America Under Siege.

Terrorists have struck hard at the heart of our great nation. The challenge now is to deal swift, sure justice to the perpetrators while preserving our essential freedoms.

Within a few hours on September 11th, our nation was struck by four terrorist attacks that may eventually yield tens of thousands of casualties. Although the identity of the assailants is unknown at the time of writing, our country has endured a murderous act of aggression that simply cannot go unpunished. The carefully orchestrated terrorist strike, in which civilian jetliners were converted into weapons of mass destruction and aimed at the symbols of our nation's military and financial power, was perfectly calibrated to rupture America's sense of security.

As Americans struggle to absorb the horror resulting from the unprecedented attacks upon our beloved country, it is vitally important that we keep in mind several key principles. One of the most important is contained in Alexander Hamilton's warning that war or the threat of war "will compel nations the most attached to liberty to resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe, they at length are willing to run the risk of being less free."

Hamilton's words have an eerie resonance for those of us who watched footage of armed guards patrolling Washington, D.C., and listened to a parade of national leaders warn of a possible need to curtail personal liberties to safeguard American security. "We're going to have to engage in a very constructive and intense debate on how we measure the trade-offs between protecting our people and protecting our civil liberties," advised former Secretary of Defense William Cohen. CNN reporter Tim O'Brien fretted: "I'm less worried about fuel prices than civil liberties, which may be sacrificed in the aftermath of this. And that may have to be the case. A great Supreme Court Justice once said, 'The Bill of Rights is not a suicide pact.' We'll have to take steps to protect ourselves and some of those steps we may find repugnant today but they may become necessary." Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.), who correctly described the attack as "an act of war," told Judy Woodruff of CNN, "Our lifestyles won't be the same for a lo ng time." NBC's Tom Brokaw was even more pointed: "We will have to revisit many of our freedoms as a result of this attack."

Those responsible for the atrocious crimes committed on September 11th must be found and punished, but this should be done through our existing constitutional system. If this act of war was carried out by a foreign power, or coalition of powers, a declaration of war would be an appropriate (if tragic) response. If the attack was perpetrated by a quasi-state terrorist network, such as that operated by Osama bin Laden, the Constitution provides the means to respond: Congress has the authority to "define and punish" such crimes as piracy and terrorism, and to grant "letters of marque and reprisal" against the likes of bin Laden should he or his associates bear the responsibility for these attacks.

Why review such arcane matters at a time like this? It is important to recognize right away that the attack upon our nation provides neither the need nor the justification for the use of extra-constitutional measures.

While heightened vigilance would be wise, we cannot allow our country to become a garrison state. Although it may be necessary to cooperate with friendly governments, there is no reason to become further enmeshed in entangling alliances abroad. These terrorist attacks illustrate, to tragic effect, some of the deadly consequences of our government's penchant for becoming entangled in the wars and conflicts of other nations. In the wake of this tragedy, it is wise to heed the counsel of George Washington, who, in his Farewell Address, advised his fellow citizens that "nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations and passionate attachments for others should be excluded, and that in place of them just and amicable feelings toward all should be cultivated." The course of foreign interventionism, he warned, would lead the nation away from its legitimate interests and inflame passions abroad. "Hence," Washington concluded, "frequent collisions, obstinate, envenome d, and bloody contests."

Now, despite our dreadful experiences in the Balkans and the Middle East and the wise counsel of our esteemed Founding Fathers, the drumbeat is already sounding to turn this awful event into yet another pretext for ill-considered "collective" action under the aegis of an international authority. General Wesley Clark, former commander of the NATO forces in Bosnia, emphasized that "there has to be a much greater degree of cooperation between nations to deal with this.... One resolve that will come out of this from the nations all over the world [is] that more has to be done collectively, together." Later Clark went on to clarify that the need for such international cooperation is a message that "our government will drive ... home very strongly in all of the international fora." Former U.S. Ambassador to the UN Richard Holbrooke averred that "to find the people responsible is going to take a unified international effort. No one nation -- not even the United States -- can do it on its own." Meanwhile, Henry Kiss inger recommended that this "integrated attack" be "dealt with in an integrated way."

The gravest long-term danger presented by the horrific events of September 11th is that the effort to find and punish perpetrators will become a war on the liberties of the American people. The destruction of political freedom, in fact, is precisely the aim of terrorist revolutionaries and those who support them. Marxist militant Carlos Marighella, whose tactical blueprint has been followed by terrorists worldwide, explained that terrorists attack innocent people in order to provoke governments "to intensify repression. The police roundups, house searches, arrests of innocent people, make life unbearable.... Rejecting the 'so-called political solution,' the urban guerilla must become more aggressive and violent, resorting without letup to sabotage, terrorism, expropriations, assaults, kidnappings, and executions, heightening the disastrous situation in which the government must act." Marighella went on to explain how this cycle continues until the existing political order is completely subverted and a revolu tionary regime takes power.

Our security as a nation has been tested and in terrifying fashion found wanting. The urge now, and it is an understandable urge, is to bolster our national security at all costs. We want our children safe, our families secure, our nation at peace -- but these things cannot be bought at the price of freedom. To do so would be to eradicate the very essence of our nation. To do so would be to grant victory to the terrorists.

We can have a more secure future without abridging the liberties of every American. Once our great nation was protected by several internal security and investigative bodies that have since been dismantled. Among them: the Subversive Activities Control Board; the Internal Security Division of the Justice Department; the House Internal Security Subcommittee; the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee; the Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations; the many investigative committees of the state legislatures and the intelligence units of most state and municipal police departments. The basic freedoms of American citizens need not be diminished as some pundits suggest. What is needed is to revive these former pillars of our security.

The deaths in New York and Washington will not go unavenged. Justice will be done. The terrorists who struck at the very heart of our nation thought they could bring America to her knees. They were wrong. Despite our sorrow and our shock, America has not been mortally wounded. No outside attacker, be it a nation, a coalition of nations, or a sophisticated terrorist network, can make America fall. Only we ourselves can do that, by surrendering our freedoms and our sovereignty in a vain and misdirected attempt to ensure security. Instead, we must end our interventionist foreign policy that needlessly antagonizes foreign populations. We must be vigilant of any efforts to cover up any politically inconvenient details that may emerge concerning this monumental tragedy. And above all, we must ensure that this event not be turned into a pretext to extinguish our liberties. For only by preserving our God-given freedoms and exposing the designs of those who tirelessly labor to take them away will we truly honor our d ead.