September 11, 2001 – 22 Years And A World Away

It is almost impossible to believe that it has been 22 years since 9/11. For those of my generation, the September 11 attacks were a defining moment. But at the same time, September 11 feels like it was a lifetime ago. We have all lived through so much over the intervening two decades – wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Trump Presidency and its never-ending cavalcade of scandal, COVID-19, January 6. As Amy Zeigart wrote it The Atlantic on the twentieth anniversary, the up-and-coming generations only perceive 9/11 through the lens of history.

What we have not lived through is another mass-casualty attack against the United States. Twenty-two years ago it seemed like 9/11 could have just been a prelude. The anthrax attacks later that year were a dire harbinger of the horrors to come.

Those horrors never came. There were no more major attacks—no more hijackings, no biological attacks, no dirty bombs, no chemical attacks. Yes, there were small-scale attacks, but those barely rated in the horrible shadow of everyday American violence. That we remember 9/11 as an isolated horror is a testament to the men and women here at home and abroad that sacrificed so much to ensure a safer world for everyone.

It is true that some of the things we did in the post-September 11 period proved to be destructive and unnecessary. Airport security remains mostly an exercise in security theater. The PATRIOT Act dramatically expanded America’s surveillance state and was often used far beyond what it was intended to do. Despite the wise calls of the Bush Administration at the time to separate out Islam in general from the attackers, the rise of anti-Muslim hatred was both counterproductive and against the spirit of unity that should have reigned for all at that time.

Today, the biggest threat this country faces is not an external enemy. It is not “Islamofascism.” It comes from good-old American-branded fascism. What al-Qaeda never did in 2001 or afterward was shake the foundations of this country to its core. Osama bin Laden could not and did not destroy American democracy. Instead, we have ended up doing it ourselves.

In those dark times when the World Trade Center’s towers smouldered, our country came together. Even during the threat of COVID we never achieved anywhere that sense of unity, at least not for long. We mourned together, we resolved together, we prayed together, we cheered together. That we have lost that sense of national unity in less than a generation only compounds the tragedy of September 11, 2001.

Obama’s Damascus Debacle

President Obama once again has stepped firmly into a disaster largely of his own making, as he now threatens Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad with military action. History is not without its sense of irony: here we have the same group of Democrats who campaigned against President Bush’s “war of choice” based on a Ba’athist dictator possessing weapons of mass destruction now advocating the very same thing. To see John Kerry forced to confront a skeptical Congress and convince them to go to war in the Middle East is like peering into Bizarro World.

President Obama is right on one thing, if only in theory. The use of weapons of mass destruction against civilians should be a categorical red line. Anyone government or non-governmental entity that launches an attack with chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons should be blown off the face of the earth, no questions asked. In a perfect world, the international community would swiftly and surely punish such violations of basic international norms.

Of course, we don’t live in anything resembling a perfect world.

Obama may feel free to argue that the use of chemical weapons is a worldwide “red line” that demands immediate action, but saying it does not make in so. Until the Chinese and the Russians feel the same way, all of these high-minded proclamations of global resolve are for naught.

President Obama discusses Syria in the Oval Office.

Instead, President Obama is demonstrating his naïveté on foreign policy matters. We do not live in an age of international harmony in which the saintly United Nations will come to the aid of the suffering Syrian people. We live in a world based on realpolitik. Vladimir Putin is perfectly fine with Assad gassing Syrians by the thousands. What he cares about is expanding Russian power in the region and the globe.

Even though I’m still a believer in enforcing international norms through the judicious use of military force—exactly the sort of person that the President could convince—the problem is that we are entering into yet another Middle Eastern conflict with no clear idea of just what we are hoping to achieve. Are we trying to punish Assad for the use of chemical weapons? Exactly what is the point if the punishment will be no more than a token strike with drones or cruise missiles? That will not be an effective deterrent, and sends the message that the use of WMDs will lead to a piddling and ineffectual response.

The President has made it clear that the goal is not “regime change” or killing Assad. But that is precisely what the goal should be. If we want to effectively punish the use of weapons of mass destruction on civilians, we have to make the price unacceptably high. That means that the use of WMDs should be met with immediate, clear, and undeniable action. In short: if you want to use WMDs on civilians, the United States and its allies will hunt you down and kill you, destroy your military, and end your rule. Anything less gives tyrants like Assad the leeway to gas civilians and hope to survive the consequences.

Making this all even more complicated is that many of the Syrian rebels are tied to al-Qaeda and other Salafi groups. Even if Assad were deposed, Syria will likely end up embroiled in yet another bloody civil war in which the most likely winner will be radical Islamists. Our options are, to put it mildly, not good.

In the end, we are planning on going into Syria to try to “preserve credibility” by a series of ineffectual strikes, sending the message that if you use WMDs the United States will levy a small measure of its military might against you. Maybe. If we decide to bother.

Obviously, the Iranians are quaking in their boots.

If that were not enough, the situation is even worse. Great Britain, America’s staunchest ally in international affairs is out of the running. The French were the only coalition partners that we had going into Syria. (As an aside, this is because of France’s long interest in Syria, which was once a French protectorate.) But now, Obama’s sudden (but legally required) decision to consult Congress has left French President François Hollande in the lurch, and forcing him to go to the National Assembly in the hopes of getting permission to act against Assad. Contrast that to Iraq, where President Bush had nearly 40 coalition partners at the outbreak of the war—including the British. On Syria, the United States runs the risk of standing unnecessarily alone.

But this is a problem largely of President Obama’s own making. Despite his claim that “I didn’t set the red line,” the President’s very own words make it clear that he did set a red line with Syria. That in itself is respectable: the use of weapons of mass destruction rightly should be a red line for the United States. The problem is that Obama’s statement was made to look tough without being tough. What Obama should have done was to back up that statement with force: getting Congressional approval for a limited response targeting Assad and his military personally if there was a confirmed use of WMD.

Democratic partisans will argue that Obama would never have received the approval of the Republican House. Maybe so, maybe not. (I would guess that Obama could have squeaked it by.) But Obama is the one who decided not to even try to consult Congress until the last minute. Had this debate happened a year ago, the United States could have backed up its words with action now when it counts. But the President is openly and clearly contemptuous of working with Congress, abdicating the true source of his Presidential bully pulpit when it is needed the most.

Now, the United States faces an unnecessary crisis. Even if the President gets his approval to strike Syria, it will be too little, too late. The lesson being taught here is that the use of WMD against civilians will be tacitly tolerated, and that the United States is not to be feared, at least not under this Administration. And even if we do act in Syria, we will be acting in aid of a group of rebels closely associated with al-Qaeda who promise more bloodshed to the already ravaged Syrian people.

This is a situation that should never have been allowed to develop in the first place, but this Administration has abdicated leadership on the world stage. We have sent a message of weakness rather than resolve, and the world has taken notice. Our traditional allies are no longer with us, and we face a conflict with no clear goals, no clear resolution, and no real purpose.

While the President is right that the use of WMD is a categorical red line that should never be crossed, he lacks the political and international power to back up that statement. Even if we attack Syria, which is not a foregone conclusion, it will not achieve much. President Obama may think that it’s the credibility of Congress or the world that’s on the line, but the reality is that it was his credibility that was on the line, and he failed. Sadly, the consequences to America, Syria, and the world are likely to be severe.

Can The Iraqis Hold It Together?

Rare is the day that I find that Thomas Friedman has written something actually worth reading, but he manages to deliver an even-handed and even insightful look into the end of the war in Iraq. Of course, he cannot resist putting in a few digs at President Bush, but overall his message is true: the future of Iraq will be decided by whether the Iraqi people can pull their country together.

Friedman writes:

Iraq had its strategic benefits: the removal of a genocidal dictator; the defeat of Al Qaeda there, which diminished its capacity to attack us; the intimidation of Libya, which prompted its dictator to surrender his nuclear program (and helped expose the Abdul Qadeer Khan nuclear network); the birth in Kurdistan of an island of civility and free markets and the birth in Iraq of a diverse free press. But Iraq will only be transformational if it truly becomes a model where Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, the secular and religious, Muslims and non-Muslims, can live together and share power.

As you can see in Syria, Yemen, Egypt, Libya and Bahrain, this is the issue that will determine the fate of all the Arab awakenings. Can the Arab world develop pluralistic, consensual politics, with regular rotations in power, where people can live as citizens and not feel that their tribe, sect or party has to rule or die? This will not happen overnight in Iraq, but if it happens over time it would be transformational, because it is the necessary condition for democracy to take root in that region. Without it, the Arab world will be a dangerous boiling pot for a long, long time.

Friedman thinks that Iraq was a war where the U.S. and Iraq both paid too high a price, but he’s right in pointing out that the war had its benefits. Without the invasion of Iraq, we would not have seen the wave of revolutions across the Arab world that we’re seeing now. The visions of Iraqis going to the polls and choosing their own leaders left an indelible mark on the region. From Tunis to Tehran others in the Arab and Muslim world saw Iraq hold peaceful elections and wondered “why can’t I do this?” It took years to come to fruition, and it is far too early to see whether the Arab Spring will lead to a victory for Islamists or a real democratic movement (or some combination of both). But in the end, one thing was right: the invasion of Iraq marked a turning point.

That’s where the critics of the war in Iraq kept getting it wrong: they assumed that the U.S. and its allies went to war for one reason and one reason only: weapons of mass destruction. But wars are never that simple: and while WMDs were chosen as the primary causus belli for the war, that wasn’t the only one. The war in Iraq was intended to be a transformational moment for the region. It was, but it happened on a far longer timetable than the planners of the war perhaps thought.

I also take issue with the idea that the war was waged “incompetently.” The fact is that we took out Saddam Hussein in a matter of days. Yes, we made plenty of mistakes in the post-war period. But that’s not because the U.S. was incompetent. It’s because the U.S. has not done anything like what it had to do in Iraq before in its history. The U.S. had never engaged in nation building on a scale like it had in Iraq. The analogies to the Marshall Plan ignore the fact that while Europe was devastated by World War II, it has had a tradition of democracy and civil society that has barely existed in Iraq. Of course we were going to screw things up: the most important thing was that we adapted to the situation as it happened. Sadly, the Bush Administration was slower to adapt than it should have, but the fact was that Bush’s embrace of the “surge” (against the political conventional wisdom) was the right choice, which even Friedman now admits.

If we had done what John Kerry would have had us do: abandon Iraq early and leave it to al-Qaeda and Iran, who knows what the Middle East would look like today. Iraq would have been ripped apart by a combination of al-Qaeda and Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias.

The planners of the surge were right in separating Iraq’s Sunnis from al-Qaeda. Once al-Qaeda in Iraq was destroyed by the joint U.S.-Iraqi forces, Iraq’s Shi’ites no longer felt the need to rally around groups like Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. Instead of trying to force a “political solution” without changing the reality on the ground, President Bush and the U.S. military set the groundwork for a political solution to happen on its own: something that could have only happened once al-Qaeda was defeated.

Now it’s ultimately up to the Iraqis to decide their own fate. The U.S. has left Iraq, and while leaving so completely without at least establishing basing rights in Iraq was an utter failure of the Obama Administration, the mission in Iraq was going to have to transition to Iraqi control at some point. We could not provide a security umbrella in Iraq—otherwise the Iraqis would have had no incentive to develop their own security umbrella.

But there is still a problem: President Obama got his wish. We’re out of Iraq now. And now President Obama will basically ignore Iraq—not that any of the Republican candidates care to engage there either. But right now, as Friedman notes, Iraq is in a state of transition that could either lead to a chance at a lasting democracy or a renewed civil war, At the very least we should be active in getting both sides to negotiate rather than start to rearm sectarian militias.

Right now, Iraq’s future is in grave trouble: the Shi’ite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has accused Iraq’s Sunni Vice President of being involved in terrorism and is threatening to upset the delicate political balance that has kept the peace in Iraq. The arrest warrant for Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi threatens to split off the Sunni Iraqiya bloc, and since al-Hasmemi fled to Iraqi Kurdistan, it may lead to tension with the Kurds as well. If that happens, then Iraq could all too easily fall into civil war once again.

If President Bush were President, there would be extensive shuttle diplomacy going on to cool these tensions: but President Obama seems blithely uninterested in the long-term peace in Iraq. That mistake threatens to undo everything that more than 4,000 brave Americans fought and died to achieve.

We did pay a high price to bring a hope for democracy to Iraq, but what was achieved there could be transformative for the region and for the world. But if we neglect Iraq, we risk losing everything. It may be ultimately up to the Iraqis to shape their own future, but we cannot pretend that we’re not interested in the results, and we should not abandon them when we could help them create and maintain a stable and civil society.

Osama Bin Laden Is Dead

It’s official… Osama bin Laden is dead, killed in a ~~missile strike~~ daring Special Forces raid just outside the capital, Islamabad.

More information as it arrives.

11:52 pm

The government is stating that bin Laden’s body will be treated according to Islamic customs. Which I hope involves having his head mounted on a pike at the top of the new Freedom Tower in lower Manhattan while the rest of his body is slathered in pig fat and fed to a pack of dogs. Sadly, he will get far more respect from his enemies in death than he ever showed in his life.

11:42 pm

The Pakistani government was not informed of the raid before it took place. That’s not surprising – Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI, has long been suspected of being in bed with al-Qaeda.

It is also being said that the compound where bin Laden was hiding was constructed five years ago and was made specifically for him. That strongly suggests that at least some elements of the Pakistani government knew that bin Laden was hiding in their country.

It was never really doubtful that bin Laden was in Pakistan, but it’s surprising that he was so close to the Pakistani capital. Then again, there were always rumors floating about that bin Laden was hiding in an urban area rather than the desolate mountains and rivers of the Afghan/Pakistan border.

11:36 pm

Allegedly, this was the location of bin Laden’s hideout. It seems too close to the center of town to be right, but it does match the general description of the site.

11:22 pm

Marc Ambinder is reporting that the former Seal Team Six performed the operation with help from unmanned drones and helicopters.

Bin Laden was hiding in a large walled estate 80 miles outside Islamabad in the town of Abadabad.

11:16 pm

Reports are that President Obama received several briefings over the past few weeks on bin Laden, and gave the go-ahead for the operation on Thursday, April 29th.

11:14 pm

Sources are saying that Navy SEALs were involved with the operation near Islamabad.

11:11 pm

Thus also demonstrates that despite all of our impressive technology, the deadliest tool in the American arsenal is the US soldier.

11:09 pm

If bin Laden was so close to Islamabad, it does suggest that he had a great deal more operational control of al-Qaeda than previously thought. His death could be more momentous than just a moral victory against al-Qaeda.

The other good aspect of this is that what’s left of al-Qaeda has got to be running scared. Now Ayman al-Zawahiri is the most wanted man in the world, and if we can nail bin Laden, he’s certainly not safe.

11:00 pm

I never would have predicted that bin Laden would have gone down like this. That we’d actually get him in a firefight, face-to-face. I always figured that we’d have taken him out in a drone strike or he would have died in a cave somewhere. To know that he died knowing that the US was closing in on him is utterly fitting.

I hope he died in abject fear.

10:57 pm

Another thought: according to the President, the US had intelligence that Osama bin Laden was near Islamabad since August. It’s shocking that Osama would not have moved in eight months. It’s a sign that he was getting sloppy, and that undoubtedly helped us finally get him.

10:54 pm

The story of how this was pulled off has got to be incredible. The sheer amount of skill needed to pull off a covert op in the middle of Pakistan and kill the most wanted man in the world without a single casualty is just amazing.

10:53 pm

From one of my Facebook friends: they should take bin Laden’s body back to the US and charge to kick him in the balls. Budget deficit solved. I’d be in line for that.

10:47 pm

The President’s speech faltered at first, but he found the right voice and the right tone at the end.

10:45 pm

The President’s speech ended on a wonderful note of American unity. A very strong end to a historic speech.

10:44 pm

“Today’s achievement is a testament to the greatness of the American people.” Very much so.

10:43 pm

There’s nothing more just than an evil man meeting his well-deserved end.

10:42 pm

The President is striking the right tone now. “Justice has been done.” Indeed it has.

10:41 pm

No US casualties in the operation that led to bin Laden’s death. Damn good work.

10:40 pm

Apparently the killing of Bin Laden occurred today, and was accomplished by US Special Forces.

10:39 pm

President Obama’s speech is not reaching the Churchillian heights I’d hoped for. It sounds like a policy speech, and Obama is stumbling on some phrases. So far not a line that’s worth remembering.

10:35 pm

Obama is speaking now.

10:34 pm

There are hundreds of people outside the White House now. Remember the “Arab Street?” This is the American street.

10:31 pm

Awaiting President Obama, expected to speak shortly.

10:30 pm

CBS is reporting that bin Laden was not killed in a missile strike, but was “shot in the head.” Exactly the ending the bastard so greatly deserved.

And to whomever pulled that trigger, thank you.

10:27 pm

This may be the most important speech Obama gives. He has a reputation for great oratory—now more than ever he’ll have to live up to it.

10:26 pm

Politically, this helps Obama. But the political calculation doesn’t really matter now. This is a good day for America. This is a good day for civilization itself.

10:25 pm

There is a risk that this event may destabilize the Pakistani government. And because Pakistan is a nuclear state, there’s a huge risk of nuclear weapons falling into terrorist hands. Hopefully the military and intelligent community have been preparing for this announcement.

10:23 pm

Sources are saying that Osama was killed in a “ground operation.” The CIA’s fingerprints are all over this.

10:20 pm

They’re singing the national anthemn outside the White House… beautiful.

10:16 pm

Time for celebratory glass of Scotch…

10:13 pm

Outside the White House, chants of “USA, USA!”

10:12 pm

President Obama was to speak an hour ago, but hasn’t appeared yet. On a momentous occasion, finding the right words can’t be easy.