We're Living in a War Zone

Robyn Johnson was forced to leave American University on Thursday morning because of a bomb scare. She went to see a friend downtown. That building was then evacuated because of another bomb scare nearby at the White House. Johnson, standing on the corner of K and 17th streets, said what everyone has been thinking: "It's a war zone."

Another woman nearby wondered if the next attack would be biological or chemical. She asked, "Do I need to buy a gas mask?"

Things are jittery in the war zone. The National Guard is everywhere. Cops guard the reservoirs. Insecurity is not an irrational emotion given the events of this week. I've heard people say they were thinking of moving away. They wonder if they should just pack up and start driving. I've heard of staffers in the United States Capitol going to the windows whenever they hear a siren. Tuesday they were dashing from the building as cops shouted "Run!", and 24 hours later many of them were expected to be back at their desks. Try working in that atmosphere.

The situation was most surreal at the Pentagon, where many staffers were told to report for duty Wednesday even though the building was still on fire. The fire, in fact, was spreading. Apparently the workers were supposed to console themselves with the fact that the fire was not in their particular part of the building.

Last night a New Yorker, fresh from that scene of horror, came driving into town to visit one of my neighbors. He got trapped in gridlocked traffic. Bomb scares had forced street closures. The New Yorker was peeved. My neighbor said sharply, "Excuse me, we're at war."

One of the things I've been wondering the last few days is how long this will go on – when will we get our old lives back? When will we be able to read a novel or catch a movie? Watch some sports on TV? Relax? The answer is, not for a long while. And that's as it should be.

We shouldn't try to get our old lives back when there are bodies trapped in rubble and justice still to be meted out.

We must hold funerals. We must clean up disaster sites. We must rebuild. And yes: We have to do everything we can to make sure this never happens again. The terrorists apparently think that, when they die, they will meet their God in Heaven. As a nation we must do everything we can to help them test that hypothesis.

A few jet strikes won't do it. The consensus is building that we're in this for the long haul, a sustained campaign designed to remove from our lives the threat of similar terrorism. Like the rabbi said this morning on ABC, you won't achieve closure on this just by reading the 23rd Psalm.

The terrorists had no obvious purpose other than to terrorize. The killing of all those innocent people was just a part of the true agenda. They struck at every one of us. We were all targets. We were all hit. Don't you feel like you took a shot to the gut? The pain is quite possibly worse three days later than it was at the time of the attack. At first you have the adrenaline rush to get you through – an instinctual animal response. Only later does it start to sink in how enormous was this crime. It's easy to be depressed, even despairing. That's the secondary war we must not lose.

Victory will come when we fly without fear. When we go to a baseball game without worrying about bombs. When we read a book for fun, watch a mindless TV show, cheer our kids at soccer games. But maybe we should also hope that we'll never quite get our old lives back, because our new lives will be better – more generous, more thoughtful, more aware of our connection to a larger global family of decent people. Maybe we'll have become better brothers and sisters to one another.

This country is more united today than it has been in decades. Think of how much divisiveness we've endured for the past 40 years. We suffered through Vietnam and Watergate, riots, vicious political battles, the "culture war." But right now everyone's the same thing: an American.

Great good can come from great evil. Please tell me that's not naive.