Fed up with Vietnamania?

Time for a deep breath. We've hit that late-summer stretch when everyone is waiting for autumn, and the news seems stuck in endless replay. Seven years ago, we were about to hit round-the-clock eulogies to Princess Di. Three years ago, it was Gary Condit, 24/7 (the former congressman, since cleared of suspicion in the death of his young lover, in case anyone has trouble remembering what topped the U.S. talk shows in the weeks just before September 11).

This year, we have John Kerry's Vietnam record. It matters more than Gary or Di, but how long do we have to keep fighting the last war? Having listened earlier this month to breaking news on where Mr. Kerry did or didn't spend Christmas 1968, I escaped last week to a conference in Utah, including a most otherworldly stroll in the Wasatch Mountains--and, upon returning, tuned back in to find the country, or at least its most vocal inhabitants, still arguing over Mr. Kerry's Vietnam record.

This can't last. Even beyond the presidential election, this autumn is freighted with more than the usual portents. Soon, for better or worse, events will again compel us forward into the war of today, tomorrow, and years to come. Somewhere--remember Madrid--the next attack is quite likely in the making. Between such matters as Iran's nuclear-bomb-and-terror program, North Korea's nuclear blackmail, and the leads packed into such material as the 9/11 reports--including the recent 152-page monograph on global terrorist funding--it must surely be clear by now that we face not simply Osama bin Laden, or Al Qaeda, but a fascist movement that finds in murder an intoxicating power over the rest of mankind, and in modern technology a terrible arsenal.

Though the form, anchored in Islamofascism, may be specific to our age, the animating spirit runs deep enough for Joseph Conrad in his 1907 novel, The Secret Agent, to have captured it perfectly in one of his characters, the bomb-making Professor: "He was a force. His thoughts caressed the images of ruin and destruction. He walked frail, insignificant, shabby, miserable--and terrible in the simplicity of his idea calling madness and despair to the regeneration of the world."

Not that the Professor alone can cause much ruin, but when a state-sponsored secret agent hooks up with him, a bomb goes off. An innocent dies. This ghastly offshoot of human nature, hitched in one way or another to assorted despots, is what now threatens our civilization. This war will require even more resolve than we have found so far, and it will not be won by seeking the approval of the tyrant-larded United Nations. It will be won by killing the Professor and laying down the law for his pals--and that can only be done by keeping faith with who we are. And while our arguments of the day certainly matter, some deeply, I am not sure that the spiritual strength for the coming season should be drawn chiefly from the froth of most nightly news.

So, as we approach September 11, 2004, marking the start of year four of World War IV, here are some alternatives to watching the next talk show:

• It sounds like a school assignment, but as you get older, it is more clearly the stuff of life and death: Reread the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, especially the references to the rights forfeited by tyrants, and the blessings of liberty.



• Take the time you might have spent listening to yet more debate over Mr. Kerry's Vietnam record, and Mr. Bush's response, and write two letters, one to President Bush and one to Mr. Kerry.
  
  Suggestion for Mr. Bush: If he wants to one-up Mr. Kerry on Vietnam, try nudging the debate forward, from 1968 into the 21st century. In the interest of the liberty and democracy that Mr. Bush has put forward as pillars of U.S. foreign policy, this would be a good moment for him to speak up for a democratic dissident who is in prison in Vietnam today, still fighting for that country's freedom, Nguyen Dan Que.
  
  Suggestion for Mr. Kerry: One of his constituents, Mohamed Eljahmi, has a brother, a citizen of Libya, and democratic dissident there. Fathi Eljahmi was released from a Libyan prison earlier this year, in the first flush of new-found U.S.-Gadhafi rapprochement, only to be detained again by Gadhafi within the month. Since late March, Fathi Eljahmi has been held incommunicado by Gadhafi's secret police. And while Gadhafi's surrender of his nuclear kit may have earned his regime the privilege of not being attacked outright by the U.S., he has done nothing to deserve the kind of U.S. approval he has since received. If Mr. Kerry wants to one-up Mr. Bush, he would do well to point out that under Mr. Bush's own doctrine, it is not the tyrant, Gadhafi, but the democratic dissident, Fathi Eljahmi, who deserves the support of America and our allies.



• Dust off that old college Shakespeare, and open it to Henry V, Act IV, Scene 3, in which the king, on the eve of battle, rallies his "band of brothers." That phrase may be best known these days as the title of an HBO series about World War II, but it dates back to 1599, and belongs to the most stirring call to arms in the English language. And though the character of man may be the same, the methods of war have somewhat evolved. In this war we are now fighting, there is a call for many talents, not solely on the battlefield. This is also a global war of information, of technology, of ingenuity. If you want to honor and understand our troops, if you want a reminder of why even at home it is worth looking for any way to contribute, these lines of Shakespeare rank among the mighty gifts of our culture.



• If you want something more recent, punch up the Gettysburg Address. We all toiled through it in high school (I hope), but it bears rereading in full, all three paragraphs--honoring those who died to preserve this nation and what it stands for; that "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."



• For a contemporary view, read Charles Krauthammer's speech at this past February's American Enterprise Institute annual dinner: "Democratic Realism: An American Foreign Policy for a Unipolar World." Here you will find the real issues. Whether you agree or not, Mr. Krauthammer provides a brilliant and lucid account of America's character, culture and choices in this post-September 11 world.



• Get your hands on an old black-and-white movie, Fritz Lang's "M," filmed in Berlin in 1931, which has more to say about terror, and the stopping of it, than just about anything produced in the 73 years since. It is the story of a child-killer, a murderer of innocents, stalking a terrorized city. The police finally rid the city of this monster by making life so unbearable for the ordinary criminals that the lords of the criminal underworld run him down themselves. It's a terrific blueprint for dealing with terrorists and the regimes with which they consort, such as Syria and Iran.

Pick up one of those classics on the best within us, and never mind if it's not set in color and segmented into 30-second sound bites. Rent "Inherit the Wind," in which Spencer Tracy defends the right of a man to think for himself. Sit back with a copy of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, in which small-town southern lawyer Atticus Finch faces down the mob to do what he knows is right.

And, if you have, as recommended at the top of this column, begun by taking a deep breath--exhale. When you get back to the TV news, and tune in for the fall season, it's going to feel just a bit more manageable.

This article appeared in the August 25, 2004, Wall Street Journal Europe.