Victor Davis Hanson, one of the most astute students of history alive today has some very cogent reflections on the aftermath of September 11. Indeed, his closing thoughts match my own, but in greater eloquence:
In our current feeding hysteria that diminishes astounding success to quagmire or worse, what disinterested observer would ever believe that in just 24 months we have liberated 50 million people, destroyed the odious Taliban and Saddam Hussein, and routed 60% of the al Qaeda leadership — all at the cost of less than 300 American dead? It is almost as if the more amazing our accomplishments, the more we must deprecate them.
It will require an economist, politician, historian, philosopher, and artist to make sense of the world turned upside down after September 11, which unlike Y2K really did prove to be the abyss between the millennia.
Until then, we would do better to think simply of the dead, and to pledge both that we shall never forget them and in our lifetimes and, according to our efforts and station, we shall not allow it to happen again to any others on these shores — so help us, God.
I couldn’t help but observe there is a factual… angle to what Hanson said. Last time I checked, the Taliban has not been destroyed, nor Saddam. Doesn’t that make all the dead and wounded on all sides slightly more saddening?
Both the Taliban and Saddam Hussein are out of power and will not be coming back.
That counts as a major victory as far as I am concerned.