Columnist William Safire: Shaking off the gloom, doom of Sept. 11

William Safire

Friday, Sept. 28, 2001 | 4:24 a.m.

William Safire is a New York Times columnist.

WASHINGTON -- Legend has it that when Lord Cornwallis formally surrendered to Gen. Washington at Yorktown, ending the Revolutionary War, the red-coated band played "The World Turned Upside Down."

The same song is being played today in the aftermath of the September massacre. Life will never be the same, we are told with dreary unanimity. From now on everything will be different. We have to learn to live with dread.

No more sense of security in skyscrapers or airplanes; no more carefree days cheering at the Super Bowl; no more driving on a bridge or through a tunnel without a frisson of fear that the truck ahead may be driven by a suicidal maniac. Confidence in our personal safety is supposedly a thing of the past.

The notion that "everything has changed" ripples outward: this loss of our sense of security about our very lives spreads to worry about our livelihoods. As the fallout from fear curtails travel, will I lose my job near the airport or making beds at the resort? Will the ebb of consumer confidence depress the stock market and plunge us into deep recession and snatch away the security of my retirement funds? Do I dare start a new enterprise in this climate, or even bring a new baby into this vale of fears?

Now for a message from the poet Milton: "Hence, loathed Melancholy!" True, we have a right to be outraged at the death of our 7,000, murdered only for the sin of being free and happily productive Americans. And we have an obligation to support their families in their bereavement and to wipe out the state sponsors of their killers.

We have no cause, however, to wallow in what is becoming a fashionable dread, and no reason to assume the doom of our personal security and national prosperity.

This debilitating dread is abetted by the belated warnings from agencies that failed to protect us. A chagrined Justice Department and CIA -- which neglected to use present authority to work closely with immigration and customs officials -- now cover up past misfeasance with demands for more intrusive police powers to eavesdrop on and detain suspects.

On top of a panicky rush to eliminate rights, too many of us are afflicted with a "nameless, unreasoning and unjustified terror," in FDR's words, of seeming to be complacent about the terrorist threat. This catch-up alarmism contributes to the "terrorist mastermind" theory that focuses on Osama bin Laden as the central villain. It is simpler and less controversial than exposing the far greater nuclear and bio-war threat based in states using terrorists as their launch pads.

Suicide hijackers and bombers do not pose what is coolly called an existential threat to -- that is, a danger to the very existence of -- the United States. We lose 7,000 lives on our highways every two months. Terror-sponsoring states use these human missiles to implant that debilitating dread in individual American minds, thereby causing us to curtail our freedoms and to implore our leaders to appease the terrorists.

That is not going to happen. The blow to our body politic of Sept. 11 is not a knockout blow. We will brace ourselves for other murders already probably set in train, until we force the nations supporting terrorists to turn their agents over. Every new offense creates its fierce counteroffensive, and we are not going to let their new weapon change our lives permanently.

Airliners will be hijacker-proofed and private pilots deeply vetted. New York's ground zero will be rebuilt and Washington's Pentagon repaired. Our coming deficit will stimulate the economy, and the smart money on Wall Street will gobble up shares months before the upturn. The Redskins will not make it to the Super Bowl, but two other teams will.

And we'll shake off that dread. Americans will return to our future's normalcy (no, President Warren G. Harding didn't coin the word), which will be no more or less safe than the present. Our children's world will be rightside up.