Toward Confidence in an Uncertain World

摘要

As I write this editorial, I am just about ready to leave for a flight to Los Angeles, Calif. This will be my first cross-country trip since Sept. 11, 2001, and so, especially with the recent holiday disruptions in air travel due to security concerns, homeland security has been on my mind. For many Americans, it doesn't matter anymore that thousands of airplanes take off and land safely every day, that people go to work in high-rises and military installations around the country and come home to their families every night. Because of that day in September over two years ago, many Americans now share an almost unconscious but very real sense with much of the rest of the world that terrorists can strike again, at home, at any moment. As do citizens in every other threatened country, we get on with our lives, although "getting on is accomplished with a hopeful reliance, somewhere at the back of our mind, on the responsiveness of government agencies, whether we like it or not.