I use this in a loose version, subject, of course, to Crane's refinements, but I think it is a useful conception (at least for me) to put together in retrospect the thought tracks of this administration in the wake of 9-11. The first thing to note, and I put this forth as my leading hypothesis, is that President Bush personalized the 9-11 attacks much too much, seeing it as a successful challenge to his tough-guy, indomitable image, and vowed in its wake to do everything (and I mean just about everything) to prevent a recurrence. That drive became the coin of the realm in his tenure. Rather than countenance any possible chinks in what is not even yet a failsafe national security system, ironically, he imposed draconian measures positing AN attack, ANY attack on the homeland as again catastrophic (whilst allowing New Orleans to drown), and unwisely starting a truly catastrophic foreign war (which I argued for perhaps more than I argued against at the time, like many others not fit to lead ON THAT ISSUE AT THAT TIME, unlike Senator Kennedy, for one), which is the true crown of his paranoid mindset: a true catastrophe imposed on soft evidence on many millions of people in a desperate effort to either change the subject, or worse, fight a chimera that continues to frighten only him and his circle. In this regard, cooler heads, visionary minds, are looking to diplomatic, political -- visionary and statesmanlike -- solutions to the terrible canker Iraq has become. But, yet, and predictably until the end of his term, President Bush has us in a "paranoid rut." What I mean by that is not that real danger does not abound in the world, but that real solutions must reach beyond the familiar and the brutal if we are effectively to see our way out. This does not, emphatically, dishonor or discount the importance of our brave military; it just refuses to use it as a total excusee for national policy.
