Saturday marks the three-year anniversary of one of the worst days in American history. Three years is just enough time for politics to permeate discussion of and our nation’s response to Sept. 11.

It seems almost inappropriate to associate the two — politics and Sept. 11 — but this is an election year, and the direction the United States goes in fighting the “war on terror” is a political decision — one that pits the policies of America’s past against the policies of President Bush.

Before Sept. 11, the American response to terrorism was reactive. When our barracks were bombed in Beirut, we left. When our embassies in Africa were bombed, we launched a few tomahawks into a couple of camps. When the World Trade Center was bombed in 1993, we put the terrorists we caught on trial. When the U.S.S. Cole was attacked in Yemen, we did nothing.

Our “war on terror” was much like the “war on drugs” — shortsighted, naive and ineffective. The American ethos on terror was to go after the individuals.

From Sept. 12, 2001 and throughout that fall, the United States awoke to the gruesome truth that our policy of the decades before was not working. Despite our best efforts to keep terror “contained” and to put terrorists on trial, the Middle East was still producing mad men. It seemed clear that the United States needed to do more than just treat terrorists as international criminals — that we needed to “take the war to them,” instead of waiting for them to come to us. The nation was unified in its response.

That was then.

As we head into the fall of 2004, it’s not so clear. Sept. 11 is now framed within the confines of Kerry vs. Bush. After toppling the fundamentalist Taliban in Afghanistan and the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, American voters are faced with the question we are faced with every four years — which direction do we want to take now.

President Bush’s overall response to the attacks is as much a uniting factor as it is one that divides us.

Sen. John Kerry’s response, difficult as it is to nail down on any given day, is just as polarizing.

The question for us, three years later, is whether we’ve learned the lessons of Sept. 11. Whether we want to fight a “war on terror” that is shortsighted, naive and ineffective, or whether we will wage a war that not only eliminates the terrorists who planned the Sept. 11 attacks, but that will transform the region from which terrorists sprout.

John Kerry has had a hard time finding his voice on the issue, but when says that he would fight a more “sensitive” war on terror, that the battles we’re waging in Iraq are “reckless and irresponsible,” and that the W in George W. Bush stands for “wrong,” what he means to say is that the United States needs to shift back to its original ethos.

When Democrats, and a few Republicans (Pat Buchanan among them), say that American efforts should be aimed at Osama bin Laden and that the war in Iraq is a distraction from the “war on terror,” what they mean is that they would rather we go back to the failed reactive policies of the past — back to the days when the United States treated terrorists as criminals rather than men with which we should be at war.
That’s a policy we cannot, and should not, return to.

The “war on terror” encompasses much more than just Osama bin Laden, and it cannot be won by just focusing on him and his band of fundamentalists. To win this war, if it can be won, change must be brought to the Middle East.

Hopeful as it is, investing in democracy in the region is our best response — and that is going to require a lot of time, effort and, yes, American lives.

It is shortsighted to believe that we can quickly leave our posts in Iraq and call the job done. It is shortsighted to name a date of withdrawal. It is shortsighted to say that because we’ve lost 1,000 soldiers in Mesopotamia after 18 months of fighting that we are losing or that we are caught in a quagmire. Democracy is not built in 18 months, wars are not won in that time, and change in the Middle East will not come overnight. Imagine if the politicians during World War II had felt the same about Bastone.

It is naive to believe that once we capture or kill bin Laden that the terrorist threat will simply vanish. It is equally naive to believe that al-Qaida is the only terror organization in the world. We cannot win the “war on terror” if our sole focus is on bin Laden and al-Qaida. We must, as the president says, be in it for the long-term, rout out terror where ever it is bred and bring fundamental change to the Middle East.

It is ineffective to treat terrorists as criminals — we learned that three years ago at the unimaginable cost of nearly 3,000 lives on our own soil. No matter how much we reinforce and reform our intelligence agencies and no matter how many terrorists we condemn for crimes against the United States, they will still attack, they will still slip through the cracks and they will still hate the freedom that comes with being an American.

As another Sept. 11 comes around on Saturday, we should not only mourn the dead of that day and the days following. We should also reflect on what that day taught us about the failures of our past, and renew our resolve to not repeat those same mistakes.