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September 11, 2001 is the definitive
I-remember-where-I-was moment of our time. I hope it stays that
way, as in a very real sense the moment has not passed. Any doubts
about that can be cleared up by glance at the pictures of body bags
of Russian schoolchildren that hit the news earlier this month.
The fact that there has not been another attack on
American soil can only be seen as a blessing, but it is a silver
lining that comes wrapped in a cloud. Without collapsing buildings
and falling bodies to remind us, we have lost the white-hot focus of
three years ago. Where we were once determined, many have retreated
to their corners, content to leave the fight to others or abandon it
altogether. Worse, having circled the wagons on September 11, some
have turned their guns inward.
It is too easy to blame politics and politicians for
this. The more calculated types have undoubtedly been manipulating
the tragedy since about September 12, but the short attention span
and forgiving nature of most Americans is the greater culprit.
This quirk of our national psyche is both a blessing and
a curse. Few countries have fought as vicious and destructive an
internal conflict as the American Civil War and fully reunited.
Unless one has cracked a history book or two – a fairly rare
occurrence judging by the views of some folks – it would be hard to
believe that Germany, Italy, and Japan were mortal enemies within
the lifetime of many living Americans. While we have our
differences, war with those nations would now be unthinkable. The
veterans of World War II laid down their arms in their hearts every
bit as much as they did on the field.
Our enemy today sees things differently. Osama bin
Laden frequently claims revenge for the Crusades as his motivation,
and those medieval battles are often cited as a justification for
terrorism. Scholars generally place the Crusades from 1091 to 1291,
well before Columbus sailed the ocean blue. And while some
historians also put much later battles under the banner of the
Crusades, it was over long before there was a United States to hate.
These people hold a grudge in a way few of us can
understand or should want to. Paired with a theology that gives
little value to human life and none to infidels, radical Islamists
are in it for the long haul.
How long? Since at least 1291 so far, and by my
observation they’re just getting warmed up.
Believing everyone sees the world the same is a mistake
that comes with a price. Having declined to fight terrorism abroad,
Russians had it come to them. As this is written, news stories
indicate at least 340 people, half of them children, died during
attempts to free a Russian elementary school taken over by Islamist
terrorists the media insists on glorifying as “Chechen rebels.” The
same groups claimed responsibility for the simultaneous downing of
two Russian commercial airliners last month and carried out the
occupation of a Moscow theater in 2002 that resulted in the death of
129 hostages. Russia’s ITAR-Tass news agency reports the school
assault was financed by Abu Omar As-Seyf, an Arab al-Qaida
representative in Chechnya; 10 of the 27 slain terrorists were
Arabs, not Chechens.
Recent polls indicate that Americans place a higher
priority on the economy than national security, a symptom of our
tendency toward national amnesia. It is also an attitude that will
last until about a nanosecond after the first school invasion,
suicide bombing, or plane crash on American soil.
There are many critical issues besides national
security, as there have always been. If we want to keep the luxury
of debating them, we should honor the September 11 victims by not
forgetting, nor thinking their killers will. |
