The Other 9/11 Story

by Victor Davis Hanson - September 11th, 2008 - Townhall.com

Seven years ago we suffered the worst attack on the American homeland in our history. The material damage proved far greater than the 1814 British burning of Washington, the human losses more grievous than the almost 2,400 Americans lost at Pearl Harbor.

Years later, we tend to forget all the dimensions of that sinister homicidal bombing of our institutions. Radical Islam brazenly signaled that it need not have missiles or sophisticated bombers to burn 16 acres in the heart of Manhattan and set the Pentagon afire. Instead, it could turn from the inside out our own technology against us, in a manner that we were scarcely aware of — and in an iconic fashion at the heart of our greatest cities, ensuring collective psychological trauma that trumped even the terrible loss in blood and treasure.

Some bewildered Americans offered apologies that either the attacks were tit-for-tat payback for America’s overreaching global presence, or — more preposterously still — that our record against Muslims incited such hatred. And so yet another cultural war broke out over the “causes” of 9/11.

The lesson of 9/11 must never be forgotten. The Islamo-fascists will use any technology against us that allows them to kill us. Beheading innocents whose only crime is that they are NOT MUSLIM makes them joyful. Just as they have no qualms at all in burning down the heart of a city, with zero regard for all the innocent women and children who die, the use of nuclear bombs is no moral quandary for them either. The fear of what happens when some branch of the Islamo-fasicsts gets nuclear weapons is something we must not lose.

And yet ... we have a new culture war here in America, agonizing over whether the barbaric acts of these killers is justified or not. This culture war fills me with both sadness and rage. We are wasting time arguing over how clean our energy should be while the middle east gets richer for our failure to provide domestic sources. We are wasting time arguing over the moral stance of offensive acts against the Islamo-fascists while these militant savages prepare for their next attack. We debate military versus police strategies, whether we have the right to defend ourselves against their supporters or we have to wait until a specific individual takes a specific act. All the while they are seeking nuclear bombs.

There has always been a question whether a democracy based republic could survive. 150 years ago Abe Lincoln persuaded the stronger half of a nation to fight for union against an evil institution whose adherents tried to leave this great experiment we call the United States. He saw then that the greatness of our nation was worth any price to keep us together, as the last great hope for individual freedom. Most agreed and that civil war was fought. Yet today the children of the slaves he freed are dedicated to group rights rather than individual freedom. They have joined the political party that tried to keep their ancestors slaves and which advocates the socialist state ... which many see as the modern version of slavery.

I think of this as I think of the irony of the other 9/11 story that Victor Davis Hanson speaks of. Those on one side of the culture war can only rail against George Bush while those who were kept free are too busy to separate his short term failings from the great success he attained. We are winning. I am no George Bush fan. Yet on this seventh anniversary I too agree we need to acknowledge, seven years and counting! Meantime the culture war continues to sap our energy to fight.