BETWEEN THE LINES -- Byron del Arakal

So this is what it was like nearly 60 years ago. Dec. 7, 1941: The day

of infamy. This is what our mothers and fathers, our grandfathers and

grandmothers felt when this nation’s heart was “suddenly and

deliberately� ripped from its chest on that winter morning. When they

were forced to stop their lives and defend the mantle of freedom. We --

my generation -- didn’t know nor could we feel what they knew and felt

and still remember.

Our only connections to that day, when our country’s freedom was

assaulted, are their stories and our history books and that infamous

piece of black and white film of the USS Arizona exploding in a towering

plume of smoke. That awful footage of more than 2,000 brave boys dying

nearly instantly beneath the shallow burning waters of Pearl Harbor. My

generation has never known what it is to come under attack, to be the

target of an act of war. To have to hit the pause button and willingly --

with relish -- go to war.

But now we do. Tuesday, Sept 11, 2001, is my generation’s date that

will live in infamy. We are at war. And our country and our lives have

been forever changed.

This is our war, the war of the grandchildren of the greatest

generation. My children’s war. A battle ignited by the incomprehensible

treachery of savage men. This is our defining moment in history to rally

as one people behind our country and our flag. To defend our Declaration

of Independence and Bill of Rights and Constitution as our forefathers

and foremothers did.

We shouldn’t need the motivation to go to war. But if we do, we have

it. We have the video sequence of United Airlines Flight 175 -- a Boeing

767 -- screaming at more than 300 knots into the side of the New York

World Trade Center’s south tower. That will compel us. We have the images

of that tower and its twin sister -- impaled minutes earlier by American

Airlines Flight 11 -- folding in on themselves, entombing perhaps

thousands beneath tons of concrete and steel and glass. We can think of

the thousands of souls in those buildings and on those airplanes, and

imagine the unspeakable terror they suffered in the moments before they

joined the boys who died at Pearl. And we will seek vengeance and

revenge.

We should be spurred, too, by the loyal women and men of our armed

services -- at work in the Pentagon -- killed when American Airlines

Flight 77 plunged into our military’s nerve center as this macabre litany

of terrorism unfolded on this date in infamy. And we must be moved to

defend their honor. But I worry that this war will frustrate and anger

us. That’s because it will be a different war than the epic fought by the

greatest generation. Our enemy here is faceless. Gutless. There is no

Japan or Germany. No Tojo. No Hitler.

We have only speculation that the architect of this act against the

United States is Osama bin Laden. A lone figure. He leads no country and

commands no territory. So we have no beachfront on which to land our

flotillas. No seas for our destroyers and battleships to command. No

terrain over which to rain our paratroopers. No hills for our infantry to

charge.

Where do we enlist? Where do we buy war bonds? How do we sacrifice?

What do we sacrifice?

It is a struggle in these early moments to know.

But I will go to war. By sacrificing my indifference. By laying down

my boredom with the rich freedoms the generations before me fought and

died for. I will battle this new enemy by mobilizing my enthusiasm and

patriotism for a United States sustained by a mighty military, an armed

force constructed by the ingenuity and strength of our great and free

economy.

For the rest of my generation, I can only hope. Hope that it will be

this war that awakens this era of Americans from their apathy.

That it will divert them away from their lattes and SUVs and gated

estates just long enough to bring them in touch with the sobering reality

that our shores are no longer safe.

So now my generation knows. We have our date that will live in infamy.

We are at war. And we will prevail.

* BYRON DE ARAKAL is a writer and communications consultant. He lives

in Costa Mesa. His column runs Wednesdays. Readers may reach him with

news tips and comments via e-mail at o7 [email protected] .