The War on Terror is a misnomer for that reason among others; the rules of war are generally not used in the case of terrorists. Killing them by whatever means you might have at hand is a rule of that "game" and preferably before you are killed yourself. The trick is identifying them before they use your ignorance of their intentions against you. The pressure that puts on people who have no intention of terrorizing anyone is significant. That should be obvious by the ways we are changing the rules of our society in order to cope with the threat of a terrorist act since their first real success in this nation on 9/11, two years ago.

We are a very civilized people in many ways but we are also a group descended from some of the greatest survivors in human experience. Whatever else you can say about the people who took this continent away from its prior inhabitants they were survivors and we are their inheritors. Those who came here after that time also survived the dislocation of immigration and probably some serious pressure on their survival skills before they came here. In addition they often lived under squalid and even dangerous circumstances during their struggle to win wealth and a good life in our society. First they had to learn the rules and then they had to work out how to use them to their advantage. Whatever else you can say about us we have the genes of survivors to fall back on in time of need.

This is a time of need. We are being led into a set of circumstances that will test our ability to survive when the rules change in mid-play. Our lives have been altered by the declaration of war against us by those who use no rules in fighting their wars. Terrorism might be described as "war by other means". It is certainly not war as described by the rules of engagement enforced by the civilized nations of our modern world. Those rules have kept us from the horrors of nuclear war. They have long prevented the use of weapons like gas that are too horrible even for use in war by our standards by major nations. The terrorists are not constrained by those rules, so we must decide what rules if any apply to our behavior toward them. That is compounded by the difficulty of determining who is a terrorist before an act of terror is committed.

Of course we have the leadership of our nation to fall back on in that decision. Surely our President and Attorney General know a terrorist when they see one. The Patriot Act says so. Almost certainly the members of our military and the FBI and the CIA can easily identify one on sight. The Patriot act leaves it up to them to decide. Of course that mystical gift of knowing can be passed on to our local police and maybe our snoopy neighbor. Eventually we may all be sure that we just "know" who is and is not a terrorist or a terrorist sympathizer. Ann Coulter can certainly identify the terrorists and traitors among us, they are registered Democrats. Yes they are easily identifiable; they are those that are too different than us to be tolerated in a time of terror.

We are clearly strong enough to survive in a world where terror is a real prospect. But there are a few good questions related to how we will do that. One question is, are we brave enough to keep our civil liberties intact in the face of our fears? Another is, are we sturdy enough to keep our tolerance for those different in the face of the threat of terrorism? A third is, will we still use our considerable powers wisely in the world now that we feel threatened. The final question is do we have the fortitude to admit when we are taking a wrong course toward security. These are not questions for our leaders. They are the questions we will have to answer in the dark of night or in the light of day. We will answer them in the quiet of our own bedroom when we confront our fears alone and must face them down without help. We will answer them in the quiet of the voting booth and the moment of truth when terror is loosed among us. The answers we create will identify us for who we are to the next generations of citizens, our children and grandchildren and beyond. Ponder those questions. God bless and keep you on the path of right in these times of terror and fear and things that go bump in the night.