It has been said by many people that Sept. 11 shattered the American sense of invulnerability. Instead of accepting the vulnerability that most of the rest of the world already lives with, we seem to want something that nobody can give us: we want to erase our vulnerability. Jim Wallis, a Washington D.C.-based evangelical often critical of the Religious Right, addresses this issue. Wallis states on erasing vulnerability, “If the government says more wars can do that many will say fine. If they say suspending civil liberties can do that, many will say fine. If they claim spending more and more of our tax dollars on the military and homeland security will do it – at the expense of everything else – many will say fine. But we simply can’t erase our vulnerability, not in this world and not with the human condition being as it is.” In 2003, Robert Jay Lifton of “The Nation” wrote about the United States as the lone superpower stating, “At the core of superpower syndrome lies the fear of vulnerability. A superpower’s victimization brings on both a sense of humiliation and an angry determination to restore, or even extend, the boundaries of a superpower-dominated world.” The United States is busy about the process of restoring the world to the way it was pre-Sept. 11. Donald Rumsfeld talked this past week about those who are operating in the post-Sept. 11 world and those (implying Democrats) who are not, but just what exactly does that mean? Lifton furthers, stating, ‘In important ways, the war on terrorism has represented an impulse to undo violently, precisely the humiliation of 9/11.” Are we protecting ourselves or asserting our right to go back to a time when we did not seem to know vulnerability? Certainly, threads of reassertion have surfaced, as in the President’s famous “bring ‘em on” speech.

A certain quote comes to mind: “Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor ... When the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded with patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader, and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar.” Shakespeare’s words have perhaps never sounded so familiar to our ears and so sickening to our hearts. I am not advocating that President Bush is a vindictive emperor, but I question the direction that we appear tempted to head in. Much has been made of the recent news of the President’s authorization of wiretapping through the National Security Agency. Certainly we should protect ourselves, but are we being vigilant or fearful? Will we live in a state of paranoia, where no amount of security can pacify our desires to feel safe? Will we justify pre-emptive war on the account that the times do not afford us the luxury to find out what may happen?

It was Trappist Monk Thomas Merton who said, “The root of war is fear.” Is the American nation afraid of admitting that it is just as vulnerable to today’s threats as other nations? Invulnerability cannot be purchased through the assertion of military dominance in the world. Invulnerability is an illusion, a fountain of youth that an aging superpower, if it so chooses, will search for until its dying day. In the words of Jim Wallis, “To be prudent and vigilant in the face of danger is good. But when a government offers to take away our vulnerability, it borders on idolatry.”