I’ll drive out to Mt. Vernon. I’ll sit on the lawn overlooking the Potomac River. I’ll think about how blessed we are to be Americans. And I’ll remind myself that the man who so loved that promontory ground above the river faced in his day greater terrors and challenges than we will probably ever know.
New Yorkers–indeed, everyone else in the country–have every right to scoff at the notion that Washingtonians felt, or feel, under special siege. The losses here were not as dramatic. We are a target, to be sure, but also have the “hardened” security of the seat of government, including missile batteries wheeled into place just the other day. The “constitutional chain of command” can, when circumstances warrant, be whisked to “secure and undisclosed” locations.
But though many lives were tragically lost here, at the Pentagon and in the plane Osama’s evildoers crashed into it, the real damage done to Washington was psychological and political, in the largest sense. This is a city created in the name of the very principles our enemies hate: freedom, equality, rule of secular law, representative democracy. An attack on the Capitol (which was where Flight 93 was headed) or the White House or, yes, the Pentagon, was an act of war against this city’s reason for being. The enemy declared war on us in many places, but none carried more symbolic weight than the one here.
Unlike ancient capitals, Washington doesn’t have a wall around it, or even (like London or Rome) the remnants of one. It is not a citadel, but an open place, a sweeping vista of monuments to our national ideals. But it does have a river running through it, and it was above a strategic bend in the Potomac that George Washington built his home. From Mt. Vernon’s lookout you can see in almost all directions–east toward the Old World, south and west to the expanding colonial land of the New.
When the revolution came, the Virginia gentleman farmer, soldier and explorer faced what was then the mightiest force on the planet, the British Army and Navy. Washington knew that, if he failed, he would he die, and so would his brethren; that his family and theirs would be ruined, exiled or both. And he knew, above all, that the ideas for which he fought would be ripped from the fertile soil in which they had a chance–perhaps their only chance in history–to grow in a world then dominated by dictators and Divine Right.
A few days after September 11, my work done for the week, I drove out to Mt. Vernon. In mid-September the tourist crowds are gone, and the place is all but empty. It feels pretty much as it must have when the old general was there, enjoying his retirement in the years after the presidency. The famous image of Mt. Vernon is of the front, with the stately wings reaching out to envelope a lawn lined with trees he planted.
But you can see at once that the spot Washington himself must have treasured most is on the other side, where a long veranda looks out over another lawn, the river below and the countryside beyond.
I found a spot to sit down to look at the view. The river doesn’t carry much traffic anymore, but has become a noise-reduction flyway for flights in and out of Reagan National Airport. On most days, the 18th-century scene would have been interrupted by jets. But on this day most planes were still grounded; the skies were eerily quiet. The scene really was as Washington had known it.
What would he say if he could talk to us now? First, he would want to know if, as a nation, we were people of good character, if we were living in the way required of citizens in a new republic. Let’s hope he would think so. He would remind us to secure the high ground (as he did at Mt. Vernon) and be prepared for a long struggle. He would assure us we had no choice but to fight–and every reason to win. He might tell us to remember Valley Forge. Above all I think he’d remind us that what we seek is not to rule the world but to be left in peace on our lawn, looking at the river in freedom.
On the way out of Mt. Vernon, I exchanged my day pass for a yearlong one. When I drive out there again this week, I think I’ll inquire about the family pass–and perhaps even about the lifetime option.
