique DNA even exists: A Polish teenager left her family, made her way to Antwerp, boarded a ship, crossed an ocean in steerage, disembarked, and tried to make a life for herself in a country where she couldn't even speak the language.

Not safe.

A risk.

A risk that allowed the Polish girl to meet my great-grandfather. A risk that, in turn, led to the birth of my grandmother, to the birth of my father, to the moment my father met my mother, to their marriage, to my own birth.

Risk, when you reflect on it, is so obviously how we got to where we are as a people, as a country. It's depressing that safety has elbowed risk aside to such an extent. For all our bluster, so many of us are so scared.

Langewiesche thinks we are probably too scared for a president to reason with us -- about terrorism, about our self-defeating wish for total safety: "The fault is with us that our politicians can't speak honestly about this even if they want to."

I'm not so sure. I'm still intoxicated enough by the election results to believe that Americans are ready to hear the truth. But the truth needs to be delivered carefully and it needs to be delivered before the next terrorist attack. Langewiesche and I do agree on that.

"That's correct," he said. "It has to be done in advance. It really does."

So what could Obama do if he took the political risk of talking to us like grownups about terrorism, about fear, about safety?

"Let's talk about safety," Langewiesche said. "We know how to construct a very safe society. Basically, it's what dictatorships do."

With that bleak truth in mind, Obama could ask us the key question: Do we want to live in a society organized around what Langewiesche termed "the pursuit of safety at any cost"?

As it turns out, this is a question I've thought about a lot. Back in June, I gave my own answer to the question in a piece called "Live Tyrannized and Die Anyways." As I wrote then, "We can risk being murdered before our next birthday as proud citizens of a country that stands for something. Or we can slog into inconsequential old age as cowering, hunted inhabitants of some putrid corpse of what America once was."

Americans need to come up with their own answers. I think Obama can be the one to get us to think hard about what kind of a country we want to call home.

"Of course, Obama is capable of it," Langewiesche acknowledged.

He just doesn't think it will happen. He doesn't think we, as a people, are up to the conversation.

I'd love to prove him wrong. I suspect he'd love to see us prove him wrong. That's my guess, at least.

But I've already fouled up one lunch date by guessing at what Langewiesche thinks. So scratch that.

Whatever Langewiesche thinks or doesn't think, let's be grownups about this. Let's reject "the pursuit of safety at any cost." Let's take the risk of protecting America, its founding values, and the quality of our own lives.

It's a risk well worth taking. We could do it. With brave leadership at the top and a new notion of patriotism all through our society.

Comments

[Alaskan4alaska]

When the planes started flying again after 9/11 we took our children on a jet trip to vacation in another country. My relatives were horrified. "Aren't you afraid" they asked? I replied "It's my patriotic duty to not be afraid"

Terrorists are terrorists because they are not numerous enough to be a conquering army. The only way they can win is to make us fearful far out of proportion to their actions. To make us cower and change our live styles and freedoms in response to their threats. Sure, we should kill them. Sure we should investigate what we can do to stop others from hating us. But we should never cower and hide.

[pocee]

David, you should be reading Thomas Barnett. One of his main lines of thought is making society more resilient to shocks to the system (9/11, Katrina, SARS) The link below is to a video which is long but worthwhile

http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/2008/08/the_latest_and_greatest_brief.html

[kissmygrits]

What do you actually propose? I'm sure you're a good writer, but I'm failing to find a real advocative essense here, other than that you don't really know what another writer meant and that you think we should be less afraid? I will always tell my loved ones to have a safe flight. I live in New York City. I'm not an idiot.

[David Quigg - Huffpost Blogger]

Thanks for leaving a comment that forced me to think some more.

Here's the deal. I'm not asking you to stop saying "have a safe flight." I'm probably not going to stop, either. But I do plan to say more than that, to lift myself out of the rut fear has plowed for me.

Seriously. Imagine raising your champagne flute at a wedding to say, "A toast to the couple. May they have a safe marriage." Or imagine lighting the cake candles and singing a rousing "Safe Birthday to You!"

At a French airport, you might hear "bon voyage," essentially a wish for the traveler to have a GOOD trip. Implicit in "good trip" is a wish that the traveler won't die horribly in a hijacking. But much more is implied, too -- the wish, for example, that the traveler's life might be bettered by the trip.

I apologize if I distracted from the deeper points with the "have a safe flight" quote. Langewiesche's core message is that Americans need to assess -- and hopefully reject -- what it would mean to live in a society organized around "the pursuit of safety at any cost." That rejection is the precursor to evolving beyond our most self-defeating reactions to terrorism.

My point is this: Obama should speak to us like grownups about terrorism -- and broader issues of safety. He should get us ready to respond to the next attack with restraint, precision, and effectiveness.

[LewDan]

Its the saying in advance "We'll take the hit..." that is naive. It would encourage terrorism. Not "might," "would." Look at how Sadam saw us as greenlighting his invasion of Kuwait. Americans can handle the truth. Honest assessment after an attack wouldn't cause panic (Pearl Harbor anyone?) Our politicians aren't protecting US (literally­.) They're protecting their seats. They're afraid of being targeted as soft on terror or weak on defense if they say anything "unhawkish" following a terrorist attack or attempt. And they're right. The opposition will attack any pol in a NY minute if they say anything that can be interpreted as weak on defense.

The real problem is that BOTH parties play politics at the expense of Americas security. And that neither party is willing to put what is best for America first because one party in particular is ruthless in its exploitation of fear for political gain. Its our homegrown terrorists, our Republican terrorists, we have the most to fear from. But not exclusively. Few, if any, of our elected officials are willing to really put country first. They, and not the American people, are the problem.

[timm0]

Of all the things on the list, saying we'll take a hit will absolutely NOT encourage terrorism. You're not being naive, you're being illogical.

When we pound our fists on the table and declare we're the biggest, toughest, hombre on the block - THAT'S when you're a target. Back during the cold war, didn't Americans cheer louder when we beat the Eastern block countries? Why, because they said, "Ah, we can lose an ice hockey game now and again - doesn't bother us"? Or was it because they were the best in the world and foul tempered and arrogant?

Misdeeds and arrogance make you a target, not humility and calm. Your fears are getting the best of you.

[peterg76]

It's the false dichotomy that constantly plagues American two-dimensional thinking. Clearly inaction is not a suitable response to a terrorist attack, but neither is the mindless panic that followed September 11th. There are options besides complacency and hysteria.

And safety is a fine goal, but the pursuing the appearance of safety can be a counter-productive distraction.