Opinion

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Dry Bones

(- FANATICAL IRAN
IS PUSHING AHEAD
TO GET NUCLEAR
WEAPONS .

Editorial

ISRAEL TODAY

AND NOW
THEY'RE SHOWING
OFF THEIR MISSILE
CAPABILITIES

9-11's Lessons

I

t is standard rhetoric to say that
everything has changed since 9-11.
After seven years, the date still rings
like an alarm in the night. It has become a
numerical incantation that needs no fur-
ther embellishment.
Yet serious doubts remain that
Americans fully realize the scope of the
threat or the extent of the danger present-
ed by Islamic extremists.
Certainly, our lives have been touched
by the aftermath. Air travel has become a
misery and a simple trip to Canada now
requires a passport. Ongoing military cam-
paigns in Iraq and Afghanistan have sent
convulsions through the political system.
Thousands of young men and women have
come home seriously disabled, or not at all.
For the overwhelming majority, how-
ever, the conflict remains smoke from a
distant fire.
There has been no follow-up attack.
Despite several reports of terrorist plots
and predictions that such an attack would
be inevitable, none have been carried out.
While Europe has seen terrorism strike
at the very heart of its great cities, there
has been no repeat of the disasters at the
World Trade Center in New York City and
Pentagon in Arlington.
The surveillance programs that the gov-

ernment has put in place actually affect
a very few. A small number of innocent
Muslims also have been caught up by
over-zealous investigators.
But in the greater sense, life goes on
pretty much as it was seven years ago. So an
increasing skepticism has grown up about
the reality of the threat that Islamic extrem-
ists pose to us, and a conviction has devel-
oped that confrontation is unnecessary.
We hear some political leaders say that the
extremists who control the government of
Iran cannot be regarded as a serious threat
and that quiet diplomacy and compromise
are the best ways to deal with the problem.
Unfortunately, there is absolutely no
evidence to support that theory. While
talk is always better than war, there must
be some indication that the other side is
talking to a purpose. But the Islamists are
not interested in a live-and-let-live world.
They want submission, not compromise.
When they look at the United States
today they must have every reason to feel
their approach is working.
Seven years is a long time to live on alert.
Seven years after Pearl Harbor, after all, we
already were rebuilding our former enemies
in Japan and Europe. The sense of triumph
in a desperate war defined the country. But
there is no victory celebration now

APPARENTLY
THAT'S
WHAT WE'RE
COUNTING ONE

www.drybonesbloq.com

Instead, we still have a hard slog ahead
of us against an enemy that has no inten-
tion of surrendering because he is sure
that time is on his side.
It may take another stunning blow before

we fully understand that the world has
indeed changed, and that phrase is more than
mere boilerplate. We pray it never comes
to that — but if it does, we will have this
growing sense of complacency to blame. ❑

error.
mer employer, the Detroit
"But if you got that wrong;' he
News, and found a reference
told me, "how can I trust the rest
to a pitcher whose career
of your story?"
had "digressed" since 2006.
I never forgot that. One insig-
Well, I'm sure Nate Robertson
nificant mistake in the greater
wishes he really could
picture can raise doubts about
change the subject regard-
an entire story to the reader who
ing his pitching collapse,
knows the insignificant to be
but the right word here was
untrue.
regressed:'
e Cantor
It is no secret that in these
Again, it was an error no
umnist
difficult times, for both the local
experienced editor would
economy and newspapers in
ever make.
general, the Detroit dailies are cutting
But there are more than errors in urban
back. Many veteran staffers have accepted
geography and prefixes that annoy me.
buyouts, including those who were guard- There is a growing loss of civic identity,
ians of the paper's institutional memory
too.
and the city's history.
I was having lunch at a restaurant in
I cannot imagine the veteran editors I
Eastern Market, the kind that capitalizes
knew at the Freep letting this kind of mis-
on its attachment to Detroit by placing
take go through.
historic photographs of the city on its
A few days later, I was thumbing
walls. The waitress came up and asked,
through the sports page of my other for-
"Would you like more soda?"

That set me off. We drink pop in Detroit,
lady. A soda is a concoction with ice cream
and fizzy water. Maybe in New York they
would call my carbonated beverage a soda.
But this is not New York. Just look at the
pictures on the wall.
I also hate it when people say that are
standing "on line." No one ever does that
in Detroit. We stand "in line" here, except
when we are occasionally unruly.
If you are over 55 and grew up in the
city, you'll recall that you never went trick-
or-treating on Halloween. You went beg-
ging; and the appropriate cry was, "Help
the poor." It was a Detroit thing.
What's the use? Every year the city's
distinct identity fades a little more and we
become just like everywhere else. But I will
go on drinking my pop forever.

Reality Check

Loss Of Memory

A

few weeks ago, the Detroit Free
Press ran an article lament-
ing a fire at a church located
on Linwood between "Gladstone and
Hazelton."
As any old Detroiter from the West Side
knows, the next street from Gladstone is
Hazelwood. So the error jumped right out
at me.
Mistakes do happen, especially with
young reporters who are not familiar with
the geography of the city. But the fact that
it would also pass through a few layers of
editors was surprising.
The paper corrected the mistake the fol-
lowing day. Still, it made me wonder.
When I was a young sportswriter, I cov-
ered a press conference at Notre Dame and
described one of the players being inter-
viewed as wearing a green sweater.
A writer from New York came up to me
the next day and told me that, in fact, the
sweater had been brown. A very minor

(

❑

George Cantor's e-mail address is
gcantor614@aol.com.

iN

September 11 • 2008

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