by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
RightNetwork.com<\/p>\n
I\u00a0was on a flight to Hillsdale College to lecture on, of all things, misinterpreting Gen. George S. Patton. Suddenly after an early morning take-off, a furious American Airlines pilot came on the intercom, relaying a weird story about some fool in a light private plane who had crashed into the World Trade Center, and so shut down the system \u2014 wrecking our flight way out here in the Central Valley of California.<\/p>\n
We all sighed, \u201cHow could anyone be so clueless as to crash into a skyscraper?\u201d Our jet banked and turned right around, back toward Fresno. The terminal was already shut down when we landed. I immediately called Hillsdale College to apologize that I would miss the lecture, and promised to take another flight out that night. Some promise.<\/p>\n
By the time I got out to my office at Fresno State the towers had fallen, and our old lives as we knew them were gone. A book I wrote about the long tradition of Western military dynamism,\u00a0Carnage and Culture<\/em>, had just appeared a few days earlier, so by afternoon as bin Laden\u2019s face hit the television screens, I kept thinking, “that guy is not going to like what follows.”<\/p>\n My only surprise was not the panic of the media as it forecast hourly probable new attacks, or warned us that we had little recourse for direct retaliation \u2014 but its uncertainty about culpability, as too many pundits on screen pondered why Bin Laden had “lashed out.” For some reason I remembered at the time a line from\u00a0Dirty Harry<\/em>. It seemed as likely an answer as their pop philosophizing\u2014\u201cbecause he likes it.\u201d<\/p>\n For that first year, I had not followed George Bush\u2019s presidency closely, and knew little of him or of his prior tenure in Texas. But three days later when he stood at Ground Zero, put his arm around that noble-looking retired fireman Bob Beckwith, grabbed a bullhorn, and extemporaneously announced to the crowd, \u201cI can hear you, the rest of the world hears you, and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon,\u201d\u00a0I thought, ‘I’m relieved this guy, at this moment, is president.’ And through all the tragedy of the next nine years, I am still.<\/p>\n \u00a92010 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson RightNetwork.com I\u00a0was on a flight to Hillsdale College to lecture on, of all things, misinterpreting Gen. George S. Patton. Suddenly after an early morning take-off, a furious American Airlines pilot came on the intercom, relaying a weird story about some fool in a light private plane who had crashed into the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[515],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-kr","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8638,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/victor-davis-hanson-is-teaching-a-course-on-leadership-ancient-and-modern\/","url_meta":{"origin":1267,"position":0},"title":"Victor Davis Hanson is teaching a course on “Leadership, Ancient and Modern” at Hillsdale College","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 8, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"THE HILLSDALE COLLEGE HISTORY DEPARTMENT PRESENTS A CONSTITUTION DAY PUBLIC LECTURE Reflections on the GOP Presidential Debates and\u00a0Prospects for the 2016 Election Thursday, SEPTEMBER 17 \u2022 7:00 PM MARKEL AUDITORIUM IN THE SAGE CENTER FOR THE ARTS VICTOR DAVIS HANSON \u00a0 Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 8 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 8 comments","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/victor-davis-hanson-is-teaching-a-course-on-leadership-ancient-and-modern\/#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13569,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/victor-davis-hanson-speaks-at-hanford-rotary\/","url_meta":{"origin":1267,"position":1},"title":"Victor Davis Hanson speaks at Hanford Rotary","author":"Victor Davis Hanson","date":"June 17, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Donald A. Promnitz \/\/ The Sentinel Author and historian Victor Davis Hanson visited Hanford to discuss the social and political lessons learned from 2020. Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and chairs the Working Group on the Role of Military History in Contemporary\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11476,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/new-online-course-at-hillsdale-college\/","url_meta":{"origin":1267,"position":2},"title":"New Online Course at Hillsdale College","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 28, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"I will be teaching a new online course on World War II at Hillsdale College. See the following tweet for more information. Purchase a copy of The Second World Wars here. \u00a0 https:\/\/twitter.com\/Hillsdale\/status\/1053621644265209856","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8653,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/hillsdale-college-september-11th\/","url_meta":{"origin":1267,"position":3},"title":"Hillsdale College September 11th","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 11, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"","rel":"","context":"With 6 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 6 comments","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/hillsdale-college-september-11th\/#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"IMG950832","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/IMG950832-500x375.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6156,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/flying-as-torture\/","url_meta":{"origin":1267,"position":4},"title":"Flying as Torture","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 1, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media As the Fourth of July nears, be careful of flying. I have wondered lately whether a weekend in Guantanamo Bay would be all that much worse than flying in the United States. Imagine that we treat Khalid Sheik Mohammed in the manner we accord\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Popular Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Popular Culture","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/popular-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12682,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-radio-free-hillsdale-hour-victor-davis-hanson-ben-beier-anthony-swinehart\/","url_meta":{"origin":1267,"position":5},"title":"The Radio Free Hillsdale Hour: Victor Davis Hanson, Ben Beier, & Anthony Swinehart","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 24, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"The Radio Free Hillsdale Hour \u00b7 Victor Davis Hanson, Ben Beier, & Anthony Swinehart","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1267"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1268,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267\/revisions\/1268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}