AMERICAN.COM

As the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approach, it’s no surprise that I, along with other colleagues here in the foreign and defense policy group at the American Enterprise Institute, have been asked by various media outlets to comment on that event and the unfolding of policies since. The most predictable and prevalent question is: “Has the war on terror been won?” To which the only sensible answer is “no, but we are winning.” Responding to these kinds of queries is the bread and butter of policy analysts who work in D.C. think tanks. It can be time consuming but it’s just part of the job.

Far more aggravating has been the number of foreign reporters, both TV and print, who, in interviewing me, want to focus on how damaging 9/11 was to the American psyche—wondering if we aren’t crouching under the table, looking constantly over our shoulder at Arab-looking men and women, willing to throw aside civil liberties and all moral constraints in fighting this war.

What follows is a slightly edited email response by me to one such recent inquiry.

Happy to help out [with the interview] … although I think ‘the psychological consequences of 9/11 for the American psyche, ie the feeling of vulnerability’ is just BS. Americans aren’t that fragile and haven’t in fact been traumatized. Of course folks in D.C. thought the earthquake might have been an attack but not because they are ‘on edge’ but because it was a very large, unexpected bump. And since we don’t get earthquakes of that magnitude here but once a century it was perfectly reasonable for them to assume a bomb of some sort. Truth is, I’ve been in Paris, Jerusalem and London during periods where terrorist attacks were common and I don’t see a dime’s worth of difference in attitudes here than in those places at that time …

In that connection, Pearl Harbor is not ‘a syndrome.’ Surprise attacks are facts of history. And combined with the reality of nuclear weapons, not being caught by surprise was a logical response to how America and NATO postured itself during the Cold War. With 9/11 of course, and the attacks on London and Madrid, we also now know that terrorists can pull off attacks that no longer just kill a few at a time but hundreds, even thousands. So, naturally enough, trying to prevent such ‘surprises’ makes sense—a policy I might add that the French were the first to employ when it comes to terrorism in the ’90s.

Sorry to be so grouchy but this attempt to turn 9/11 and the reaction to it into some dark moment in American history is aggravating. The fact is, we have:  a) successfully avoided new major attacks; b) toppled several tyrannical regimes since; c) and [despite having] been at war for a decade, have had no major changes in the practices of American civil liberties. In other words … by most historical standards, [the decade since the attacks on 9/11 has been] a [strategic] success.”