Quick Hit

Pat Buchanan has an article in the American Conservative that, oddly enough, I agree with. [link] Buchanan reviews "An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror", a new book by Richard Perle. In the review, Buchanan posits that neo-conservatives may finally have been exposed as having lost touch with reality.

Perle claims that we and the terrorists are in a struggle that will either affirm or destroy Western civilization. But Buchanan's point is that in the struggle between terrorists and everybody else, the thing that we can least afford to do is panic:

In the war we are in, our enemies are weak. That is why they resort to the weapon of the weak—terror. And, as in the Cold War, time is on America’s side. Perseverance and patience are called for, not this panic.

In support of his argument, Buchanan draws some interesting parallels to WWII, and makes some common-sensical points about our and the terrorists' relative strengths and weaknesses. What struck me, however, was Buchanan's application of FDR's quote about fear; usually, the quote is truncated to "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." But as Buchanan recognizes, the rest of the sentence is relevant and should be repeated, often. It reads, "[T]he only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."

In other words, let us react to, and prepare, for real threats, but let us not jump at shadows or, in the name of fighting terrorism, restrict our freedoms more completely than any terrorist ever could. To do the latter would be to succomb to the nameless, unreasoning and unjustified fear that Roosevelt was warning against.