That was a secret of leadership.” In reaction to a certain mode of flag-displaying faux national unity after the cataclysmic events of 11 September 2001, I wrote an article that proposed instead a sort of activist reticence that might be better designed for a long and arduous confrontation. In this attempt, I annexed a slogan that was adopted by some French citizens after the agonizing loss to Germany of the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. “Always think of it: never speak of it.” Instead of grand proclamations about a “Global War on Terrorism,” or consoling but misleading injunctions from President Bush to consider “America” on the one hand and “the terrorists” on the other, it would be better to cultivate a low but intense flame, designed to burn indefinitely rather than to flare up, and directed not merely at the remorseless grinding-down of al-Qaeda as an organization but at its discredit; at the steady, detailed refutation of Osama bin Laden’s false claim to ventriloquize the wretched of the earth.
