These readers were appalled that I would question our government at
                      such a time of national crisis. They questioned my patriotism.

                      I am not angry with these readers. They were simply exercising their right to
                      freedom of speech. Good for them. Freedom of speech is perhaps our most
                      essential right as Americans. It was the first thing the Founding Fathers wrote
                      down at the Constitutional Convention. We built a new nation based on it.
                     We crossed an ocean to achieve it, and fought wars to preserve it.

                      The only antidote to free speech we don’t like is more free speech.

                      What troubled me greatly was not that these readers disagreed with me,
                      but that they disagreed with my right to ask questions.

                      This got me thinking about what it means to be an American.

                      The very act of coming to the New World was an act of free speech. The
                      Founding Fathers constructed a government of three separate branches,
                      so that any one of the branches could question the other two, so that
                      no one branch gained too much power. They made two of those branches
                      elective, so that if the people did not approve of their leaders’ actions,
                      they could replace them.

                      Our nation was founded on our right – in fact our responsibility -- to
                      question our government.

                      So how did we get to a place in this country where it is considered
                      unpatriotic to question our government?

                      I’ve been thinking a lot about this question – lying awake nights, in
                      fact -- and I think I have the answer.

                      Fear.

                      Fear is not necessarily a bad thing. As a human instinct it keeps us
                      from killing ourselves driving 80 miles an hour in a snowstorm or
                      jumping off of bridges tied to ropes because it looks like fun (well,
                      some of us anyway).

                      And sometimes we feel fear and do the thing we fear anyway. That is the
                      definition of bravery: fearing to do something and still doing it
                      because it is necessary. Brave men stormed the beach at Normandy
                      despite the fact that their pounding hearts and trembling limbs told
                      them it was certain death.

                      But fear can also lead us headlong into some of our worst mistakes.
                      Even if we think we are doing right, it is the fear that makes us think
                      this. It is the fear that keeps us from examining the facts.

                      Inciting fear is a time-honored tool of kings and presidents to
                      persuade the people of the necessity to do what the leaders feel needs
                      to be done. If you want people to attack something, make them fear it.

                      In an effort to pursue the American doctrine of Manifest Destiny and
                      seize land south of the United States, President Polk in 1846 sent U.S.
                      troops to the region between the Rio Grande and Nueces Rivers, which he
                      knew Mexico believed was part of its territory. When Mexican forces
                      attacked the American troops, Polk announced that Mexico had "invaded
                      our territory, and shed American blood upon the American soil." He used
                      the fear this incited in the American people to receive from Congress a
                      declaration of war against Mexico.

                      In 1964 President Johnson used the questionable report of a North
                      Vietnamese attack on the U.S. destroyers Maddox and Turner Joy to rally
                      American support and push through Congress the Tonkin Gulf Resolution
                      authorizing war in Vietnam.

                      Some folks even believe that President Roosevelt allowed the Japanese
                      to attack Pearl Harbor in order to persuade Americans of the need for
                      the U.S. to enter World War II. I don’t know if that is true. I would
                      like to believe that it is not, though it may be fear that makes me
                      hope this. Either way, it was indeed a war that needed to be fought,
                      but it took the fear created by the attack to start the war drums
                      beating in American hearts.

                      A Congressional panel is right now asking some of the same questions
                      that I asked in my column, and getting some very disturbing answers
                      about the state of our administration’s readiness. Whether these
                      answers will become part of the public debate any time soon is doubtful
                      as long as people continue to let their fear prevent them from
                      examining the facts.

                      In the meantime we stand poised at the edge of war in Iraq, with very
                      little idea of the consequences of war to the international coalition
                      against terrorism, or if who we wind up with in place of Sadaam will
                      not in fact be worse, and indeed no real evidence of the necessity to
                      attack at all.

                      All we really know is that we have suffered a heartbreaking attack on
                      American soil. The White House has been unable to capture Osama bin
                      Laden, so it points to Sadaam Hussein, and says he is to blame for our
                      pain. And we charge forward to attack what we are told is our enemy.
                      We give in to the fear without examining the facts.

                      We must do what needs to be done. But we must be sure it needs to be
                      done before we do it. What I am hoping is that we will exercise the
                      good fear, the kind that tells us to be wary of bloodshed, and use this
                      fear to question a war in Iraq before we begin it, instead of giving in
                      to the fear that makes us afraid to ask questions to which we may not
                      like the answers.