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The United States government has been in a flurry of activity since 9/11. During the past year, in the words of the Department of Homeland Security website, the government has:

• Deployed more than 4,000 FBI special agents and 3,000 support staff to the international investigation of the September 11 terrorist attacks—the largest criminal investigation in history.
  
  
• Deployed more than 9,000 National Guard troops to help secure the nation's airports.
  
  
• Dispensed antibiotics to thousands of people potentially exposed to anthrax mail attacks.
  
  
• Acquired more than a billion doses of antibiotics and signed agreements for the procurement of the smallpox vaccine.
  
  
• Provided round-the-clock security at 348 dams and reservoirs and 58 hydroelectric power plants, including the Hoover, Grand Coulee, Glen Canyon, and Shasta dams.
  
  

That's an impressive response—and only a small part of a very long list of measures. The $10 billion-plus for these protections has been money well spent. Terrorism is not a fad that extremists will soon tire of. It's been brewing for decades. Anthony Lake, in Six Nightmares: Real Threats in a Dangerous World and How America Can Meet Them (Little, Brown, 2000), details the recent history of U.S.-based terrorists (such as Aryan Nation) turning to chemical weapons of mass destruction.

Internationally, the problem is more frightening. One reason the Bush administration is making noises about invading Iraq is that nation's public acknowledgment of its chemical weapons reserve.

In the 1990s, Iraq declared it had 2,245 gallons of anthrax, 5,125 gallons of botulinum toxin, and 4 metric tons of the nerve agent VX—all of which combined could kill everyone on Earth several times over. Since Saddam Hussein turned away weapons inspectors four years ago, these substances—among others in Iraq—remain unaccounted for.

It doesn't take an expert in espionage to see that the threat we face is neither new nor small. The destruction of the World Trade Center was only a spectacular moment in a growing number of terrorist attacks. So thank God, and thank the government for pouring so much money into national security.

Unfortunately, it's not enough. To put it in the words of the Psalmist, "Unless the Lord protects a city, guarding it with sentries will do no good" (127:1).

Government has a divine mandate to protect its people, and it is the way of modern government to depend on a flurry of effort and technology to protect its citizens. This is the sort of thing citizens should rightly expect of their leadership. But we should also expect leaders, especially Christian ones, to at least hint at a vision of security that transcends the technological. At a recent speech at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, President Bush, who knows better, slipped into some unfortunate rhetoric: "In this new war, we will rely upon the genius and creativity of the American people. And that's why I'm here, to look in the eyes of those who possess the genius and the creativity of the American people. Our scientific community is serving on the front lines of this war, by developing new technologies that will make America safer."

To be sure, it was a pep talk to a scientific community, and on other occasions he has pointed his listeners to God. Regardless of the genius, creativity, and technologies of a people, the sobering fact of history is that the Lord, in his unfathomable ways, allows great nations to suffer great harm.

Indeed, for nations that proudly depend on their own wisdom and strength, it is a biblical promise that "the Lord of hosts has a day against all that is proud and lifted up—and it shall be brought low … against every high tower and against every fortified wall" (Isa. 2:12, 15).

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September 9 2002, Vol. 46, No. 10