End of an idyll?

A firefighter in mourning: the U.S. response to the Sept. 11 attacks demonstrated a renewed sense of community in the United States.

Fifty years ago, the historian C. Vann Woodward pondered The Irony of Southern History, the "eccentric position" of the post-Civil War American South as a region of losers in a nation of winners. America's unbroken chain of victories, culminating in World War II, Woodward argued back in 1952, had fostered a national legend of innocence and invincibility, a sense that Americans "are somehow immune from the forces of history." Quoting the English historian Arnold Toynbee, Woodward lamented Americans' tendency to believe that "there is, of course, a thing called history, but history is something unpleasant that happens to other people."

"History," alas, "happened" to this generation of Americans a year ago on Sept. 11. The vicious, catastrophic terrorist attacks challenged certain American assumptions - especially the myth of invincibility - and reinforced others - especially the idea of innocence. Notions of invincibility stem from power and success, conceptions of innocence from a powerful ideology, a vision of an expansive and welcoming liberal democracy that appeals to people throughout the world.

In this traumatic year of pain and loss, of anger and fear, of uniting and fighting, the American idyll might have ended, but American ideals survived. In the weeks after those crimes, as the desperate search for survivors evolved into the depressing search for body parts, one lament was repeated: "Our lives will never be the same again." We sadly welcomed each other into a terrifying new world, a world where no one would feel safe, a world where the most routine actions, be it going to work or flying home, shopping at the mall or eating a pizza, could become fatal and final acts.

A year later, most American lives are mostly unchanged. The vast majority of Americans have "moved on." The widows and the orphans, the bereaved parents and the stricken friends, still struggle daily with the pain and impact of losses; most Americans, however, are back to normal, despite the occasional security inconveniences or flashbacks of insecurity.

This return to normalcy is, in many ways, a triumph. It demonstrates America's resilience and the terrorists' failure to paralyze the country in spite of the great damage done. While the military victory over the Taliban did not eliminate all terrorist threats, it helped restore many Americans' sense of control. But this rebound has created two Americas. One very small, very sad, very disrupted America of those directly related to the 9/11 victims, as well as all the soldiers mobilized in the new war against terror and all of their families, mourning, coping, reeling, imprisoned in the pain of Sept. 11, while the rest of America roams free.

Nevertheless, those lucky Americans who dodged the Al-Qa'ida bullets acquitted themselves well. The outpouring of support, both psychological and material, for the victims illustrated a great generosity of spirit, a deep sense of community, a most welcome moral clarity. The 9/11 widows and orphans were comforted by a massive group hug, by candlelight vigils and tearful embraces from strangers, by financial donations and warm proffers of friendship.

Joined by millions of people throughout the world, the 9/11 bystanders proclaimed: this will not stand. We saw last year that one of the most effective responses to terrorism is sustained and widespread moral indignation. The fact that an outraged world mobilized to support those victimized helped to show Osama bin Laden that his strategy to weaken America backfired.

Worldwide indignation was backed up with firepower. America's military response to the terrorists and their hosts - supported by a broad anti-

terror coalition that included Canada - helped Americans regain their sense of equilibrium. And the random and bloodthirsty nature of the attacks against so many unarmed civilians - including dozens of Muslims - reinforced America's sense of innocence.

U.S. leaders have often spoken about "good" and "evil" in world affairs. This time, the terminology was particularly appropriate. No amount of blaming the victim, of demonizing America, can justify this mass slaughter. And those Palestinians and Pakistanis, those Saudis and Syrians, who celebrated the deaths of firefighters and police officers, of secretaries and stockbrokers, of young fathers and pregnant mothers, were indeed dancing for death and should be repudiated.

There are many important questions about what motivated Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qu'ida sociopaths. But valid intellectual questions about Islamic extremism and modern terrorism, about the relationship between America and the Arab world, should not blur the clear moral equation. On Sept. 11, 2001, the 19 hijackers, their co-conspirators, their comrades and their cheerleaders were the guilty ones; the approximately 3,000 killed were innocent.

Such a conclusion does not mean that the U.S. is perfect. Americans' sense of their own innocence in all world affairs can be dangerous - for Americans and their enemies. But valid criticisms of American self-righteousness or American mistakes must not obscure the realities of that horrible day.

There is a fascinating parallel with America's northern neighbor. Decades of diplomacy and peacekeeping have imbued Canadians with a strong sense of immunity from such violence, and of innocence, as well. Unfortunately, Sept. 11 reinforced those notions among too many Canadians. Recently uncovered plans reveal that Canada, too, might be a terrorist target. Those revelations, as well as the broad, irrational hatred of all "infidels" and the West, suggest just how illusory the myths of Canadian immunity and innocence might be.

Just as Americans last Sept. 11 rediscovered that they are one community, that New York's pain resonates out west, that Washington's pain echoes through the heartland, so, too, must we remind ourselves that the entire civilized world is in this together. It is easier to ignore the terrorist peril or declare quick victories than to root out this pathology. But Americans learned last year the perils of inaction, for warning signs about Islamicist terrorism in general and about Al-Qa'ida in particular had accumulated for years.

Let us hope that we learn the right lessons and live the proper paradox - we all must proceed with our ordinary lives, remaining committed to our highest ideals, even as good people throughout the world mobilize aggressively against this extraordinary threat.