The 9/11 Question
By Jackson Murphy (12/31/69)
It has been two years since that fateful day on September 11, 2001. It is hard to say if those two years feel like a lifetime, or are just memories moving by and healing more quickly than we could imagine. One thing that was supposed to be certain was that the world would never be the same again. The truth is that while the world did indeed change, most people have not.
So how do you commemorate a solemn day like this?
“Two beautiful fall seasons ago this society was living in a fool's paradise,” wrote Christopher Hitchens in Slate.com. “While so far from being ‘in search of enemies’ that its governing establishment barely knew how to tell an enemy from a friend. If there is anything to mark or commemorate, it is the day when that realm of illusion was dispelled—the date that will one day be acknowledged as the one on which our enemies made their most truly ‘suicidal’ mistake.”
It is sobering to think that this could so easily happen again. Seeing a new videotape and message from Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden emerge the day before this symbolic anniversary doesn’t help. Doubly so if you remember that the enemy has nothing but time on its hands. Time to plan and plot more horror, even as the fight has been taken into their backyards and doorsteps. Lest we forget, eight years prior to the World Trade Center attacks of 2001, the towers were attacked once before.
Amitai Etzioni writing in The Christian Science Monitor reminds us, “It may take Al Qaeda another eight years - careful planners that they are - before they strike again, but with our lack of preparedness, the next time the damage could well be even greater.”
With the first post 9/11 Presidential election looming it is becoming increasingly clear that, sadly, things haven’t changed all that much. There are two things worth noting. First, the events of 9/11 are a huge event in history. And second, many people, impossibly, don’t get ‘it’.
In years past, the grounding question in elections was simple. Are you better off today than you were four years ago? Today there is really only one important question to ask before voting for the Commander in Chief. What would he have done on 9/11, on 9/12, and every day after? And it is considerably different than asking whether you are safer today than you were four years ago? Because you may not be safe yet.
Everyone knows what George W. Bush’s answer is. While his answer isn’t completely finished, you know what his thesis is. What about the frontrunner in the Democratic field? That is why this question, the ‘9/11 Question,’ should be front and center. But whole debates and speeches go by and the Democratic field sometimes even fail to mention the first battle in this war on terror.
Worse many are now trying to balk at the President’s recent request for an additional $87 billion for ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. A stark reality for President Bush and those who want his job is that the ‘9/11 Question’ has an answer. The answer is to keep going. Continue to hunt down terrorists, oppose tyranny, and ensure that something like 9/11 never happens again. If any of that is truly possible at all.
As Austin Bay explains, “Sept. 11, 2001, was gut-check time. Sept. 11, 2003, is also gut-check time. For everyone who values liberty, the pursuit of victory must continue to supersede the pursuit of happiness.”
On this 9/11, the second since 2001, it should be reaffirmed that while the terrorists increasingly demonstrate their hatred for us, our resolve and equal hatred for them and their aims is joined. They must have thought that the west would have retreated, yet two wars have been fought, two regimes tumbled, Osama and Saddam are on the run, Saddam’s murderous sons dead, Iraq and Afghanistan are struggling to be free, and there is no real sign that we will stop there.
All of these, writes Andrew Sullivan, “are real achievements. They are the platform for the next phase: in building a free society in Iraq, toppling yet more tyranny in Iran, removing the Saudi dictatorship, and bringing some kind of settlement to Israel. We cannot disengage now. And standing still is to move backwards. Wars are dynamic; and we are in a war. Still. Two years later. With work to be done.”
It is hard to see a September 11th in the near future that will not spark these feelings or won’t see troops stretched throughout the globe fighting. Victory over these forces of evil is the only answer to the 9/11 Question.
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