The Disunited States of America
Posted by Steven Den Beste on September 11th, 2006 (All posts by Steven Den Beste)
Dean Barnett writes movingly about his personal experience on 9/11/2001. And
he concludes with this:
IT HAS BECOME A TRITE LAMENT that 9/11 brought us together, and it’s a
shame that since then we’ve come apart. But 9/11 brought us together because
of two transitory emotions – sadness and rage. Once those emotions calmed
down, once our open wounds turned into scars, it was inevitable that our
differences would resurface.When the flags came out in the aftermath of 9/11, they didn’t signify a
consensus on where we would go from there. They symbolized a consensus that we
were all in pain, all anguished. When the time came to move on, disagreements
inevitably (and not improperly) came regarding exactly how we should move on.Even though a thorough review of 9/11, including both its lead-up and
aftermath, won’t provide an obvious path forward that everyone will agree on,
there are some valuable lessons we can draw from that awful day. Looking back,
we can clearly see the remorseless murderers that our enemies are – that
knowledge is instructive. And we can also see that they are numerous. That,
too, is important to take into account.But the most important lesson we can take from 9/11 is this: We must take
every possible step to ensure never again.
Never again will we allow ourselves to feel the way we did that
day. Never again will we be so blind to storm clouds
as they gather. Never again will we choose to believe
comforting lies rather than disquieting truths.
9/11 didn’t bring us together. It’s true that in the immediate
aftermath of the event that we all felt sadness and rage. But not about the same
things.
Some of us felt sadness at the terrible loss of lives in New York and
Washington and Pennsylvania, and rage at the killers.
Others felt sadness at the terrible loss of life amongst those killed by
America and its puppets over the decades, in South America and "Palestine" and Viet Nam, and
rage at the blind self-centered Americans who had stood by without caring.
We were all anguished. Some of us were anguished because we feared that there
might be further and more devastating terrorist attacks against us. Others were
anguished because they feared that this might inspire an entirely new round of
bloody military aggression by America against innocent people around the world, and conversion of America into a police state.
We all saw clearly. But some of us were looking in a different direction.
Some of us clearly saw the remorseless and ruthless murderers behind the attack,
and knew that they were our mortal enemies who would attack us again if they
possibly could, no matter what we did. Others were looking inward, and saw what
they viewed as an ugly need for revenge amongst Americans.
We all vowed never again. Some of us vowed that we would do
whatever it took to make sure that the terrorists didn’t strike us again. Others
vowed that they would do whatever it took to make America stop doing all the
evil things that had inspired the attack in the first place.
The only consensus on 9/11 was that a terrible tragedy had occurred. There
was no consensus as to who was truly responsible. And that is why within
hours we began to hear, "Ask yourselves why they hate you." They knew that
America had brought this onto itself; deep down they knew that we deserved it.
We all knew that reform was needed. Some of us thought it was the
Arab/Islamic world which needed to reform. Others knew, deep down, that America
was the true problem. To try to force reform onto the Arab world would be to
renew the very mistakes which had caused the attack in the first place. And to
even make the attempt would inspire more and more young Arab men to become
terrorists against us, increasing the danger to us.
Some of us felt that the "root cause" of this war was Arab failure, and Arab
shame at their failure. The others knew that the "root cause" was American
failure, and America’s refusal to feel shame at its failure.
We were not united on 9/11 and we have not been united on any day since. But
that is not a weakness. If the people of America are ever 100% united on
anything whatever, I will know that the country I love has died.
September 11th, 2006 at 3:58 am
“They knew that America had brought this onto itself; deep down they knew that we deserved it.”
Yes, many Leftists Blame America (Blame Bush, Blame Christianity & the Crusades), and especially Blame Capitalism, claiming poverty is the root cause.
Jane Galt’s recent disagreement with Brad DeLong about Envy, and chopping down the Tall Poppies, reducing the rich EVEN IF it doesn’t help the poor absolutely. There argument: ‘Those who believe the rich induce envy in the poor, and do so out of spite, deserve to be brought down.’ Such folk who hate Tax Cuts (for the rich!), would mostly think bringing down rich America (inducing envy!) is reasonable.
Secondly, protesting the current status, in which it is easy to get a big “unity” coalition, is far different than agreement on what policy. On Iraq, there’s more troops, fewer troops, and the same troops. I kind of think the same troops is the best bad choice, with more troops meaning more casualties and not any quicker Iraqi responsibility (probably slower), and less troops means much more Iraqi casualties as terrorists see a ‘weaker’ America.
But both those wanting more or fewer troops can be against Bush — and are. Yet they don’t really agree.
Great disagreement post.
September 11th, 2006 at 8:48 am
What has amazed me since the event is how 9-11 remains a Rorschach Test for the anti-American Left - a giant ink stain which functions as a mirror of a person’s beliefs. I looked at a book at the local Barnes & Noble written by some academic who blamed America’s “interventionist foreign policy” for the attack.
Was that America’s “interventionist foreign policy” that supported the Serbs as they attempted to wipe out the Muslims of Bosnia? No wait… America supported the Muslims against the Serbs there.
Or was it America’s “interventionist foreign policy” that supported the Soviets crushing of Islamic resistance in Afghanistan during the 1980’s? Well… We backed the mujahadeen then didn’t we…
Or was it America’s “interventionist foreign policy” of waiting for the UN to fix the problem in Rwanda in 1994? Or America’s “interventionist foreign policy” that helped Islamic Indonesia after the tsumani of ‘05?
9-11 remains an ink stain for the anti-American Left. It doesn’t fit into their world view, forcing them to do intellectual contortions to make that event fit.
September 11th, 2006 at 9:11 am
You are right, Steven! After 9/11, my friend Amanda’s first words to me were, “why do they hate us so?” And I remember being surprised that she thought that way. I knew her to be a liberal, but until then I didn’t realise how different her viewpoint was. My own first thoughts were fear that the US would not do anything to fight back. After all, there had been plenty of attacks on US property around the world and I was just getting used to the attitude of “US is a powerful country so it shouldn’t hit back because that would be fair on the little guys throwing stones at us”. Since then we have developed these initial reactions in separate paths. Amanda has resigned to being attacked by the bad guys and our good guys fighting them off as long as we have a strong military. I on the other hand am still convinced that we have to change or destroy Islam; it has had free rein around the world for far too long.
September 11th, 2006 at 9:22 am
I think that the Left defaults to the blame American/Liberal-Democracies first argument because it is the only model of foreign relations that grants the articulate intellectual a central role in defining and solving the problem.
Articulate intellectuals affect the world by influencing the beliefs and behaviors of others through various modes of communication. Western-intellectuals have the most influence within the western developed world itself. Therefore, they seek to define problems as arising from the past or present behavior of the west so that the obvious solution to the problem is to have intellectuals alter western behavior via their persuasive abilities.
Defining problems as arising from factors internal to non-Western actors defines the problems in terms by which intellectuals will have little ability to influence events. For example, if aliens invaded tomorrow just because they felt like it, what role would articulate intellectuals play in the conflict? Their ability to manipulate public opinion would mean little. Look how small a role that they played in WWII.
The Left’s model of the Cold War followed this template. I was taught in college that although Joseph Stalin was a paranoid mass-murdering psychopath on matters internal to the Soviet Union, when it came to foreign policy he metamorphosed into a calm, rational realist. It was only the paranoid and irrational behavior of the free-world that created the Cold War in the first place.
Clearly, the intellectuals adopted this view based not on any empirical observations but on a desire to define the problem in such a way that they placed a central role in resolving it. If the Cold War arose primarily from Communist ideology and the internal dynamics of Communist states then nothing that Western intellectual said would have much impact on the course of the conflict. They would be reduced to the role of mere documenters and the conflict would continue until Communist lost their internal hold on power. (Which is what happened.)
I think they pursue the same basic model for the same basic reasons in the War on Terror. If contemporary terrorism arises primarily from the actions of Western liberal-democracies then articulate intellectuals will play a central role in solving the problem by persuading us to change or evil ways. However, if the conflict arises primarily from factors internal to non-Western actors (right now, Islamic and Arabic societies) then intellectuals in the West will have little influence on the outcome.
There is an old saying that when the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail. The contemporary Left simply cannot contemplate major events in which their hammers aren’t needed.
September 11th, 2006 at 9:40 am
SDB’s post is a much-needed rejoinder to the conventional wisdom that we were all “unified” after 9/11. A corollary to the “unified” meme is that “we all supported Afghanistan” (which is said in an effort to separate Afghanistan from Iraq), which is equally untrue: Some people supported the invasion of Afghanistan, others didn’t want it but knew they could not stop it so they pretended to support it or at least became resigned to it’s inevitability.
p.s. Shannon Love’s comment is one of the most insightful things I have read in quite some time.
September 11th, 2006 at 9:46 am
Yeah. Maybe I grew up too enamoured with what I knew of the history of World War II, and how the vast majority of the country got behind the war effort.
Now I look on it in retrospect and realize that the reason for this seeming unity was that the non-isolationist right knew we had to fight, and most of the left opposed it because the Nazis had a pact with the Soviets and the left were Soviet sympathizers at the time. So once Hitler attacked Russia, the left was united with the non-isolationist right. Then the only ones left to oppose were the isolationist right, and they were bowled over.
We may never see such unique circumstances again.
September 11th, 2006 at 9:50 am
>p.s. Shannon Love’s comment is one of the most insightful things I have read in quite some time.
Amen, brother! My sentiments exactly!
September 11th, 2006 at 9:55 am
The school of thought that tries to find reasons for the terrorist attacks rooted in Western culpability is both solipsistic and a mirror image of the terrorists’ psychosis.
Something people don’t often ask is the corollary of “Why do they hate us?”:
Why don’t we hate them?
The answer, I think, to both questions is very simple. They hate us because they are taught to hate us by their schools, their religious leaders, their states: all the gatekeepers of information. We don’t hate them because we are taught NOT to hate others by our free media, our schools, our religious leaders, and our freely elected governments.
Those that rule by force, or aspire to, rally support through xenophobia and fantasy. The gatekeepers of information in the Mideast do their best to create a narrative in which they are necessary, so that the people they oppress never demand the freedom that is their right.
September 11th, 2006 at 9:58 am
After 9/11, I was one of those who asked “Why do they hate us?” I remember saying something like, “Nobody bombs Switzerland.” Thankfully, because of USS Clueless and other blogs like it, my opinion has greatly reformed to what is commonly referred to as a ‘neo-libertarian’ mentality. I wish most of my intellectual friends had made this journey with me…
September 11th, 2006 at 10:01 am
Shannon Love’s comment is key. It reminded me of Robert Nozick’s famous essay Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism. Captitalism doesn’t reward intellectuals the way the educational system taught them to expect. Wordsmith intellectuals are deeply resentful and wish to live in a world like grade school classroom, in which their skills made them the teacher’s pets. The world, instead values the skills developed in the rough and tumble of the schoolyard. In a world where Jihadis are killing us, wordsmith intellectuals can only insist we need to talk, show our empathy and appeal to reason.
September 11th, 2006 at 10:02 am
The afternoon of 9/11 I remember sitting in my office with NPR on and listening to caller after caller saying this was our due. The caller I remember most was filled with venom, commenting this was clear & fair retaliation for our sins; but, he sputtered, we wouldn’t change, we would be dogs returning to our vomit & continue in our evil.
Shannon’s point was reinforced by the complete unwillingness of those callers to think in terms of an Islamic point of view. These anti-Americans were obsessively American in the values they projected: terrorists only want freedom - freedom from us. They couldn’t conceive of the arguments real terrorists make nor of their values.
September 11th, 2006 at 10:03 am
Dean Esmay,
The broad consensus in WWII was highly unique in US history. Never before or since have we fought with such unity. The bitter disputes we see now are the norm dating all the way back to the Revolution. Even the same basic arguments both for and against the war make a reappearance.
There are times when I think that we should make December 7th “Isoroku Yamamoto Appreciation Day.” Without his culturally shocking surprise attack America might have never entered the war or would have done so bitterly divided. Had the Japanese tried to just slowly ooze into Dutch Indonesia they could have avoided conflict with America altogether or at least fought a demoralized and uncertain nation.
September 11th, 2006 at 10:20 am
TallDave wrote: “We don’t hate them because we are taught NOT to hate others by our free media, our schools, our religious leaders, and our freely elected governments.”
We are, however, taught to hate ourselves. Our free media abuse their freedom to trumpet a distorted, dishonest picture of reality in which we are responsible for all the world’s ills. Our schools violate our trust and betray their own mission by indoctrinating our children with a hatred of their own country and the values of Western civilization. Our elected governments are controlled by self-serving bureaucrats and politicians who care only for securing and enhancing their own positions of power and privilege.
Our enemy hates us because their entire civilization revolves around murder and brutal conquest. And we are no match for them because our culture revolves around suicide and surrender.
September 11th, 2006 at 10:22 am
Interesting comments all around — especially yours Shannon.
There is an old saying that when the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail. The contemporary Left simply cannot contemplate major events in which their hammers aren’t needed.
The funny thing is that leftists I’ve run into would trot out the old saying about hammers and nails. They would equate the use of military force as the hammer and problems come in different shapes and sizes. So they would criticize anyone who would want to use the “hammer”. The trouble is that sometimes the problem does look like a nail and does need a hammer to smack it down.
September 11th, 2006 at 10:52 am
It is certainly true that the United States has always been disunited, and that this is one of our strengths. But from a sufficient distance in time or space, we have seemed unitary. Similarly, history buffs know that the chronicle of any given period or war is full of nuance and alternative interpretations, even if a simple pat narrative is taught to grade school students.
But the competing narratives of the last few years and the disunity of the competing camps cannot be smoothed over at any altitude. For this reason I tend to expect, with some foreboding, that the history of this age will be written even more in terms of future events than those past.
September 11th, 2006 at 10:57 am
This lack of unity guarantees that we will someday see a more horrific attack succeed. Like it or not, our enemies see this disagreement as a sign of weakness. The great problem of American foreign policy is to convince the world that Americans can fight in a credible fashion and persist in the face of error, uncertainty, and disagreement.
Our enemies think our internal disagreements will split us. So they will keep attacking and will be encouraged to keep attacking until something so monstrous is done that our response is unambiguous and decisive and to some extent, nearly as horrific.
The only thing that would stop that is some internal transformation in the world terrorist movement that causes it to wither away of its own accord. I see nothing on the horizon that makes that remotely possible.
Therefore, there will be another 9/11. No. There will be something MUCH worse than 9/11. It’s just a question of when.
September 11th, 2006 at 11:10 am
claiming poverty is the root cause.
If this were true, Haiti would be a nation of terrorists. Haiti is not a nation of terrorists.
Q.E.D. this notion is pure bullshit.
September 11th, 2006 at 11:12 am
Exactly. Al-qaeda didn’t learn from the Japanese, who looked at the same disunity as weakness during the 1920s & 1930s (and still don’t understand us today), so another attack will indeed occur and may even succeed.
And we will smack them again. Pakistan doesn’t have the stomach to take out the “tribal areas” - but we do.
Such is the price we pay for our civilization.
September 11th, 2006 at 11:12 am
Miss Love is largely correct, but there’s more to say on the subject. For those “articulate intellectuals,” whom Thomas Sowell would call “the anointed,” are incapable of imagining themselves outside society’s core group of decisionmakers; it’s why they’ve always loved socialism. Their model may be the arrangement they most admired, the “New Frontier/Great Society” administration, but in extremis it’s about a vision of all significant decisions being made by themselves and their acolytes, even if it should require a totalitarian state to enforce them.
In other words, it’s not necessary for them to take sides against America simply to see themselves at the heart of its power structure. We must look deeper.
My own thesis is that they’re emotionally offended by the systemic processes of free societies. Such things don’t strike them as rational. Note also that the logic applies to the acquired wisdom we call tradition, which was assembled painfully over the generations by trial and error, and by persons less canny than they.
Time was, the philosophers cherished the notion that they could “deduce the world” from a single grain of sand. Our own “intellectuals” harbor similar conceits, and would fight to the death to keep them. Our deaths, not theirs.
September 11th, 2006 at 11:15 am
I disagree with the left’s views on policy matters and the terrorist issue. However, there’s a big difference between “disagreement” and “disunity”. If there’s one thing I dislike about the current political climate within the Conservative movement is the promotion of the idea that “disagreement” from the left is equated with “disunity”… or even worse, Anti-Americanism. I believe it to be a very dangerous path to travel, because the fact is, those on the left are still our fellow Americans.
While they have no problem impugning the Right or Conservatives, it’s wrong for us to sink to those same depths. And sadly, I’ve seen/read way too many things from respected Conservatives that do exactly that. Most notably the recent phenomenon of comparing EVERYONE that disagrees with your views to Hitler or Nazis… from BOTH sides of the political spectrum. It is quite justified to attack the views and philosophies that we believe to be dangerous… but attacking the PEOPLE who hold those view is wrong.
September 11th, 2006 at 11:20 am
Nah, if there is lack of unity, and if there is another 9/11 coming, it’s because of the Bush administration’s inadequate response and foolish choices. DenBeste should return to his Japanese schoolgirl comics, how this guy is thought of as having anything to say on war is beyond me.
If you’re going to fight a war, do it right: plan and provide adequate resources.
To give one example of fecklessness, Rumsfeld has fought expanding the size of the Army tooth-and-nail. This has, of course, caused those who are in the Army to serve longer and more frequent tours in the combat zones. My son has been one of them, and as a veteran myself I am flabbergasted at the incompetence of the whole war effort.
The failure to expand the size of the military also prevented the deployment of adequate troop numbers to secure either Afghanistan or Iraq. The results are there to see: Opium production and Taliban attacks are increasing in Afghanistan, and we all know about Iraq.
The lack of resources has nothing to do with “lack of unity,” it rather is the result of a failure of the Bush administration to recognize that you have to raise, not lower, taxes during a war. Instead, they pander to their “no new taxes” base, to the detriment of those relative few trying to fight the war.
Thus we have both a half-assed war effort and a ballooning national debt.
September 11th, 2006 at 11:22 am
StrategyPage assessment of where we are after five years. Tangential, but may as well put it here.
The USA has made progress despite disunity. As SDB says, America would not be America if we had unanimity on any important policy.
Our apparent unity during WWII covered over a lot of different agendas, and there was lots of partisan fighting about the conduct of the war, even though all parties supported the war generally. FDR almost lost control of the house in the 1942 Midterm elections. The Ds lost 45 seats. There was unity, within the scope of the usual, well-functioning American political process.
September 11th, 2006 at 11:25 am
Steven, since no one else has said it I will: Damn nice to hear your voice once more! I so miss your writing on U.S.S. Clueless, even though I understand your reasons for quitting. Be well, my man, and Godspeed.
September 11th, 2006 at 11:33 am
Excellent discussion all around.
I’d like to follow on Shannon’s insightful analysis to add the historical note. Marx had considered the revolution to well up from the working class, but by the early 20 th century it was becoming clear that that wasn’t going to happen. Lenin moved intellectuals (of suitable views, of course) to center stage to “guide” Joe Sixpack to communism, thereby appealing to their vanity. Much like Christians who believe they’ll be rewarded in the afterlife, intellectuals believe they’ll assume their rightful place in the social order once socialism replaces capitalism.
For most of the last 150 years businessmen were the iconic figures, with intellectuals being largely marginalized, and that strikes intellectuals as blatantly and self-evidently unjust. So, following Shannon, they try to shift debate to a basis that favors them, namely verbal gymnastics and tortured reasoning that confounds and/or bores their adversaries. In many respects, leftist intellectuals do for public policy what Enron did for accounting: obfuscate reality to achieve their self-serving purposes.
September 11th, 2006 at 11:40 am
“…the result of a failure of the Bush administration to recognize that you have to raise, not lower, taxes during a war.”
Wrong, point-five. Tax revenue has increased with the Bush cuts in tax rates. Spending is the problem and both parties are to blame for that.
The other defects in your thinking I’ll leave for others to address.
September 11th, 2006 at 11:44 am
Shannon made a good and very true post, but that’s only part of it. Some oppose our policies out of vanity, but some leftists truly believe in Socialism, and are ‘religious fanatics’ for their faith. Capitalism is the greatest evil; the US is the center of world capitalism; therefore, the US is the center of evil. They have devoted their lives to fighting this evil, which is why so many of them use their job, whatever it is, to further the Cause. That is the reason I can be expelled for stating an un-PC idea, the reason I have to listen to my GEOGRAPHY professor bash Bush for two hours, and the reason my father’s union, as announced in its newsletter, gives its support and money to HUGO CHAVEZ. Their view of patriotism is that it is patriotic to destroy the US in its present form to free the people from the Great Oppression–we insist!
9/11 just proves what they already believed–see the world strike back at the great top-hat wearing, obese, cigar-chomping Satan. See the “little Eichmanns” die for their sins. Leftists of this stripe view terorists not as a threat, but as just more backing for their arguments, at minimum, or, at most, as the brave vanguard in the fight for capitalism’s overthrow.
This war has a silver lining. The terrorists, who hurt us once but now cannot seem to win a battle, are revealing to us just how far our internal rot has gone.
September 11th, 2006 at 12:00 pm
For a few days after 9/11 the world (yes, even most of the Muslim world) was with America. It wasn’t so much Bush’s ridiculous posturning that turned us off as the hysteria.
We know the American people are in thrall to their shrinks and are constantly brainwashed with psychobabble about “letting go of your emotions” but if ever there was a time for British stiff upper lip, German self - posession or Swedish reserve it was in the aftermath of 9/11.
Following the very minor London bombings of July last year my very dear friend in Dallas called me and said “I don’t want you to go anywhere near London.” She was genuinely concerned for my wellbeing but I explained that if I’d had any reason to go to London the next day I would have gone bacause not to do so would have meant the terrorists had beaten me.
America virtually came to a standstill after 9/11 and now Bin Laden only has to fart and there is a major international panic.
And so the terrorists have won. While some people take comfort from the fact there have been no further attacks on American soil, let’s remember the victory they were handed means they don’t have to attack but simply make a few noises.
September 11th, 2006 at 12:16 pm
The 9/11 attack was not about us. It was Osaa showing his power to rally forces against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Like Nasrallah in Lebanon he unerestimated his opponent and misread history. We were supposed to be cowed by the Soviet experience in Afghanistan. The House of Saud was to be overthrown.
In the US, the same intellectual leaders who never found evil in the Soviet Union found evil in the US. The attack was our fault and “If-Only” we would never be attacked again. This was a great romantic way to regain the same power they had when they overthrew the Nixon/Vietnam establishment. This would make up for the humiliating failure to steal the 2000 election…
The problem for both Osama and the Intellectual Leaders is that the world changed in 1990’s. The Internet allows faster communication and greater sharing of information. Technology changed the way we operate and we inturn have changed… The old prisms that allowed us to see so clearly the past returning are no longer valid.
The news moves faster. The facts can be created and manipulated faster. The enemy changes and evolves faster. Our forces change faster… The war we accepted in 2001 is several evolutions behind the one we fight today.
Our political structures have creaked and groaned to shift in response. Our intellectual leaders keep hoisting views of the past in hopes that something of the future can be seen. Our knuckel-dragging warriors are adopting to new tactics and using new technology faster than their ossified Pentagon parents can follow.
This war may not be over for 50 years or more. What results will be a changed world. Just as the world changed following WWI and WWII and the Cold War, the world following this conflict will be different. Unfortunately, we have much blood to shed before those changes will happen. It may involve WMD’s of every stripe being used against the West… How will we respond to a WMD attack?
The game is afoot and nobody knows what awaits.
September 11th, 2006 at 12:22 pm
Good to read you SDB.
September 11th, 2006 at 12:26 pm
Howard Cronin ,
If there’s one thing I dislike about the current political climate within the Conservative movement is the promotion of the idea that “disagreement” from the left is equated with “disunity”… or even worse, Anti-Americanism.
Except no one is really equating disagreement with Anti-Americanism. We are equating repeated cries of “America is the cause of all the world’s problems” with anti-Americanism.
No one who says that the War on Terror is being prosecuted ineffectively is accused of anti-Americanism. Only those who repeatedly and forcefully claim that America (and the west in general) actually cause terrorism are rightly called to task for their views. When you see that the same people who believe that we cause terrorism also hold extremely negative views about historical and contemporary America across a wide range of issues it is fair to ask if their arguments arise from a dispassionate analysis of the facts or instead from systematic contempt for America itself.
Try this experiment with your leftist friends: Ask them to name three things that Americans do better than any other political entity. Observe how uncomfortable they get. Most probably won’t even answer. In social gatherings, Leftist will often compete to see who can voice the most anti-American sentiments. The darker one’s view of America, the greater one’s status.
Leftist are fantasy driven. The America they love exist only in their minds. They hate the reality of America because they have convinced themselves that reaching their fantasy America would be very easy if only everyone else wasn’t so evil and stupid. They may sincerely believe that love America but functionally, in the real-world where political postures have physical consequences, they are anti-American. When it comes time to defend the actual real America, warts and all, they won’t do it.
September 11th, 2006 at 12:30 pm
“America virtually came to a standstill after 9/11 and now Bin Laden only has to fart and there is a major international panic.”
What a load of self-serving B.S. Yet another commentor with a weak memory.
Terrorist attacks against the USA, even on USA soil, were fairly common events even before 9-11.
For example, when the FIRST World Trade Center bombing killed 6 and injured 1040 people, Manhattan stayed opened for business. Planes filled with Americans were blown up or hijacked every couple of years, and people kept flying.
The difference with 9-11 was the scale. Thousands died. It was only dumb luck that 10s of thousands did not die. Property and economic damage ran into the 100s of billions of dollars. It was the worst disaster, man-made or natural, in the USA since WWII. And it was the single most violent day in North America since 1864.
I’m certain an attack of similar scale, out of the blue, in Stockholm or London would trigger a bit of “hysteria” by the locals. In fact, maybe we should compare the number of suspected terrorists shot by police in the USA since 9-11 with the number shot in the UK since the July bombings before we start discussing the relative levels of hysteria in each country.
September 11th, 2006 at 12:48 pm
We ain’t winning and we ain’t losing.
Islam is the enemy.
The enemy will conquer us using our own words, deeds and laws.
All we need is to get someone to get elected that will be sympathetic to Moslem anger, greivances and desires.
all we need is some idiot who will agree to allow Sharia laws to exist alongside our own laws.
That Idiot is out there somewhere! waiting to be elected.
Then It comes down to the Infidel resistance among us.
I see a tiime where our own laws will defeat us.
September 11th, 2006 at 1:06 pm
–For a few days after 9/11 the world (yes, even most of the Muslim world) was with America.–
Uhhh, no.
Superficially, perhaps.
—
As to the deficit, well, when we get to 130% like we were in WWII, give me a call.
September 11th, 2006 at 1:24 pm
Excellent post Shannon Love.
Recently the left has been pushing a kind of utilitarian approach to the WOT. There is nothing irrational about such an approach…functionally that was our approach before 9/11. Example…the Khobar Towers bombing…Clinton promised to get to the bottom of it but when it became clear that Iran was the culprit he turned the other way because dealing with Iran would mean War. I think Clinton was right.
And there is nothing immoral about such an approach either. Evil will always be with us.
But deep down, human beings are not pure utilitarians as a new book “Moral Minds” demonstrates. The 9/11 attack disturbed us deeply in ways we cannot fully articulate because the moral calculus is hard-wired. It is impossible, I think, for us to just shrug our shoulders and say “shit happens”. So I don’t believe the left even buys its own bullshit. They are comfortable with their pose however of moral superiority when the yokels take up the hard task of stopping the jihadists.
September 11th, 2006 at 1:26 pm
Personally, I think the purpose of the 9-11 attacks was to trick America into attacking Saudi Arabia, not Afghanistan (and certainly not bin Laden, personally).
All the 9-11 attackers were hand picked by bin Laden. Why were 15 of them Saudis? Why not use caucasian Al-Qaeda members who could move about America unremarked, like John Walker Lindh or David Hicks? Why were none of the attackers from Iraq, Iran, Palestine, Syria, or Afghanistan?
It fits together, especially with bin Laden’s efforts to initially deny responsibility for 9-11. His hope was to trick America into attacking the Land of Mecca and Medina, a move that would galvanize the entire Muslim world against us… and, in the particular fantasy that bin Laden happens to believe in, bring Allah himself down from Heaven to smite the infidel and personally usher in the worldwide Caliphate. Only when it became clear that Dubya wasn’t going to take that bait, did Osama finally claim responsibility.
Not that any of this matters to bin Laden’s fellow fantasy idealists.
September 11th, 2006 at 1:39 pm
Further to Shannon Love’s point - I give you the liberal anthem:
“It’s the Hammer of Justice,
It’s the Bell of Freeeeedom,
It’s a song about love between my brothers and my sisters, allll , allll over this world.”
If pretty songs and lyrics could protect us, they would have done so - we’ve filled the world with songs about peace and love for years.
All the while, others who lust for conquest and religious glory listened to those songs and said “Wow, we can surely take out these fools!”
September 11th, 2006 at 1:57 pm
Steven, I gratefully remember what a tower of strength you were in the months after 9/11. It’s good to read you again.
Your last paragraph was “We were not united on 9/11 and we have not been united on any day since. But that is not a weakness. If the people of America are ever 100% united on anything whatever, I will know that the country I love has died.” Being concerned about our disunity and how the war is going, I hope you’ll expand on those statements in the future.
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‘point five’’s comment has much I agree with, but he prefaces it with “…how this guy is thought of as having anything to say on war is beyond me.”
My sympathies. Inability or unwillingness to look at what others are offering can be a serious impairment. Heaven knows it’s hurt me on occasion–not that I could see it at the time.
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Like others, I found Shannon Love’s first comment thought-provoking. She wrote, “However, if the conflict arises primarily from factors internal to non-Western actors (right now, Islamic and Arabic societies) then intellectuals in the West will have little influence on the outcome.”
Actually, our articulate intellectuals potentially have much to contribute. Unless it deteriorates into a genocidal clash of civilizations, soft power as well as hard power will be required to win this new kind of war. At present we are outmatched in soft power and that is exactly where our articulate intellectuals could contribute.
Maybe the childishness pointed out by Shannon masks the intelligentsia’s deficiencies. Faced with a refutative challenge to their imaginary multicultural wonderland, they retreat into denial. In part, the point of the tantrums is to cover up the exposure of their incapacity.
September 11th, 2006 at 2:05 pm
Come on, leftists don’t just have a hammer; everything doesn’t look like a nail to them.
They also have a sickle, so some people look like grain ripe for harvest.
September 11th, 2006 at 2:28 pm
Just for the record: Shannon Love is a man.
September 11th, 2006 at 2:29 pm
There are few people I’d rather hear from on this day than you, Mr. Den Beste. Yours is a voice I’ve greatly missed. Godspeed.
September 11th, 2006 at 2:35 pm
Interesting comments, and I don’t doubt the sincerity and conviction of all of your statements; however, I find it bizarre that not a single comment referenced oil. Contrary to what many have noted, this is NOT a war with Islam, it’s a war with a small group of individuals with a political agenda that are using religion to fulfill their ends. I don’t believe that the US is to blame for terrorism, yet I’m not so blinded by ideology to recognize that we’re complicit in its creation. We’ve been propping up oppressive regimes in the Middle East for decades now (see the CIA-led coup to install the Shah in the 50’s, see our deal with the devil in Saudi Arabia), and we armed, trained and supported the very mujahadeen that morphed into Al Qaeda. Furthermore, our policies continue to have blowback, most often because we veil them in rhetoric that makes no sense, like “freedom’s on the march.” Until we have an honest discussion about this from all ends of the political spectrum, we’ll continue to scream at each other and not understand why. Our goal for the Middle East is to ensure a stable, market-driven, fungible supply of oil. Period.
I’m sure this will inspire some flamethrowing, but I’d honestly be interested to hear what some of you have to say on this issue.
September 11th, 2006 at 2:48 pm
“If you’re going to fight a war, do it right: plan and provide adequate resources.”
Do some reading… Wake Island, Invasion of Guam, D-Day, Gettysburg, Bull Run, Kasserine Pass, Belleau Wood, etc…
Then, come back here, make that comment again, and remember to put the /sarcasm tag on it.
September 11th, 2006 at 2:52 pm
Edgar wrote:
Our goal for the Middle East is to ensure a stable, market-driven, fungible supply of oil. Period.
If we were in it solely for the oil we could have cut deals with the dictators, as the French and others did. Or we could have continued simply to buy oil on the open market. Oil is fungible, after all, and the sellers, having no other products worth considering, would certainly continue to sell it — to us or to someone who would sell to us.
No, this war is mainly about protecting ourselves against WMD attacks by terrorists and terror states. Our neo-Wilsonian campaign for democracy follows our having tried every alternative without success. That shouldn’t be difficult to understand, yet I keep hearing arguments like yours that assert that it’s all about oil and ignore the WMD threat. Why is that?
September 11th, 2006 at 3:06 pm
Shannon,
ever consider signing as “Mr. Shannon Love”? Less confusion that way…
September 11th, 2006 at 3:13 pm
Jonathan wrote:
I keep hearing arguments like yours that assert that it’s all about oil and ignore the WMD threat. Why is that?
In my opinion, they’re one and the same. Without oil, we don’t have a strategic interest in the Middle East (although you could make a good argument for Israel, but