"Sweet land of liberty"--that's the old image at the heart of America. It's the poem missing from Operation Infinite Justice, which has nothing sweet or good in it, and little of liberty. The dream of liberty and justice gets lost in shadow governments, super-hard nuclear-tipped missiles, body counts, secret imprisonments, and the glorification of world war. But the old dream of "sweet liberty" is the one I'm convinced is in the hearts of people who are letting Bush lead without question, and the one they believe they're protecting. Bush has painted a black and white world that's recognizable to people who live daily with the black and white realities of unemployment, sick kids, lack of money, crime, the need to survive. They want to be strong and help protect America against the evil world Bush claims to see: a world filled with terrorists who will kill us if we don't keep constant guard, rogue nations ready and anxious to use nuclear and chemical weapons against us, and allies who would endanger us by their passivity.

I want to tell these people: hang onto the reality of this moment and look, really look at the future that we're creating in this moment. What we're creating by ourselves, not at the hand of others. By our own hands, we're killing innocent people. We're creating new fighters out of people who may believe they're only protecting their lives and homes against us. We're enraging people who've lost people they love to our bombs, and we're inflaming their neighbors, who relate to their lives in ways they can never relate to ours. We're alienating the allies who rushed to help us after September 11 by treating them with contemptuous disrespect.

This war machine that's meant to edge out beauty and idealism for America's heart has an insatiable hunger that needs to be fed by hundreds of billions of the dollars we make in our workaday jobs. The taxpayer dollars from the jobs we go to so we can feed the kids and try to afford a decent life are feeding the voracious war-beast. We have to choose. If the administration is left to build, on our fear and sorrow, new, implacable realities of bombs, deaths and nuclear threats, the old image--of justice, truth, freedom, honor, generosity, goodness, and peace--may never return. Is the war-beast really the image at America's heart, or just at the heart of George W. Bush?

We didn't lose everything on September 11, but that's the illusion the administration is exploiting. We've lost everything only if we act as if we have, as if liberty no longer matters, rights no longer matter, our relationship to the rest of the world no longer matters. We've dealt with al Qaeda and we're seeking out more war for the beast, endless money for the beast. We're choosing survival devoid of love for civil rights or openness in our government. We risk losing sweet liberty by replacing her image with vengeance and war, might and power.

There are other choices. We can build, on the brokenness of September 11, a careful structure dedicated to liberty, which did not die and will not die as long as its image is in our hearts. A careful structure that deals with the need for physical protection without turning our nation into a prison. A careful structure--safe but open to the light, more careful of safeguarding sweet liberty than ever.

We risk losing the beauty in our nation's soul, but not because of "them." We have to choose, not because hatred and fear aren't warranted, but because no person or nation can hold two images at once, can have two souls. In the face of gross injustice, we must still choose love or fear. It's the ultimate freedom, the only one we ever really have.

Choose one, just choose and follow. The choice determines all the outcomes; it determines the poem.

Linda O'Brien lives in Bethesda, MD. She is a freelance writer and welcomes responses at dktlind@aol.com

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