by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
National Review Online<\/em><\/p>\n O<\/span>n that day, we watched tape of the doomed in suits diving head first from the burning floors, hoping to splatter on roofs rather than crush and kill incoming firefighters \u2014 as some tragically did.<\/p>\n I remember reading about the last hours in the stairwell of the Cassandra FBI agent John O\u2019Neill, who chose to go back into the inferno. His year-long, near solitary race to save us against the evil of the al Qaeda planners Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh came to an end that day \u2014 and with it O\u2019Neill himself.<\/p>\n And I remember reading the accounts of a smiling bin Laden, fresh off from buying his fifth wife for $5,000 (a 15-year-old girl no less). At that very moment in Afghanistan, always the inveterate liar, he was haughty after his recent cowardly murder of the far better fighter Massoud.<\/p>\n That day bin Laden snickered to the radio reports of his 9\/11 jihadists, now holding up a finger for each plane\u2019s impending crash to his adoring acolytes in Afghanistan \u2014 and soon to be alternately denying culpability in his fear, then boasting of it in his hubris.<\/p>\n Then there were the incomprehensible statements of our own that followed \u2014 of Michael Moore, the later darling at the Democratic Convention, claiming that a Democratic city\u2019s blue-state, anti-Bush voters ipso facto should have won an exemption from the killers\u2019 target list.<\/p>\n We heard too from the now apparently warped novelist Norman Mailer, at last relieved that his aesthetic skyline was cleared of the bothersome looming towers (\u201ctwo huge buck teeth\u201d) \u2014 and with them, for Ward Churchill at least, the ashes of the \u201cLittle Eichmanns,\u201d of his \u201ctechnocrats of empire.\u201d<\/p>\n We remember the firemen and police who went up into the towers even as they came down. And always there were the nightlong, lit-up scenes of the construction and rescue workers who brought a majestic dignity to the macabre task of sifting for hundreds in the detritus of lower New York.<\/p>\n We keep thinking as well that if there had not been a Todd Beamer and a few kindred brave souls on United Flight 93, there would have been no more Capitol at all, its century-old dome instead reduced to smithereens like that of the golden mosque of Samara. It perhaps would now still be sitting there, six years later, a quarter rebuilt amid scaffolds, its restoration unfinished as it was during the Civil War \u2014 and its smoldering skeleton plastered on every poster in Gaza, in DVDs sold in all the bazaars of Pakistan.<\/p>\n S<\/span>eptember 11 was not the first and won\u2019t be the last terrorist assault on our citizens and culture. And the subsequent factionalism and left\/right bickering over the proper course to defeat the jihadists \u2014 whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, the courts, at the Hague, or the United Nations \u2014 did not originate solely after 9\/11.<\/p>\n But the day reminded us that for a near-quarter century prior, only luck and the impotence \u2014 not the intent \u2014 of radical Muslims had prevented the murder of Americans on such a horrific scale. It re-taught to us, as would surely a second or third such attack, that in war there aren\u2019t really good choices. Instead, once the fighting breaks out, only the bad choices either of incurring casualties and expense to prevent greater such losses to our civilization in the future, or (far worse) of inaction in hopes of searching for reason or decency where they are not to be found, remain.<\/p>\n Bin Laden\u2019s killers tore off a great scab on September 11; at once they exposed to billions the evil of radical Islam and with it the Western world\u2019s shock, fright, and difficulty in confronting it and defeating it. That uncertainty ultimately does not arise from our enemies, but from within ourselves \u2014 this strange disease of thinking we fight back too much when we often do too little.<\/p>\n It was the particularly evil genius of bin Laden to see not that we are militarily weak as he alleged \u2014 indeed the United States is more powerful than ever \u2014 but that we are apologetic over the source of our bounty and the reasons for our success, to the point of a collective stasis.<\/p>\n The more we push for democratic change abroad, the more the democracy-hating terrorists slander us that we do not. The more we accommodate the religion and culture of detainees, the more the beheaders and bombers cry to the world that we are savage while musing among themselves that we are weak. The more that we tolerate the great asymmetry of reciprocity between Islam and the West; the more we are supposed to apologize for just that tolerance and liberality. The more we pay for outrageously priced oil, the more we are to concede that we are stealing it.<\/p>\n Our shock, and again their insight, is not that they level such absurd charges, but that they do so in such utter confidence that they will find a receptive audience in the West, an audience that has the desire and ability to curtail the American response.<\/p>\n We laugh that on this sixth anniversary a clownish Bin Laden, in dyed chin-whiskers no less, urges us from a cave in Waziristan to read more Chomsky and Scheuer. We laugh that radical Islam hates us for global warming, corporate profits, and high-priced mortgages. We laugh that its jihadists, as a result of these American \u201csins,\u201d were forced to kill us for the Neocons, and Richard Perle, and Hiroshima, and the 19th<\/sup>-century Indian wars, and all the other American crimes that Hollywood and the universities have globally peddled into a lucrative industry. But the laugh is not that fascists would so clumsily crib our Left to justify their killing, but that they are convinced that they could do so in such amateurish fashion to such great effect.<\/p>\n S<\/span>o is the joke on them or on us?<\/p>\n Bin Laden and his evil Rasputin Dr. Zawahiri were confident on September 11 that such guilt and self-loathing in our hearts could be seasoned, and that it could then be harvested through their own arts of revisionism, victimization, and lies. And consequently within a brief six years of his murdering, our own voices \u2014 indeed the very elites of the West \u2014 in the luxury of calm before the next attack, are often emboldened to proclaim that the government of America, not the terrorists abroad, is the real danger.<\/p>\n The great lesson of September 11 was not that the jihadists ever believed that they could kill us all. Rather, they trusted that enough of the West and indeed enough of us here in America, might at the end of the day declare that we had it coming.<\/p>\n In this long war, that belief was \u2014 and is \u2014 far deadlier even than an unhinged murderer at the controls of an airliner.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u00a92007 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Reflections on 9\/11, six years later. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online On that day, we watched tape of the doomed in suits diving head first from the burning floors, hoping to splatter on roofs rather than crush and kill incoming firefighters \u2014 as some tragically did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","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":[754],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-V4","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6935,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/duty-and-the-taint-of-the-tell-all\/","url_meta":{"origin":3538,"position":0},"title":"‘Duty,’ and the Taint of the Tell-All","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 23, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Robert Gates's insider memoir is the latest in a dishonorable genre. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 For all the hysteria over former defense secretary Robert Gates\u2019s new insider memoir of his tenure during the Bush and Obama administrations, the disclosures are more breaches of trust than earth-shattering revelations.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Literature"","block_context":{"text":"Literature","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/literature\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7920,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/small-and-petty-from-small-and-petty\/","url_meta":{"origin":3538,"position":1},"title":"\u2018Small and Petty\u2019 from Small and Petty","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 14, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ NRO- The Corner Deconstruct former Obama flack Bill Burton\u2019s hit on Leon Panetta: On Secretary Panetta, he is a guy who has had a long and storied career in Washington and has really served his country well. And it is kind of sad that in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Opinion"","block_context":{"text":"Opinion","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7942,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-biggest-lie\/","url_meta":{"origin":3538,"position":2},"title":"The Biggest Lie","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 21, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The Left would rather forget its old slogan, \u201cBush lied, thousands died.\u201d by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online The very mention of weapons of mass destruction (WMD)\u00a0and Iraq was toxic for Republicans by 2005. They wanted to forget about the supposed absence of recently manufactured WMD in great\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Middle East"","block_context":{"text":"The Middle East","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"President George W. Bush at the White House, February 2005 (Alex Wong\/Getty Images)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/pic_giant_102114_SM_George-W-Bush-G-500x291.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":13728,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/trump-winds-and-biden-whirlwinds\/","url_meta":{"origin":3538,"position":3},"title":"Trump Winds and Biden Whirlwinds","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 12, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness Victimizers quickly becoming victims is a recurrent theme of Thucydides\u2019 history. In his commentary on the so-called\u00a0stasis\u00a0at Corcyra, he offers his most explicit warning about the long-term dangers of destroying legal institutions, customs, and traditions that serve the common good for short-term gain.\u00a0 The\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 7 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 7 comments","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/trump-winds-and-biden-whirlwinds\/#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4616,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-fog-of-battle\/","url_meta":{"origin":3538,"position":4},"title":"The Fog of Battle","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 27, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"What comes around, goes... by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Even in daytime fighters do not perceive anything; indeed, nobody knows anything more than what is going on right around himself. So the fifth-century B.C. military historian Thucydides commented on the confusion of battle on the heights above Syracuse\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "August 2004"","block_context":{"text":"August 2004","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2004\/august-2004\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4175,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/give-em-a-call\/","url_meta":{"origin":3538,"position":5},"title":"Give ’em a Call","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 27, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"How to mitigate the collateral damage of hurt feelings. by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services When Abraham Lincoln conducted a controversial war, he stocked his Cabinet with former critics and potential rivals like Salmon Chase, Edwin Stanton and William Seward. Perhaps he sought a diversity of opinion or wished\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "December 2005"","block_context":{"text":"December 2005","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2005\/december-2005\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3538"}],"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=3538"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3539,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3538\/revisions\/3539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}