We should always honor the victims and the heroes who gave their lives on this date. And it should remind us to be always vigilant against the threat of terrorism. But, at some point, do we need to put what happened on September 11, 2001, behind us? Can fear of another 9/11 or desire for retribution for 9/11 distort our foreign and domestic policies?
Back then, we were filled with an exhilarating national unity and a righteous desire for revenge. We attacked Afghanistan and we took the country. But that did not slake our thirst for vengeance. We attacked Iraq. 9/11 was the reason for the Iraq war–not weapons of mass destruction or certainly not oil. Nor did it matter that Iraq was not particularly involved with the 9/11 attacks. We needed someone to fight. We had scores to settle with Saddam Hussein, and he was a convenient target. We defeated his army, overthrew his government, and delivered him to the hangman.
Such acts of vengeance when a great nation is enraged may not be just, but the phenomenon is a commonplace of history, and America arguably was more restrained than others. What then complicated our actions was our ideals and our good intentions. We could have gone in, overthrew the existing powers, and left, making it clear that any other aid to jihadists would bring us back. In retrospect, that may have sent the strongest message. But we not only wanted to defeat Muslim extremists, we wanted to make them free, like us. We wanted them to have a democratic republic with inalienable rights like we have. So we stayed in both countries to build up their own nations in our image. We assumed that the desire for political freedom is natural to human beings, thinking that if these people were just released from their shackles they would rejoice in the better life we would give them. We forgot that our own liberties had as their necessary foundation a religious and cultural and historical foundation that these countries lacked. But that didn’t stop us, even though our entanglement inspired resistance in those countries, bloody guerrilla war, and more and more and more terrorism–precisely what we had gotten into these wars to stop.
The left blames the wars on all kinds of American villainy–on big oil, Halliburton, imperialism, and the alleged psychosis of our president. I blame the wars not on American evil. I blame them on American goodness.
Ironically, even a left-leaning president, with high ideals of his own, is unable to extract us from these conflicts and even looks to be escalating the one in Afghanistan. I’m not sure what we should do now. Pulling out would deliver a victory to the jihadists that would only ensure a revival of their movement and ever more terrorism. But all of this is the legacy of 9/11.
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