A lamentation and a prayer

In the weeks after September 11, 2001, I remember feeling an overwhelming sense of loss for what could have been. I remember seeing the pictures and news clips of people all over the planet, lining up at US embassies to sign condolence books and leave candles and flowers. I remember the mind-boggling array of nationalities among the fatalities and missing persons.

It was a moment when nearly all of the world's human population was drawn together in a sincere, intense yearning for peace. United in our fatigue with conflict, the majority of humanity was poised at that moment to say: Enough. Enough of trying to douse violence with more violence, enough making excuses as to why the problem is everyone else but us. It was a moment that could have been seized by a truly gifted leader, the type of person who comes along only rarely in human history. If that kind of person had been in a position of leadership at that moment, maybe he or she could have galvanized the world in the wake of our shock and disgust, in the reminder of our common humanity, and turned the tide.

George W. Bush, of course, was not that leader. Not only was the moment lost, it was trampled. Crushed by arrogant bravado, tin-eared and ignorant turns of phrase, and eventually, violence.

He has brought war down upon the heads of millions, justified by false information that he all but demanded from government employees accountable to him - and now he disingenuously shrugs that he was misled, but admits he would have gone to war no matter what. He endlessly trumpets the same circular logic - "It's my intention to make Americans safer, therefore by definition my actions do make Americans safer." And yet Hurrican Katrina revealed our pitiful inability to deal with any kind of disaster, indeed the wholesale dismantling of the very disaster-response infrastructure that has supposedly been strengthened. Iraq has gone from a despotically ruled but relatively powerless country, to a massive training ground for angry and opportunistic terrorists. As Iraqis suffer, genuine relief at ejecting a tyrant turns to bitterness, while our own government shrugs off the incompetence of the occupation - how were we to know it would be hard? Because it was your job to know, before you played with other people's lives. More people the world over hate the United States more intensely than ever, and more terrorist acts are committed now than in 2001.

Our government has spent unfathomable amounts of money on all of this, betraying the fiscally conservative values of the president's political party and cutting basic services to his own citizens. He has fueled religious extremism and intolerance, wrapping himself in a banner of so-called Christianity while demonstrating either complete ignorance or disdain for the teachings of Jesus. The civil liberties and separation of powers that underpin our constitution are trampled, the president and his advisors loudly declaring that he is above the law. The values of democracy and liberty that we are supposedly spreading, and which many people in the world genuinely admire, are looking tarnished and hollow these days. More and more, our government uses the tactics and rhetoric of fascism, telling us in vaguely menacing tones that we should be fearful of unspecified enemies who lurk at every turn, that secrecy is necessary for our own protection, that debate is unpatriotic.

While in Rome last summer, touring the ruins of the ancient Roman Forum, I commented to Enrico that every U.S. president should be required to visit that spot before taking office. The mammoth size and splendor of the buildings are still evident, and surely the people who walked those bustling streets and corridors thought to themselves: We are it. It's a cautionary tale that should be emblazoned in the minds of all U.S. leaders, and the leaders of all superpower nations to come.

I thought that perhaps September 11 would prove to be the event that brought us back from the brink, an event so destructive that it united the people of the world in a vision of how we want to live our daily lives, what we want for our children, how we want to exist together. It was not to be so, and I have no doubt that history will judge this presidency as a mammoth and tragic failure. Perhaps, though, the Bush presidency itself will eventually prove to be that decisively destructive event, the catalyst for change, the planetary disaster that paves the way for an exhausted humanity to say: Enough.