by Ed McManus

What a mess we’re in.

Our country was viciously attacked by a bunch of fanatical thugs, and we knew we had to do something, anything, to prevent it from happening again. There were some of us who had little faith in the ability of our government—our elected representatives—to do it right. Trouble is, most people in America didn’t seem to share our concern. Trouble is, they were so shook up by what happened in September that they just wanted to be assured that something, anything, was being done about it.

President Bush’s approach to the problem has been to meet terror with terror, violence with violence—to bomb Afghanistan and its starving people. To oust the Taliban—apparently so those sorry substitutes, the Northern Alliance, could start running things. To make noises about expanding the war to Iraq. And to commission his attorney general to go to war against the Constitution, threatening the very civil liberties that make our country what it is.

Let’s take a deep breath and look at what’s happening.

Then, the attack. Thousands of innocent Americans murdered, on our own soil. What were we going to do about it? As with any criminal act, law enforcement’s response should be to do all in its power to get the killer and conspirators off the streets before they have an opportunity to kill more, and to bring them to justice. The Bush administration’s challenge was to launch a worldwide campaign, working with other countries and the United Nations, to track down the hijackers’ accomplices, and in the meantime to take tough, immediate steps to beef up security at home.

But America was mad. Vengeance was on its mind. If my brother is killed, my first impulse may well be to seek out and kill his killer, but that’s the law of the jungle; I can’t do that. Yet that clearly was the mood in America, and the President, with Congress’ blessing, responded by dropping tens of thousands of bombs on Afghanistan. He comes from a culture that teaches that military power can solve problems--a culture that happens to be dead wrong, both morally and pragmatically.

Our secretary of defense says the bombing has been targeted, but it’s a delusion to believe that bombs will only hit military targets. The reality is that the innocent citizens of Afghanistan are the principal victims—many dead, many more injured, hundreds of thousands driven from their homes by the terror from the skies, many of them flooding into miserable refugee camps. And millions facing starvation because the war is blocking relief agencies from bringing them food. Even the relief agencies have been bombed!

The war obviously has been a remarkable success in decimating the Taliban, but now who’s in charge? The Northern Alliance, of course, a ragtag collection of warlords and tribal chieftains whose human rights records are despicable. Is this what the war has gotten us? Now the administration is talking about a war on Iraq. We haven’t been told how many other countries are on our enemies list in this war without end.

Back home, our civil liberties are being chopped up. Police can enter homes without a warrant. Conversations between lawyers and prisoners can be tapped. Hundreds of suspects are being jailed with no charges against them. And the government has announced that it will bypass our criminal justice system in favor of secret military tribunals for Al Qaeda members. What a contradiction of the State Department’s pre-September condemnations of 11 other countries, including China and Russia, that do the same! (See the department’s website, www.state.gov, under International Topics, Human Rights.)

We can’t just continue to let all this happen. Those of us who recognize the mistakes that our country has made in the past three months must speak loudly until our voices are heard. It will be difficult, but it is not too late to turn the country around toward a reasoned and reasonable approach.

The most important task is to convince the American public that raining bombs on innocent people in foreign countries is not the answer. A downward spiral of violence will get us nowhere. The American people need to deliver that message to their representatives in Congress, and Congress needs to act to stop the war. Resources being used for the war against Afghanistan must be diverted to our highest priority, which is to track down terrorists worldwide and capture them. Our FBI and CIA and the intelligence arms of our armed forces have great skills, and we must give them all our support to carry out the mission. Meanwhile, we must work hard on the diplomatic front to obtain the full cooperation of the intelligence services and police agencies of other nations, particularly the Muslim nations.

We must also convince the public and the Congress to put a check on the anti-terrorism fervor of President Bush and Attorney General Ashcroft to curb our precious civil liberties. Isn’t it ironic that Spain has already arrested 14 members of Al Qaeda but is unlikely to allow them to be extradited to the United States because of concerns about the military tribunals and the fact that they might be subjected to the death penalty, which is banned in Spain and every other country in Western Europe? Doesn’t this tell us something about ourselves and about how other countries see us?

It’s a fine mess we’re in, but it’s not the first time our leaders have led us into a quagmire. There was that other war in the ‘60s. In the Pete Seeger song of that era, "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" (Columbia Records), the captain led his troops into quicksand but the sergeant took over and ordered them to turn around—just in time to save them. It will take courage by Congress to lead us out. Let’s get started.

Ed McManus is a Wilmette, Ill., attorney and a former Chicago Tribune editor and reporter. Email: emm@voyager.net.

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