In red white and blue.
Glittering in the hot Albuquerque sun.
Well, I thought, that's saying something. I wasn't sure what, but I'd made some assumptions about it being another way to say "support the troops" without specifying exactly how -- benefits, proper equipment, a CiC who listens to his generals? -- and moved on.
Tonight I read Bob Herbert's column in The New York Times, The Tyranny of Fear and realized that there can be all kinds of meanings to that glittering, red white and blue slogan.
Here's the beginning of the story Herbert tells.
Abdallah Higazy was on the phone from Cairo. “To describe it as frustrating would be an understatement,” he said, “because you know you’re telling the truth. And you know the people speaking to you have incorrect information about you.”
On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Higazy, the son of a former Egyptian diplomat, was in a room on the 51st floor of the Millenium Hilton Hotel, directly across the street from the World Trade Center. He was a student at the time, having won a scholarship to study computer engineering at Polytechnic University in Brooklyn. The Institute of International Education had arranged for him to stay at the hotel while he looked for permanent housing.
Like everyone else, Mr. Higazy fled the hotel after the planes hit the towers. He left behind his passport and other personal items. When he returned to collect his belongings three months later, he was arrested by the F.B.I. A hotel security guard claimed to have found an aviation radio, which could be used to communicate with airborne pilots, in the safe in Mr. Higazy’s room.
“That’s impossible,” said Mr. Higazy.
It’s a fact, said the F.B.I.
Mr. Higazy was handcuffed, strip-searched and thrown into prison — as a material witness. No one knew what to charge him with. They just knew they wanted to hold him.
Mr. Higazy was all but overwhelmed with fear. “I didn’t sleep that first night,” he told me. “I was shivering, and it wasn’t from the cold.”
Like an accused witch in Salem, Mr. Higazy was dangerously close to being sacrificed on the altar of hysteria. He kept telling authorities he knew nothing about the radio. But the assumption was that he was lying.
The rest will probably not astound Herbert's readers, though it will certainly sadden many. But, what's to do? We've all heard so much about how very afraid we must be. We're getting used to it.
And that's too bad.
In the months after the attacks on 9/11 the FBI and other law enforcment officials were not thinking as well has hindsight might like them to have done. Fear spurred them like a vicious rider. Hard to fault them, and I'm not. In their place I'd have been as terrified that another event as horrible as the bin Laden attacks loomed on the horizon. But I wasn't in their place, I had the luxury, if it can be called that, of walking around numb for as long as it took to adjust to the shock of what happened.
But why, so long after that time, do we allow ourselves to be ridden by fear, spurred by it? Why, after Mr. Higazy is safely home with his family, do we allow ourselves to be bidden to go shopping, to go about our business and leave the safety of the nation to men and women who have started three wars -- two of which have nothing to do with bin Laden and September 11, 2002?
Why as the November elections approach, do we once again allow ourselves to be frightened by elevated alerts and the current crop of Republicans running for office?
That bumper slogan is right. America is the home of the free because of the brave. The brave would be us. All of us, our men and women in the military, the parents who have the courage to raise their children in a nation where grade schools and high schools that were once the envy of the world are now falling into ruin, and the brave would be the immigrants who arrive to seek citizenship and enrich us by their hope.
Are we ready to once again be worthy of this home of the free, because we are among the brave?
You know, I'm beginning to think so.
Most of us no longer believe in the endless fabrications of reasons for the wars the Current Occupant ignites in the most dangerous part of the world.
More and more of us no longer believe that we have to cower each time he utters the hollow phrases that used to make us think he knew what he was doing. He doesn't. His every action and think-tank tested justification for the latest conflagration proves this to us.
We live in the land of the free because we are the brave.
Let's not forget that. Let's not allow ourselves to be driven -- ridden, spurred -- by fear.
We can find the courage to do the right thing and choose leaders who know that chaos is not the answer to the need for security.
Support the troops? Yes, indeed. And let's be worthy of what they sacrifice in wars they fight because they have the courage to keep the oaths they swear.
If we have the courage to see the shabbiness of our leaders, to know their constant talk of fear for what it is -- poison in our ears -- and to do something about it, one day, we will again have leaders who are not afraid to call the nation to rise up in courage rather than cower in fear.
We will have those leaders, because we will have summoned them.
