Hostilities exist

The engulfing fires had not been put out in lower Manhattan before I was introduced to the charge that Sept. 11 was a revenge assault for America's "indefensible" imperialism -- imperialism that some of us proceeded to defend with great vigor. Already classmates were opposed to a muscular counterstrike; I'll never forget lunch the next day, when some inquired about what made barbarism so intolerable. I replied, instinctively, but with great composure: It was nothing so intolerable that civilized firepower would not put right. For my trouble, I was branded a "warmonger." This memory surged to the top of my thoughts when I dined out this summer with some old friends. In the midst of superior political conversation, a man from the next table leaned over to ask, without the customary apology for eavesdropping, "Why are there so many of you warmongers?" When I first heard this witless sneer years before, I was slightly dumbfounded. But this time, to my delighted astonishment, I didn't mind the appellation. Given this obviously pejorative throwaway remark, the man could plainly not see the need for anything but "peace-at-any-price," so I undertook to inform him. "Well, sir, as warmongers like us never tire of explaining, we're in a war."\nThere was a time when this fact was recognized, almost without comment, by all thinking persons. But in the past few years, the belief that this is a good time for war has become, to put it mildly, a contrary one. Many seem to wish that we were not at war and tend to dwell on the negative aspects of the conflict that flared into existence. Just so. But I would unhesitatingly propose that the main result of the day when evil literally took flight was quite positive: The United States was at war at last. \nBefore the sun had set on that September day five years ago, the world was divided into three factions. There were the aforementioned, thinly covert sympathizers who on impulse blamed the victim. Second were those well-meaning anti-warriors taken in by therapeutic calls for "coexistence" or at least were put off at the prospect of a just war. But there were a few of us, if we are to be candid, for whom these morose sentiments were deposed, finally, at the expense of another one: exhilaration. In a confrontation between the best and the worst -- dare I say between good and evil -- I suppose it was indeed the "warmongers" who were spoiling for a fight.\nThere is, of course, no sure way to prevail in that fight. But there is one sure way to lose it: to forget that for civilized peoples it is an overwhelming duty, as well as an exceptional pleasure, to wage an unsentimental war against the most vicious form of reactionary nihilism imaginable. The evidence of recent years confirms that bringing any less force to bear against such a uniquely iniquitous enemy would be indefensible and unbearable, impossible as well as undesirable.