Three Realizations from 9/11

September 11, 2010 - Robert Weissberg

The events of 9/11 were a trauma for America, but as in all traumas, there is much to be learned. Some of this is practical, e.g., prohibiting box-cutters on airplanes, but others lessons are more complex. Let me offer three such realizations. First, we now know that millions of people, mainly zealous Muslims both here and abroad passionately hate America. This is not the garden variety anti-Americanism, for example, European contempt for our crass popular culture. Nor is this aversion just “a dispute.” Those who merely disagree do not become suicide bombers and kill themselves to make their point. It is boiling, mind-clouding hatred of everything about us: majority rule democracy, religious tolerance, cultural pluralism (e.g., homosexuality, women’s rights), separation of church and state, protected free speech and a free press, ample personal liberty, a passion for economic achievement and everything that defines who we are. Indeed, loathing even applies to rationality, intellectual debate, science—in short, they hate “the West.” This obsessive abhorrence has existed for decades perhaps longer, but until 9/11 we hardly noticed it and Many Americans still cannot grasp its scope and intensity.

Second, this detestation seems incorrigible. It will not vanish if America’s Middle East policy shifts nor if we shower Afghanistan will billions in foreign aid. Nor will anger cool if Americans make nicy-nice to Muslims at home. Pandering by inviting Imams of dubious backgrounds to the White House to celebrate the end of Ramadan or talking tough is irrelevant. It is almost as if hatred is genetically hard-wired so any action, regardless of motive or outcome “proves” America’s evil. Again, as with the hatred itself, Americans, an overwhelmingly kind and pragmatic people, have real trouble understanding this rage —surely, we hope, there must be something we can do to abate this anti-American, anti-West fury. Apparently not, however.

Third, sine 9/11 our historical repertory of responses has proven useless and we continue to be befuddled. Bombing the Taliban into the Stone Age is pointless when they already live in pre-modern villages. As mentioned, all the economic and humanitarian generosity counts for naught. We intervened in Bosnia to save Muslim lives, withdrew our military from Saudi Arabia so as not to offend Muslim sensibilities, even sent US troops to rescue Kuwait from Iraqi occupation, but nothing mattered. Have Saudi princes re-directed their charitable giving to the USO as a sign of gratitude?


To speculate just a bit, when it comes to winning friends abroad, we seem stuck in the Europe of between 1944 and the early 50’s. Here America was the heroic (and appreciated) savior from Nazi rule and impending starvation, and young Parisian girls rushed out to kiss the liberating GI’s. Those newsreels have left an indelible impression on our collective mind. No doubt, many Americans still don’t fathom why so many Iraqis violently turned on us after we freed them from Saddam Hussein’s bloody dictatorship. Muslim women rushing up to GI’s are now assumed to be suicide bombers.

But of all this befuddlement, none outshines our self-induced paralysis. Nine years afterward we are still confused, squabbling over the most elementary facts and it seems endless. Thanks to our PC infected brains, we want to fight “a war” without offending the enemy. How many Americans know the difference between al-Qaida and the Taliban? We are even perplexed about the enemy’s name—are they Islamic terrorists or just plain “terrorists”? How about generic sounding “militants,” “extremists,” or, as in Iraq, “insurgents”? What about Islamofacism? Or even “perverted Islam”? Where does the ethnic label “Arab” fit when many terrorists are not Arabs, do not speak Arabic and may even loath Arabs? And what drives their passion—Islam in general? Is the culprit just Wahhabism? Or, conceivably, do the attacks reflect only personal grievances and frustrations cloaked in a religion? We are even unsure of whether dozens of similar incidents are linked or just perpetrated by “lone wolves” who coincidently share certain religious beliefs about killing innocent Americans. Indeed, a few public officials disdain the whole idea of “a war on terror” and insist that everything can be handled as if these were humdrum criminal acts. Recall WW II when Admiral Bull Halsey explained his strategy as “killing Japs, killing more Japs and pretty soon they lose the will to fight.”

These recognitions—hatred, intractability and our confusion--do not arrive with simple prescriptions for improvement; solutions must be extracted. There is a place for complexity and nuance but not when fighting a war. Clearly, at least in my view, acting wisely on these lessons requires a leadership to articulate the problem, honestly explain why past solutions have failed, and perhaps most of all, stop trying to assuage our enemies in the futile hope that yet one more appeasement will bring victory.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Robert Weissberg is emeritus professor of political science, University of Illinois-Urbana and currently an adjunct instructor at New York University Department of Politics (graduate). He has written many books, the most recent being: The Limits of Civic Activism, Pernicious Tolerance: How teaching to "accept differences" undermines civil society and Bad Students, Not Bad Schools. Besides writing for professional journals, he has also written for magazines like the Weekly Standard and currently contributes to various blogs.