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Story by Dashiell Collins

Five years on, and we're still searching through the tears and the rubble for some sensible way to navigate these stormy times. The towers fell and the world changed forever, bringing America to face, President Bush said yesterday in his anniversary address, "the test history has given us."

Unfortunately for the world, Bush decided to ignore the teachings of history and launched us into the new crusades. While no history forbids waging a war of ideas, most certainly attest to their fruitless and disastrous consequences. And when the swords and catapults are replaced with airplanes and smart bombs, suddenly the flame behind the idea burns the faces of more children, torches more houses and ignites hatred and vengeance in more hearts around the world.

There seems to be little hope for an answer anytime soon. If the past centuries have not taught us well enough that fighting one extreme belief with another tends to produce more corpses than results, then it's doubtful that five more years will have done the trick. As if they have no regard for the lessons of history or the public's understanding of those lessons, Bush and Vice President Cheney candidly offer is that they were wrong before, they made mistakes before 9/11 and before and during Iraq, but they're trying really, really hard now.

And all the while, it seems the freedom-loving Americans our troops fight and die so needlessly to protect aren't enjoying many freedoms at all. Phone lines are tapped without warrant or oversight. Poverty and desperation still grip victims of Hurricane Katrina who wait, hopefully not in vain, for help from a government stretched so thinly from military spending, it'd be a surprise if their phone bills get paid.

We are supposedly fighting this long war, as our top generals have referred to it, to ensure the safety of freedom, of Americans and of the entire world. Secretary Rice has said we are safer, but not safe. Tom Ridge, who formerly headed the Department of Homeland Security, said after his resignation that countries could never be completely safe from terrorism. The death of thousands of Americans and the destruction of our symbol of world power might seem a legitimate cause for a global strike against a shadowy enemy, but the voices of Madrid, Bali, London and Baghdad cry out louder than the quivering pleas of sympathy and support for this administration.

Perhaps no answer is clear and right just yet, but this war against terrorism raises questions and problems of a new urgency. How long can this country survive if the tragic mistakes of Vietnam and Iraq become standard operating procedure for American involvement in the Middle East? How long can innocent citizens around the world bear the pain of this great clash between the defenders of freedom and the fighters of the infidels? In five, ten or fifty years, will the great teacher of history pass Bush or give him the failing grade? There's no extra credit when millions of lives are caught in the middle.