Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Al Salzman who lives in Fairfield.
Unlike the final scene in “Shane,” when Alan Ladd guns down the evil gunslinger, played by Jack Palance, and says to the little boy: “Tell your mom there are no more guns in the valley!” — the death of Osama bin Laden is not the end. Bin Laden was actually a sideshow in the war against terror and the displays of morbid jubilation will not lead to a Hollywood ending. Largely unnoticed in all the triumphalism were two other points of view published in the same edition of the New York Times.
First, an op-ed column by Robert Klitzman, the brother of Karen Klitzman who was killed when the twin towers collapsed. Mr. Klitzman writes: “There are lessons we have not yet learned. I feel Karen would share my concerns that underlying forces of greed and hate persevere. American imperialism, corporate avarice, abuses of our power abroad and our support for corrupt dictators like Hosni Mubarak have created an abhorrence of us that, unfortunately, persists.”
Second, a report written by two special assistants to Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — Captain Wayne Porter of the Navy and Col. Mark Mykleby of the U.S. Marine Corps, which calls on the U.S. not to continue to engage the world primarily with military force, but must do so as a nation powered by the strength of its educational system, social policies, international development and diplomacy, and its commitment to sustainable practices in energy and agriculture. Our first priority, they write, should be “intellectual capital and a sustainable infrastructure of education, health and social services to provide for the continuing development and growth of America’s youth.”
We Americans love our movie heroes, but without a radical change in our national priorities, even the Terminator or Jason Bourne or Iron Man would be at a loss to help us.
