The half-life of 9/11

I know what you mean; this year feels like the first "normal" 9/11 to me too. I don't know, I suppose for the average person, not personally affected (those who lost loved ones, obviously, do not necessarily feel this way), five years is the limit; last year seemed dramatic, but now, honestly, it's suddenly not so much. It wasn't even until yesterday that I realized, "Oh, is it TOMORROW?" I don't know if this is really good or not.

As an added note, though, I've also been a bit shocked whenever I hear something is happening on "September 11th." Until recently I still jumped when I heard someone say "November 11th" or "December 11th."

God bless.

I remember driving to lunch on a Saturday afternoon about month after 9/11 when I was struck with a might be called a mild panic attack. It occurred to me at that random moment that the next attack could happen at any moment and in any place. It was a terrifying to feel that vulnerable and I had to pull over, get out of the car, and catch my breath.

I think about that moment every so often just to remind myself how so little has changed because of 9/11. Going to the airport and NFL games can be inconvenient experiences now although I'm not confident the increased airport security or the mandatory pat down required at football stadiums make anyone any safer.

John Feinstein wrote after 9/11 that the event will force us to rethink sports cliches like "air attack" or "played like warriors." That certainly didn't happen. Our nation's foreign policy remains reckless. The national attitude toward oil and energy hasn't changed. Consumerism still rules the day on the homefront. Remember the whole Christmas 2001 shtick about giving picture frames and other sentimental gifts. How laughable that seems now.

We remain an arrogant, ignorant, apathetic people. Or as Edward R. Murrow once put it: "Our history will be what we make it. If we go on as we are, then history will take its revenge, and retribution will not limp in catching up with us."

Six years later I know longer think the attacks of 9/11 were the greatest tragedy of 9/11...the real tragedy is that we, as a nation, have allowed those 3000 people to die on 9/11 in vain.

What have we learned Charlie Brown?

My corollary to the above is this: we hear all to often the phrase "Everything changed on 9/11!"

Horsesh*t! Everything changed when the cave lion made off with your baby sister and had her as an appetizer, monkey-boy, and the only thing that might have changed since is your own suitable tenderization to follow her as the entree.

"Will we ourselves have learned a thing? If so, what? Now is the time to be thinking about these things."

Collectively, we haven't learned much. The FBI has spent more time, money and manpower on the post9-11 anthrax case than any other case in FBI history, and has zilch to show for it. Our borders are just as porous as they ever were. A majority of Americans still apparently believe that Saddam Hussein and Iraq were responsible for 9-11.

Most importantly, Americans still consume more oil per capita than any other country, and 2/3 of that oil is imported. Americans don't know that they consume more oil than China and Russia combined.

Most Americans don't know how years of bungled US foreign policy created the perfect medium for breeding resentment that lead to terrorism.

So in short, we haven't learned much. And most of live in a moral fanstasy world where right and wrong is as simple as whatever we want it to be, regardless of what our religious texts tell us.

But we have a big wake-up call coming soon.

What we have not learned, in no particular order.

1) A free and open society cannot be made safe. A safe society cannot be free.

2) Corollary to #1: politicians who know how to make you believe the opposite of that are lying to you for their own purposes. Whatever part of their purposes might turn out to be benign for you, is giving up freedom worth it?

3) We fire law enforcement officers for racial profiling, vilify politicians who were at some point associated with racist groups, and a man who uses the word "niggardly" correctly in a sentence can (albeit temporarily) lose his job because ignorant people can't use a dictionary. We have given unchecked power to the executive branch to do or accomplish all of those things with impunity.

4) The most popular television shows enhance their ratings by using cruel mockery. Before that, cruel mockery was used to illustrate why it is evil.

We didn't learn the most obvious lesson from September 11: that Islam is irreconcilable with Western culture.

The dust had not even settled from the towers' collapse and we were calling it a "Religion of Peace". Political correctness rolled on as ever before.

We're brainwashed with the idea that non-discrimination is the highest value and that any discrimination is irrational.

I agree with those who complain that PC nonsense has taken over. Does anyone feel more safe going through airport security? Want to live-PROFILE. Pardon me if the Patriot Act, Gitmo and rush weekend at Abu Graib are small beer. But I digress...

We've also learned that the "yes, but" Muslims in our midst don't want to be Americans. They cannot be trusted. They cannot and will not embrace America; they merely live here. And they almost certainly hate us. And I'm tired of the whining, complaining, and the constant embrace of victimhood. You don't want to be Americans? This place and it's people are so awful? Fine. Get thee to LAX and JFK and go back. To quote that noted philosopher Axl Rose, don't think you're going to start your mini-Iran here. Tolerance and pluralism are not a voluntary death sentence.

Ultimaltey, though, our president has been a disaster on so many levels. The lack of leadership has been abysmal.

He's suppsoedly an oilman. We can safely and easily drill off our shores and in ANWR. We could develop clean coal technology. We could increase wind and solar power. He instead did NOTHING.

He could've closed the borders if he had the will. He could've stopped anyone from coming through. When you compare what you endure at the airport, it's appalling to think ANYONE could walk into our country. Instead, he tried to ram through idiocy. Words fail me.

He could've sough a declaration of war from Congress. He could've put the Saudi royalty on notice that their embrace of Bin Laden would be viewed as the actions of an enemy combatant. He could've let Musharaf and all know that we would stop at noting to put Bin Laden's head on a stick, and anyone who opposed us would also be considered an enemey comabatant. He of course did no such thing. Instead, the Saudi princes, backstabbing whoremongering double dealers, got barbeque invite in Texas, and kept funneling cash to Al Qaeda.

I'm willing to consider that the Iraqi invasion was a case of putting the baddest guys on the planet on notice things would change. But ultimately it was more of the same. It was done with too few troops. Those troops were put under imbecilic rules of engagement that killed many of them needlessly. And instead of simply killing bad guys-things soldier are trained to do-they were tasked to build a nation.Why is Sadr still alive? Better to teach pigs to sing. And then the silly PC nonsense took hold, of course.

The idea that we can impose democracy on an Islamic cesspool is simply insanity. I lost friends and neighbors and schoolmates 9/11. I saw the Towers fall from Brooklyn. And I smelled the burning flesh. I will never embrace the Left's perspective, but damn if anyone can explain what Bush has wrought.

A little late to this discussion - but the 9/11 anniversary is an annual pessimistic reminder for me that this country lacks the seriousness it might have once had to confront the darkness we face.

I've indicated I have a flair for rhetorical excess, but here I don't think I overstate the case too much here: America will get hit again - hard. And we won't have the stomach or fight or resolve as a nation to do much of anything about it.

I suppose we could argue endlessly about the justification for Iraq and how swimmingly it hasn't gone and on and on. I told all of my friends before we invaded Iraq (mostly those friends just to the left of center of the political spectrum) that if they weren't prepared for a bloodbath and a snake pit and a long haul, then they shouldn't support the invasion. I supported the invasion, but I had clear eyes about the violent cost we would incur. Others didn't.

I was pretty realpolitik in my outlook when we invaded Iraq. For example, every time I see a "no blood for oil" slogan at a protest rally on television, I think "Really? No blood for that? Do you even realize what you're saying with that bit of shallow sloganeering? Because we'd better be willing to give blood for oil. If we're not, then billions of people will starve to death. Are you willing to countenance that kind of evil?"

That's just one example of what I mean by our nation's lack of seriousness about all of this.

The barbarians are at the gate. And those barbarians want no part of the republican form of democratic government we offer. The Middle East is a furnace for forging an abundance of sociopathic monsters feverishly seeking as much human death and misery as they can possibly create, because they believe their faith commands such mass murder.

"We love death," they have told us repeatedly, and they have certainly shown their fervent fondness for it.

Far too many Americans would prefer to ignore the death-cult jihadists and watch another episode of "LOST." The sad truth is that America does not have the will to fight this darkness to the finish. As Nietzsche predicted, the "eclipse of all values" is upon us. And at this precise moment in history -- just Western civilization limps along on the last vestiges of Judeo-Christian values, having already declared God dead and embraced cultural nihilism as a hip ironic pose -- we face another civilization that is no mood for such effete silliness.

John Quincy Adams rightly observed in his writings about the struggles of the Greeks against the Turks in the 19th century: "The precept of the Koran is, perpetual war against all who deny, that Mahomet is the prophet of God ... THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST: TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE." [capital letters from Adams' original writings]

So we face a civilization built around a twisted form of monotheism that has morphed into a death cult -- They are lovers of death, just as they have so plainly said, obsessed with the symbols of death and the rituals of violence. And in their desire to exterminate the Jewish people, there's not a hair's breadth difference between al Qaeda's footsoldiers, the Shiite Hezbollah or the storm troopers of the Third Reich. They are in Baghdad, in southern Lebanon, in Gaza, in Damascus, in Afghanistan and in Tehran. As soon as they're ready (i.e. the long view of the Muslim Brotherhood Rod himself alluded to on this very blog earlier this week) they'll be here again too.

While America and Europe slosh around in shallow end of the pool like toddlers, the sharks at the deep have definite purpose and drive. Their God isn't dead -- no, Allah is in a constant bloody rage.

Meanwhile, the cute Western intellectual elites, having already declared our God dead, are about to declare the human self dead, too. And they're even prepared to inflict other curious dystopian horrors on us on our down the civilization flusher (such as animal-human hybrid "chimeras" and the like).

When you can't even rely on the solidity of your own personal identity, what's left to fight for? And when "The Island of Dr. Moreau" is on the verge of becoming reality in this culture, what's the real motivation to give anyone passion about fighting for it?

Precisely.

Regardless of how articulate Bush is, or "how he handled the politics of this thing badly," our nation has become addicted to easy fights, simple explanations and instant history.

Clearly, the cultural Marxists (and I use that term specifically and purposefully -- look it up, if you must) slowly gathering power within the DNC really don't care all that much for the Judeo-Christian republic founded more than 200 years ago. It won't really hurt their feelings too terribly to see it all crumble after another devastating blow from the Koranic death cultists. They'd just as soon live under dhimmitude. I have a feeling we'll all get to find out how much they really like paying the jizya.

The various hippy trippy visions offered by the Left in America -- such as the notion of a Department of Peace to replace the Department of Defense -- are as dreamy and illusory as the notion spun by the Bush administration that we would be greeted with flowers in the streets of Baghdad.

Though they brag about belonging to the "reality-based community," leftists in our nation act like puerile adolescents unable to discern reality from fantasy. Since leftists really don't believe in anything, paradoxically they'll believe almost any conspiracy theory about the evil genius of Karl Rove, or the secret lair of Dick Cheney or the plot to steal elections with Diebold machines. And paradoxically they'll allow the full onslaught of the jihadist death cult coming to a theater of reality near you soon -- an ideology which definitely offers belief in something -- to fill the vacuum of ideas they've created.

Repeatedly, leftists have sanctimoniously exhorted us to "understand" the Middle East, Islam and the Arabic worldview. This process of "understanding" is now upon our nation. For me, it means that I'm tired of hearing our politicians -- especially Bush -- claim that Islam is a religion of peace, when we can all see plainly that this is not so. If only we'd listened to the voices trying to warn us from the history books.

Read what Nietzsche predicted: "If the doctrines ... of the lack of any cardinal distinction between man and animal, doctrines I consider true but deadly, are hurled into the people for another generation ... then nobody should be surprised when brotherhoods with the aim of the robbery and exploitation of the non-brothers will appear in the arena of the future."

So the death-cult jihadists will strike hard. And when they do, the terror will make 9/11 look like a pinprick. By the midpoint of this century or even sooner -- having failed to muster the courage to fight and lacking any respect for its own traditions -- I have no doubt that the West as we now conceive it will pass into history.

History will roll on, and with China actually well on its way to becoming a Christian nation (10,000 converts a day by some estimates), the death cult Islam will probably find itself confronting a newer and much more robust foe within the next few decades.

But in the romantic histories yet to be written in Arabic or Standard Mandarin, we probably won't merit much beyond a footnote. How's that for marking the 9/11 anniversary?

I'm game -- I hear the air is clear, if a bit thin, and a man can really stretch his legs out in those wide open spaces.... I'm laying claim to Olympus Mons (just because it would be cool to own the solar system's biggest mountain) and wherever it was they thought they found water
:-)

Brent, if there is, be assured that the Chinese will take it. They're winning that space race thingy, too.

PatientWitness

Well said.

Amongst all the rhetoric, Red Dirt provided this opening:

America will get hit again - hard.

Let's see... what happened the last time American got hit hard? Hm. A sovereign nation was invaded, training camps were destroyed, many people in them killed and many more scattered in search of a hole to crawl into, and an entire government replaced, all in a matter of months.

Oh, right. The next thing that happened was an unprovoked, unjustified invasion of another sovereign nation at the same time, indeed stifling and reducing the effort in the first, provoked and justified action before it was half finished. And now we are paying for some ground twice over, because the Taliban were given a chance to regroup.

Moral action, or political expediency? You make the call! [end sarcasm]

Hit hard? Bring it on!! We are the only free and open society in the world. For all that we've been spitting on that tradition lately, ours is the template on which every major democracy is based. Ours is the tradition of representative government. Ours is the exemplar of peaceful transition of power in government. Ours is (well, or was) the haven for those who cannot make those things in their own homelands.

The value of blood is freedom. That is what we spend it for. Every drop spent for political expediency is a crime. Honor the professional soldiers serving in Iraq, not because of what they are doing, but for what it is they are doing in despite of the mistakes of their commanders. "Support our troops" is a bald-faced lie covering the true words: "support my political agenda."

I still agree with Red Dirt.

BTW, Kim, I hope you're not mad at me for piggybacking off your "female Ann Coulter" comment. Someone sent me that pic and pointed out that anatomical curiosity, and I've just been lying in wait to use it. ;-)

Thanks, John E. I like your writing as well...and Kim's, Canucklehead's, Richard Bottom's (where is he?), and several others. As someone commented the other day (Larry Parker maybe?), even when we disagree on this blog it usually remains a civil discourse.

Will,

I think we're talking past each other.

Your statement - "This is the reason we occupy Iraq - it is the center of the world's largest remaining reserves of oil, convenient striking distance from Saudi Arabia and Iran."

That's my entire point, when I question the "no blood for oil" histrionics. That's precisely what I'm saying. Think it through. I have.

I'm all for conservation efforts on a massive scale. In fact, I think this is something that would have united the country even more after 9/11 -- and it was a missed opportunity. We need more rail, more light rail, more tax incentives for alternative energy, a national crash program in conservation and new energy sources, and more. That's not really the point, though.

Regardless of America's massive oil consumption, if the oil infrastructure collapses, then billions of people all over the world will suffer terribly. I repeat: oil is, quite literally, food. Oil and natural gas are involved in the plowing, planting, fertilization, irrigation and harvest of the world's food supply.

Now that's the system we have now, and it won't change overnight. You can't wish it away. Yes, the health of our economy is absolutely dependent on oil. No question about it. Again, my point precisely. But more than the health of our economy is at stake. If the oil supply is threatened, the food supply is threatened -- not just the Cheez Doodles we eat, as James Howard Kunstler likes to say, but basic food staples.

That's the reality I'm asking the "no blood for oil" sloganeers to understand, to connect the dots. Surely you're not willing to countenance mass starvation, regardless of how you feel about things like SUV's?

We can talk all day about energy-gluttonous lifestyles, but that misses the essential point. Incidentally, I drive a fuel-efficient Honda. My house is filled with CFC bulbs. I grow a vegetable garden in my backyard. I compost. I mow my lawn with human-powered push reel. I practice energy conservation. I recycle. I do all of this and more -- most of it alleviates my conscience, but does very little to change the facts on the ground. It does nothing to change the fact of our reliance on petroleum -- not just America, but the world.

I am a realist. I believe our decadent culture is imploding, is hollowed out, and cannot confront or truly understand real evil. This has been starkly illustrated by the past 6 years, post-9/11. I believe that we have arrived at the "eclipse of all values" predicted by Nietzsche, and that many dystopian nightmares are about to be inflicted on us by materialist science, much of it predicted in the minds of fiction writers from the early and mid-20th century. I believe peak oil is just around the corner, and will be another hard reality our culture is incapable of understanding or confronting head-on. I believe that Islam is a murderous, violent world view that fervently seeks bloodshed and death for its own sake. And I believe Western civilization is well on its way to losing this very real clash of civilizations.

I would like for this dismal mix of factors things to change. I am pessimistic that they will.

Will,

Equating violent Christians or Jews with the level of terror and bloodshed Islam is prepared to inflict just does not work. With the exception of a few groups trying to carry out abortion clinic bombings or showing up at soldiers' funerals to protest homosexuuals, there are not that many Christian extremists. The myth of "Christofascists" or armies of evangelicals wishing to impose a theocracy is just that - a myth.

Take it from someone who is both an evangelical and someone who spent time as a reporter thoroughly investigating radical "common law," militia and Christian extremist groups in the United States (and facing death threats for the work).

Equating the small number of fringe radicals in the U.S. that comprise such groups with muscular Islam is simply absurd. You've probably been watching too many films like "Jesus Camp" - Go out and get some fresh air and a fresh dose of reality.

Christianity and Judaism do not command their faithful to wage unending war on unbelievers. They just don't, no matter how strenuously leftists try to make these sorts of connections. Neither the Bible nor the Torah exhort believers to wage open-ended holy war.

However, Islam clearly does command such violence. Islam is a neatly-designed religion of war. It is a religion of complete intolerance to unbelievers (by contrast, Christianity was the ground from which our republic and the freedoms it brings grew). Islam subjugates women (by contrast, Christianity was the ground from which equality of the sexes emerged). Islam maintains slavery (by contrast, the West exorcised slavery from its midst through the efforts of committed Christians a century and a half ago).

What's more, your unfortunately typical rehashing of past history ignores the real history: "Christendom" as it used to be called only reacted to continual hostile Muslim incursions. Islam continually tested Christendom's defenses and took more and more territory, converting believers by the sword along the way, until Muslim warriors reached the gates of Vienna and fought a final battle in 1683.

Of that battle, Polish military leader John Sobieski said, "It is not a city alone that we have to save, but the whole of Christianity, of which the city of Vienna is the bulwark. This war is a holy one."

Though Islam was weakened after this time, more than a century later even John Quincy Adams felt compelled to warn his countrymen:

"In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar [i.e., Muhammad], the Egyptian, [.....] Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST.- TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE.... Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. The war is yet flagrant ... While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men."

And still the jihad continues. Islam is not a "religion of peace" as we have been repeatedly told. Please understand, this does not mean we should persecute Muslims in America. I can be clear-eyed and critical about this death-cult religion without calling for Muslims to be rounded up and deported, so please do not distort what I am saying. They have every right to the religious freedoms our founders fought for.

But our hollowed-out secularist civilization stands no chance against muscular Islam that is rousing itself in these first years of the 21st century.

No, I don't think I overstate the case. Islam is the mirror image of Western civilization. While there may be men and women of peace and goodwill living within the confines of Islam, the cultural imperative is bloody jihad, and conversion by the sword. In the West, while there may be extremists, the cultural imperative is peace and prosperity.

If we can rouse ourselves from the secularist slumber of the 20th century, and the postmodern nihilist sleepwalking of our current era, we may yet win the clash of civilizations. Otherwise, plainly, we will lose.

"With the exception of a few groups trying to carry out abortion clinic bombings or showing up at soldiers' funerals to protest homosexuuals, there are not that many Christian extremists."

By that narrow definition, no, there are not that many. Let's look at a few nominal Chrstians, CINOs if you prefer. George Bush is a Christian extremist. He makes a big show of his faith, and he used and uses that fascade of faith to win concensus for preemptive war, torture, a perpetual war of disinformation, all of which are antithetical to true Christianity. As is your shallow, blanket condemnation of Islam.

"What's more, your unfortunately typical rehashing of past history ignores the real history: "Christendom" as it used to be called only reacted to continual hostile Muslim incursions."

So that's how you explain the Sykes-Picot Agreement? Mossadegh's overthrow? Iran-contra? Osirak?

This is why we have perpetual war - your blinkered refusal to learn from these events.

Franklin, I'm afraid I can't stop the pithy verbal enhancements; they're part of the fun of this hobby. I'm in love with my own purple prose, and I don't have an editor. So the misery is all yours :)

"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.

"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).

"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.