Jonah Goldberg has a piece up today which poses a good point:
“Remember 9/11!” once looked like it was going to be a battle cry for the ages up there with “Remember the Alamo!” Now, the only aspect of 9/11 that is acceptable on a bipartisan basis is sadness. Obviously, with that much carnage and suffering there’s a place for the sadness. But why only sadness?If I had said in late 2001, with bodies still being pulled from the wreckage, anthrax flying through the mail, pandemonium reigning at the airports, and bombs falling on Kabul, that by ‘07 leading Democrats would be ridiculing the idea of the war on terror as a bumper sticker, I’d have been thought mad. If I’d predicted that a third of Democrats would be telling pollsters that Bush knew in advance about 9/11, and that the eleventh of September would become an innocuous date for parental get-togethers to talk about potty-training strategies and phonics for preschoolers, people would have thought I was crazy.
I was thinking last night how this is the first 9/11 since the horrible day itself in which I haven't felt fixated on the date. In which I haven't wanted to watch HBO's magnificent documentary that came out a year after 9/11/2001. In which I didn't walk around on the verge of tears, wanting to say a prayer or punch a wall or ... something. Last week I was driving through Dallas and passed an elementary school that had on its sign a message inviting parents to come to a meeting about Cub Scouting "on September 11." I cringed at the juxtaposition: Cub Scouts and That Date. But then I thought, well, maybe it's good to be getting back to normal.
So: today was the first normal 9/11 for me. And maybe I feel a little bit guilty for that, as if to leave all those emotions behind is in some way to break faith with the dead. Objectively I know this is untrue, but still. As I've said in this forum many times, I regret the way my overwhelming anger over the events of 9/11 caused my judgment about what the US should do in response to be informed chiefly by wrath. Don't get me wrong: al-Qaeda deserved our wrath. But decisions of war and peace should be made coolly and rationally. The trauma of that event made that sort of deliberation extremely difficult. God, it's hard to remember how scared we all were then. And that's nothing to apologize for. Nothing like that had ever happened to our country, at least not the mainland. None of us had any idea what was coming next. My office in NYC was hit with anthrax, and because I had been leaning unawares over the pile of letters to the editor in which the anthrax-spiked letter had been sitting, when I caught a cold my doctor put me on Cipro just to be on the safe side.
It was a magnificent feeling we all shared, that national unity in the days and weeks after America was attacked. We all knew it couldn't last, I guess, but didn't you think, or at least hope, that something had changed forever, and for the better? As long as America was a victim, we were united domestically, and the world was on our side. When we decided to fight back, that ended that. We fought back foolishly, to be sure, and as Jonah notes, President Bush handled the politics of this thing badly. Big mistakes have been made. We all know that. We all live with that.
I'm glad the emotional impact of 9/11 is fading, because we cannot hang on to those emotions forever, nor should we want to, lest we become one of those sad prisoners of personal trauma who orient their lives around What Was Done To Them. But I worry that in our general fatigue (see previous post), we will forget what kind of damage was done to us on that day, and what the enemy can do if we're complacent. I think we all know that one of these days, America is going to be hit again, just as hard as, if not harder than, we were on 9/11. When that day comes, God forbid, I wonder how we'll respond as a nation? Will we get serious about things we ignored or put off this time around? Will we have wiser leaders in the White House and in Congress?
Will we ourselves have learned a thing? If so, what? Now is the time to be thinking about these things.
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"The Christian conquest of Europe and the ensuing hegemony was worthy of the same condemnation. That is neither a strawman nor a diversion. It's a call to rehumanize the bulk of Muslims your broad sweep blithely demonizes."
Amen. Thank you, Franklin.
Fair enough, Red Dirt. I would suggest, then, that comments about "conducive discussion" might be labelled unreasonable expectation.
I'm also a bit non-plussed. For someone who has obviously read his history (more than most), you seem to put more emphasis on religion than on (say) economics or politics.
Religion is the most common label used to control mass opinion and justify the further label of enemy. It works equally well to foment hatred against the other, as it does to unify the masses behind a political agenda. Robert Heinlein wrote (though I'm not sure it was original with him) that nations always go to war for practical reasons. Soldiers need high ideals to put their lives on the line, and nationalism is often not enough. Religion is often the easiest road to producing a non-stop supply of cannon fodder. Quod erat demonstrandum.
As a pagan, I believe I have more motivation than most to look at the Abrahamic monotheisms with a jaundiced eye. I maintain that your indictment of Islam is the same demonization practiced on my spiritual forbearers, on Christian missionaries in non-Christian countries, and with intranecine fanaticism in northern Ireland.
"That's what bewilders me about Rod Dreher and millions of other CINOs who on the surface appear to be curious, intelligent people professing belief in what Jesus Christ taught. Yet when you scratch that surface, you find hateful, revengeful people who willfully ignore everything Christ taught. Like you, they seem intent on wiping out entire populations so that their version of Christianity can be safe from reprisals from other myopic survivors of short-sighted US foreign policy."
Will, this is a massive and unfair distortion of my position. When have I advocated "wiping out entire populations"? For a student of rhetoric, I expected a little more intellectual honesty.
But first let's talk about this idea that America is on the verge of becoming a theocracy. It ain't so, and you know it. In fact, Will, as you are probably aware, atheism runs rampant throughout American society. Polls show widespread adherence to Christian belief, but I think you would agree this is not really the case. Let me give you a brief example: Jeff Skilling, the man responsible for wiping out retirement savings of thousands of Enron employees, was a committed atheist and social Darwinian (a fact laid out in some detail in the documentary "The Smartest Guys in the Room"). Yes, "Kenny Boy" was the head of the company, but Skilling was the real engineer of Enron's rise and fall.
I know that many people would like to ascribe things like Enron to some sort of imaginary "Christianist" far right cabal of "Repuglicans" -- but that paranoid way of seeing the world does not hold up to careful, thoughtful scrutiny. In fact, an atheist world view drove that debacle. Enron was the product of our postmodern nihilist age, just as our bloated car-driven culture is (admittedly, I've wondered a little far off track in my original point, but I thought it worth raising).
In reply to this whole "vengefulness" allegation you make, I would first point out that I have no desire to commit genocide. Truly disappointed that you would feel the need to taint your arguments by making such a charge. I simply wish not to live under dhimmitude. And as I feel I already pay enough taxes, the jizya is distasteful to me.
I would simply expand upon an old aphorism from, I believe, from Justice Robert H. Jackson ... "The Constitution is not a suicide pact." Nor, in my personal view, is the New Testament (Jonestown Flavor-aid drinkers aside).
As an addendum, let me just say that I consider my participation in this particular tread at an end. It's not that I don't enjoy having an ongoing discussion with Will and Franklin and others on this topic -- I really do enjoy it. It's just that I feel the lengthy combox thread essentially confirms my original point a-way back yonder earlier this week: That our culture is in the throes of breakdown and collapse, and that we do not have the will or seriousness or understanding required to face a challenge from muscular, murderous Islam. Europe will go first; its already well on its way. America will stand alone for awhile, but hollowed out as our nation is, it will take only one or perhaps two more big hits from the jihadists to tumble us. With peak oil on the way, I expect it all to be quite finished within another decade or two. Cheers to all for an interesting discussion, but I consider it pointless beyond here.
"But first let's talk about this idea that America is on the verge of becoming a theocracy. It ain't so, and you know it. In fact, Will, as you are probably aware, atheism runs rampant throughout American society."
Why the red-herring detour into American Theocracy? Your distaste for Islam blinds you to how the world sees George Bush, arguably the most powerful man on earth, and a self-professed, born-again Christian.
This born again Christian, arguably the most powerful man in the world, manufactured evidence so that he could justify bombing Muslim populations. He knew that innocent life would be lost.
The most powerful man on earth. A Christian. A liar. People notice these things. Sometimes they get mad and seek revenge.
And excuse me if I over-stated your distaste for Islam, but I didn't detect any sympathy or partial respect for Islam in your comments. And I can say with existential certainty that you will not live one day of your life under dhimmitude, so your fears on that are just a little disengenuous.
As for the Enron scandal, I agree that there's nothing uniquely Republican, Christian etc. about the Enron crooks. Greed knows no single party or group. The fact that Ken Lay was a friend of the Bush family, and spent the night in Lincoln's bedroom during a Bush administration is just a coincidence, I suppose. Could happen to anyone. The fact that self-professed born-again Christians consort with such scum as Ken Lay is disappointing for those who have higher standards for Christian conduct. But that's the American way, I guess.
I'll conclude by saying I agree with your Peak Oil prognosis, but regret you have so much energy invested in hating Islam, as this is only a little more positive feedback for a growing cycle of violence that saps resources from more productive endeavors.
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