Bill Mauldin
was, like many cartoonists, a lot smarter than many commentators
and columnists. Toward the end of World War II, he produced a
sketch for Stars and Stripes that shows two GIs looking at a newspaper
in a trench in France. The caption captures the timeless remarks
of one of the soldiers: "Th' hell this ain't th' most important
hole in th' world. I'm in it."
Those two
sentences from 1944 explain a lot about the way we look at life
in 2004. We think the war on terror is one of the gravest moments
in our history. The Bush administration believes the gravity of
the threat justifies an unprecedented domestic spying offensive.
We are convinced that this is one of the turning points of history.
There is
no way to play down the potential danger of our age. Madmen and
madwomen abound, and some of them have, or are trying desperately
to acquire, weapons of truly devastating power. We know -- in
truth, hardly anyone can deny -- that the modern age has given
us the ability to destroy a city or cripple a culture with a weapon
as small as the sort of five-pound bag of sugar you used to prepare
your holiday cookies.
But some
sober-thinking historians at Siena College in tiny Loudonville,
N.Y., have tried to put the modern threat in historical perspective.
They did a very dangerous, oftentimes controversial, thing. They
asked some experts -- 354 of them, college history professors
from around the country. Their response may surprise you.
The study
is called "America's Most Trying Times," and the unhappy
truth is that Americans have had many times that tried their souls.
But America's history professors don't think the war on terror
even begins to match up with other threats the nation has faced.
Indeed, this survey shows that of eight "trying times"
from the Revolutionary War through the Cold War, the Vietnam/cultural
revolution and the war on terror, today's fight ranks dead last.
The most
trying time, according to this survey, was the Civil War era,
when the very survival of the nation was at stake. More than half
the historians chose this as the most critical time, and there
is something to their argument. Had the Civil War been handled
differently, had the result been different, this would have been
a very different country -- unrecognizable both to us and to the
founders.
Next comes
the Revolutionary period. There is some logic to this as well;
without the American Revolution there is no nation about which
to worry. It is possible, of course, that the United States might
have evolved the way Canada did, but if it had, it would not have
been the nation we know today, for better or for worse.
And third
is the Great Depression. It is hard today, at the distance of
three-quarters of a century, to feel the depth of the pain and
the seriousness of the threat the Depression posed. It is not
too much to say that the collapse of the economy threatened a
collapse of the national spirit and threatened to alter the nation's
identity. Nor is it too much to say that the survival of democracy
and capitalism were in serious jeopardy.
One of the
most poignant testimonies to this comes in the pages of "You
Can't Go Home Again," Thomas Wolfe's stirring novel, when
the book's hero, George Webber, says of the stock-market crash
and the bank failure in his small town: "I'm coming to the
feeling that we may be up against something new -- something that's
going to cut deeper than anything America has experienced before."
The historians,
speaking as a group, make a compelling case about these three
trying times. They were different from our own in that the survival
of the nation as we know it was in question. I would add, by the
way, the World War II era, when it was not inconceivable, at least
in the beginning, that the Japanese or Germans could have invaded
the mainland or even have prevailed in sustained combat against
the United States.
"This
should reassure us that the country has dealt with problems a
good deal greater than the ones we appear to be dealing with now,
and has dealt with them successfully," said Thomas O. Kelly,
professor emeritus of American Studies and co-founder of the Siena
College Research Institute. "This is not to say that a terrorist
attack would not be terrible, and if you were in the World Trade
Center it is hard for life to get worse than that. But the astonishing
thing about 9/11 is that the country that was in a relatively
mild recession has dealt with the impact very well. There have
been dislocations, and I don't want to minimize them, but the
country has proved to be incredibly resilient."
Now I want
to add a cautionary note. Historians are superb at evaluating
the past, far less adept at predicting the future. They are right
that, until the moment I type this, the Civil War, the Revolutionary
era and the Great Depression were more trying than the war on
terror has been thus far. But that does not mean that they will
be right in this conviction forever. It is possible -- it is frightening
to contemplate this, but it is possible -- that a truly horrific
terrorist attack sometime in the future will alter this view.
That is the difficult thing about evaluating ongoing events. They
are not finished yet.
This new
report reminds us how great were the threats this country has
faced. In reflection we can see great moments of stress -- trying
times, in the phrase the Siena experts use -- and we can be inspired
by how these moments have been conquered. But a little perspective,
like a little knowledge, can be dangerous. These are trying times,
too. With any luck someone will take a poll in a decade or so,
and the war on terror will stay exactly where it is today, at
the bottom of the heap of threats.
Copyright
2005 The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
