Five years later, America can not yet honor its own resolve
UNITED NATIONS — America and democracies everywhere are at war with Islamic extremism. Australia, Britain, Israel, and Spain have been among the targets. Now delegates from around the world will soon return to the UN’s rostrum to decry international terror, and then most certainly deride many of the specific national strategies deployed to dismember it and render it ineffective.
As I said at the time of the September 11th 2001 attacks, the irony remains that we were not attacked by a formal state such as a country with defined leadership, borders, cities, and a military order of battle. To be sure there was a doctrine—a white heat political hatred of the U.S. so graphically exhibited that September day in New York, Washington D.C. and Pennsylvania. But where was the enemy flag?
After Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the foe was Japanese militarism and we knew their address in Tokyo. In Al Qaida’s case, this shadowy militant force was in part hosted by the thugs running Afghanistan, and supported by Saudi factions, but beyond mastermind Osama bin Laden and widely scattered terrorist cells and hit squads, there was no formal headquarters and thus few specific targets.
Americans are accustomed to dealing with tangibles—namely something that you can define, see, and fix. Resolve is easier to muster when you can see the enemy rather than his shadow. So when President George W Bush speaks of America being at war, while certainly correct, few people can even begin to conjure the retro image of WWII, with its food and fuel rationing, blackouts, massive military conscription, and horrific casualties.
Instead today an America at “war” deals with the near incessant political yammering in Washington over the Bush Administration’s handling of the fight against terror, higher gasoline prices, color coded terror alert levels, and annoying airport security. All of this melodrama is watched on wide screen TV sets, flipping through endless entertainment choices and occasionally watching news programs with a laughable lack of gravitas
The corrosively negative coverage of the Iraq war in much of the left-leaning media has given Americans the impression that our policy is doomed, and that operations in Iraq must soon become hostage to the clock and the calendar no matter what the outcome. Patience remains in short supply.
Many rationalize that if Washington withdrew from Iraq and “went back to fighting the war on terror” things would somehow improve. I suppose magically so, because then an emboldened jihadi militant wave would sweep across the Middle East, toppling many moderate Arab governments and strengthening Islamic hardliners who would revel in the retreat of the “Western crusaders. ” The radicals represent a militant Muslim faction not the Islamic religion. They remain a threat to moderates from Morocco to Egypt and Iraq.
Extremists in their callous contempt for free nations, would turn their attentions to the next tier of targets—France, Spain, Turkey, parts of Russia and the Philippines.
In the short term we ask, are we safer than before September 11th ? Clearly the good news is that nothing has happened since in the USA . This does not mean terrorists have not tried nor won’t again attempt a series of attacks, but does say that law enforcement across the board has done an exemplarily job on a sustained basis to keep people safe. Still in a classic political propaganda tactic, Al Qaida released a pre-September 11th tape, sow fear on the eve of the attacks.
Five years after September 11th, the mournful monument to the terrorists remains a gaping gap in the New York skyline where the Twin Towers once stood. The monument to American resolve, not only newly planned physical structures, but an enduring commitment to freedom and security, is yet to be built.
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