World at War

As I write this on November 13, 2015, the city of Paris is under siege. Several coordinated terrorist attacks—at a stadium, at a restaurant, at a concert hall, and elsewhere—have taken place, and the death toll is mounting. This unfolding tragedy is further evidence, following the recent downing of a Russian airliner, suicide attacks across the Middle East, and other incidents small and large stretching back across years and locales, that we are a world at war. For most Americans, and much of the rest of the world, this new and very different war began with the attacks of 9/11 in the United States.

President George W. Bush on September 20, 2001, used for the first time the phrase, “war on terror.” He could just as well have declared war on abstraction. Terror is a conceptual strategy. It is, as every affected country has found, which includes a large and growing number of countries, notoriously difficult render concrete or specific. Who are the terrorists? Where are they? What end do they seek? It is impossible to attack an abstraction in the manner that wars have traditionally been fought.

The Bush administration and its allies did not fully understand this new concept of war and so pursued a substitute war, a war that could be fought on more or less traditional terms against a substitute enemy, one that turned out to be largely unconnected to the events that sparked America’s bloodlust. Many scholars believe that this action increased the likelihood of future terrorist attacks.

Moreover, on the domestic front these dual wars against abstract and concrete (if mistaken) enemies provided the impetus—excuse?—for limiting and in some cases overriding civil liberties. This is not an unusual consequence of war. However, it is a troubling one, especially as there is no end to the war on terror in sight. The national security versus civil liberties debate has paralleled the war on terror; neither has yet been resolved. Nor is resolution of this debate in sight.

This moment in history seems to be opportune to affirm, once again, the need to educate our citizenry about the nature of democracy, particularly when democracy itself is under fire. In the years since 9/11 the United States has experienced far more threats from domestic terrorists than from foreign terrorists, which conservatives, in particular though not exclusively, have consistently failed to acknowledge or to deal with in any manner other than to institutionalize restrictions on certain civil liberties, while ignoring pro-terrorism factors such as lax gun control. It is not within the scope of public education to school the general populace, but it is a specific responsibility to educate our future adults who will—or will not—defend and extend our democratic way of life.

Deborah Meier, writing some years ago in “Democracy at Risk,”* suggested that such education ought not to consist merely of more civic education classes. Rather, education in democracy should be a pervasive theme in our schools, one that is actively pursued across the educative experience. This will require, Meier avers, designing “all our courses to focus on the habits of mind that we think are most central to an informed and intelligent democratic citizenry, whether it’s math, history, literature, science, or the rules that govern us in our hallways.”

The Paris battles of this ongoing “war on terrorism” should move us to ponder anew the future of our democracy. As President Obama, responding to the situation in Paris, reminded the nation, “This is an attack not just on Paris, it’s an attack not just on the people of France, but this is an attack on all of humanity and the universal values that we share.

Meier, in her article, wrote of the need for more pervasive civic education: “Democracy is embedded in the work of living in a socially shared space, and it becomes a habit as we go back and forth between living it and studying it, over and over, and then passing on our accumulated wisdom to the young.” The assault on Paris is a piquant reminder that we need to work harder to make democracy a habit.

*Meier, D. (2009). “Democracy at Risk.” Educational Leadership 66(8): 45-49.