03/26/2003

We will have some rebuilding to do after this war. We all know it. The destruction is devastating.

We will have to start with our collective intelligence. It is getting blasted. The collateral damage has been ugly.

What happened to that fierce independence of mind and spirit that we once prided ourselves on? When did we put on the blinders and surrender to the kind of empty-eyed, unquestioning allegiance that would make the Founding Fathers cringe?

We have run to the safety of pat phrases and empty platitudes. We don't want to question for fear of the answers.

We take our news of the war in Iraq from reporters who are "embedded" with the military units. We marvel at the live instant coverage. But there is little there, because access is so controlled. Reporters are caught saying "we" when referring to the units they are with.

The most devastating footage of the war so far has come from an Arab network in Qatar, and our government asked U.S. networks not to show it.

Yet there seems no great outcry at this sanitized presentation of the war. It is more comfortable, easier to digest. There are fewer disturbing questions.

We hear of Bulgaria joining a "coalition." And Estonia. Is Liechtenstein in or out? It would be comic if not so desperately sad.

We should debate this war. We should sit down and talk about why it is a good idea or a bad idea, about whether President Bush truly made the case for it or not.

But we seem uncomfortable with our own thoughts, with the possibility that doubts might creep in if we really start to listen and think and stray from the patriotic corral or the antiwar barricades.

So we take up positions and lob shots across the widening divide.

We are becoming divided by our own inability or refusal to consider the other side.

The war seems to go badly for a day. The stock market goes south. A bad day on the battlefield is a bad day on Wall Street.

We scramble for reasons to keep our focus on the bad guys: The Iraqis aren't fighting fair. Nobody fights fair.

And protest becomes unpatriotic even though it is at the very heart of who and what we are.

I hate this war because it makes the country I love look scared and stupid.

I hate it because we went through a laundry list of a half dozen reasons to invade Iraq and we never seemed sure which one was going to hold up.

I hate it because it seems it was a done deal months ago and all the debate and diplomacy have been deceptive window dressing.

But I hate it most for what it is doing to us. It is turning us mean and snarling and suspicious of each other, and there is no good reason for it. I think we are being set up and being played.

Pretty soon, somebody is going to bring back that old '60s and '70s gem of national paranoia: "Love it or leave it." Maybe somebody already has. It certainly fits the current mood of "fer us or agin' us" that is being so crudely exploited by assorted local war promoters.

But we got past that after the Vietnam War -- maybe because we finally came to realize what a horrible, tragic mistake that war was. We reclaimed ourselves and moved on. We realized a person could love a country and hate some of the things that country does.

Maybe not this time. We aren't as thoughtful as we used to be. We aren't as smart. We might not learn from the past. We could mess ourselves up in ways that we might never come back from.

Bob Kerr can be reached by e-mail at bkerr@projo.com