The nation is on its highest alert today, as it has been since Monday’s announcement by Attorney General John Ashcroft of a possible terrorist threat during this one week period of time. Yet this message, aired repeatedly on almost every news and radio station, and headlining the world’s newspapers, contributed nothing that could be quantified or qualified as concrete, or even useful, to the residents of this already plagued country. American residents were told this: sometime before November 4, somewhere in the United States, something terrible may or may not happen. We were warned and advised to be vigilant and on guard–and were then told to live our lives normally, as Americans should never be forced to live their lives in fear. We were left to ponder this message and decide how best to integrate it into our lives.

The choices are rather unappealing to the American people. We can either choose to put a halt on our lives, postponing flights abroad and trips to the mall in order to decrease the possibility that we may become victims. Many potential students who arrived to view Pomona this week expressed this idea, a few sadly cutting out trips to Georgetown and New York University during their college shopping experiences. Many expressed a regret for opportunities lost to fear, and regret is not something the American people like to feel.

Yet our other alternative seems equally flawed, because if we ignore the vague and possibly frequent warnings from above, we leave ourselves open to a more ominous form of regret, the regret that comes from carelessly lost lives.

On his monthly radio show, Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore verbalized what most people have already understood, but have not admitted, to be true. "There will be some attack at some point, no doubt, again and somebody will be hurt," Gilmore said. "Americans are going to have to realize that they’re living in a different situation." Yet, as a country who is unwilling to be cowed by recent and novel fears, are we willing to be slowly subdued by the gradual accumulation of corpses?

Last week, Vice President Dick Cheney talked to the country about the"new normalcy" of America–being constantly alert almost every single day for the foreseeable future as terrorist attacks continue to become a greater part of what Americans have to expect in their daily lives. This new normalcy is what many people are beginning to fear, and what patriots are beginning to call unAmerican. America, a country whose citizens have roamed freely and without fear throughout the world for centuries, are beginning to be constrained by the threat of people and groups we once considered insignificant. The threat of bombings and attacks that is unsettling, but familiar, in many other countries, has now entered our homes and minds and is beginning to show Americans, no matter how hard we try to deny it, that our citizenship and our government are not as all-powerful as they once seemed. Perhaps this is what terrorism is all about: the long-term institution of fear that has made America and other countries question values and infringe upon rights we hold dear, and change the way we live to betray the insecure reality of our situation. For those of you who went to malls on Halloween night, and who will be traveling and interning in Washington D.C. during this upcoming semester, I’m not sure whether to applaud or chastise your arrogance. The consequences of terrorism have permanently escalated, and we’re going to be living like this for quite some time. People are soon going to have to decide how to live their lives during what could be America’s longest or permanent state of high alert.

Sincerely,

Amit Thakkar

Editor-in-Chief