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all recall that when Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction
were not being eliminated as prescribed in the armistice agreements,
moderate Arab governments, our own State Department, and those on
the Left opposed unilateral military action to take out his missiles,
germs, and stored nuclear material. Instead we were directed to
the U.N. Yet once international sanctions began to have some moderate
effect, the Iraqis nevertheless continued splurging on their elite,
stealthily purchasing weapons, and broadcasting on CNN pictures
of purportedly starving children. At that point, the initials "U.N."
were insidiously replaced with "U.S.," and we incurred
the world's blame for "U.S. sanctions" that "killed
babies" — but without the benefit at least of ridding
Iraq of the mechanisms for killing us. Of course, had we used force
to blow up Iraq's ordnance of mass destruction by sustained air
strikes, in 1992 or 1993, we would have been roundly denounced as
interventionists and crude unilateralists, insensitive to the nuances
of the Muslim world.
Pundits here
and abroad wax on about how we "created bin Laden" and
then "abandoned Afghanistan." They should look at histories
of the Soviet invasion written during the 1980s. Most accounts,
after outlining Russian atrocities, are bugle calls for U.S. action
and castigation of the slow American aid to the "freedom fighters."
Soviet mines disguised as dolls and toys were said to have been
dropped from the sky. Prisoners were tortured, and carpet-bombing
of entire villages, we were told, made it imperative to help these
brave but outclassed patriots. The media saturated our screens with
images of flintlocks against attack helicopters, piety pitted against
atheism. And so Stinger missiles, sophisticated automatic weapons,
and mobile artillery followed, sensationalized by Dan Rather and
others caught up in the zeal of helping the seemingly helpless.
Most military historians agree that such heavy machine guns, rocket
launchers, and the Stingers turned certain Muslim defeat in 1983
into virtual stalemate by 1985. However, what once was seen as principled
assistance to indigenous underdogs now is reinvented as cynical
CIA machinations — "chickens coming home to roost."
Of course, had we done nothing to help the Afghanis, we would then
have been scolded that we were amoral Kissingerians, who did not
think dying children in Afghanistan were worth confronting the wrath
of the Soviet Union. Had we stayed on to create democracy we would
have been dubbed naïve "nation-builders," intent
on idealistic secularism in a fundamentalist society. And so we
pulled out our military assistance, kept giving millions of dollars
in food aid, and accepted the charge that we had "ignored"
our "friends," all the while "giving aid to the Taliban."
Most Americans
agree that supporting corrupt autocracies and medieval theocracies,
such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, is against our long-term interests
and must stop. But we also realized that such countries supplied
not only our imported oil, but the world's as well. And so, between
a rock and a hard place, we were not sure something far worse —
like the evil in Algeria, Afghanistan, and Iran — might not
take the sheiks' place. Yet now we are told that bin Laden might,
in fact, have some legitimate grievance, because his constituencies
have not had the freedom to vote and speak. That may well be so,
but it does not follow that bin Laden himself would ever have sanctioned
freedom or democracy, as we've seen from the Taliban gangsters.
Of course, had we mandated elections in the Middle East, had bin
Laden's thugs swept to victory, and then destroyed nascent democratic
machinery and taken over the oil to buy frightful weapons —
we would now be told by an aroused world that we were naïve,
foolish, or culturally blinkered.
For much of
September we were reminded, through historical fictions, that attacks
against Afghanistan meant suicide-with no real study of Alexander
the Great's career, the Third Anglo-Afghani war, or the true situation
during the Soviet occupation of 1980-82. Then, after our initial
strategic airstrikes and near-annihilation of the Taliban's traditional
military assets, talking heads sarcastically referred to an absence
of real targets, while critics overseas agonized that a sophisticated
modern air force was simply pounding those who could not fight back.
Now, weeks later, the harpies have reversed course and castigated
our military for not doing enough. By this logic, we should expect
in the future that when we are successful in the use of overwhelming
force, we will be dubbed bullies of an outclassed foe-and that,
when we suffer reverses, we will be pounced on for naively blundering
into a quagmire.
For years,
PBS documentaries like American Jihad demonstrated that real
supporters of anti-American terrorists reside in the U.S. Anyone
who has taught on American campuses in the last 20 years has been
struck by the occasional vehemence of foreign students from the
Middle East who quite bluntly lecture their professors on American
foreign policy, spicing their remarks with open hopes of destroying
Israel and expressed tolerance for terrorist groups. On Halloween
night, live from the National Press Club, we saw more of it. The
FBI has known that Islamic "charities" were often conduits
for cash transfers to terrorists. And the State Department surely
was aware that known leaders of murderous groups like Hamas, Islamic
Jihad, and others openly raised money among Muslim groups, community
mosques, and student organizations on campus.
Yes, we knew
all that, and so are now told that our intelligence agencies are
inept, naïve, and worse, for not spotting the hijackers in
advance. But we also surely suspect that, had any government watchdog
agency swept down on America's universities, mosques, Islamic leagues,
and Muslim charities — to expel agitators hostile to the U.S.,
to infiltrate such groups, or to wiretap — they would have
met with a storm of protest. The Islamic-American community would
have quickly mobilized the considerable arsenal of our politically
correct media; universities; the legal professions; and local, state,
and national government to allege ethnic stereotyping, racial profiling,
religious intolerance, Islamophobia, and all the usual -isms and
-ologies we have become acquainted with.
We have been
aware for years of what the Taliban was doing to millions of women:
arbitrary executions, gender apartheid, daily degradation, child
abuse, whipping, and sexual mutilation. Afghanistan violated every
consideration of civilized life — from desecrating cemeteries
to book burning and cultural vandalism — and was at odds with
a number of United Nations pronouncements on human rights. Indeed,
the Taliban was every bit as diabolical as the racist regime in
South Africa and, had it had the resources of Serbia, as genocidal
as the outlaws in Belgrade. Yet if the United States had taken prompt
action, cut off all travel to Afghanistan and Pakistan, frozen their
assets, embargoed their trade, and treated both as rogue nations
(such as Cuba or North Korea), a storm of protest would have arisen
both here and abroad. Moderates in the Arab world would have lectured
the U.S. on our insensitivity toward Islam, while cultural relativists
and anthropologists would have bleated the usual mantras of "Who
is to say what always is normal?" "Are we always any better
ourselves?" and "This is just a part of their culture
very different from our own." Feminists who damned the Taliban
would have damned just as much American military interventionism
and bellicosity.
Much of the
hypocrisy, of course, is simply what a great power expects from
the envious and inferior — as Pericles reminded his Athenian
audience in the first book of Thucydides's history. But a great
deal of the paradox is the sad wages of the times, and reflects
our own troubling uncertainty about morality — and our allegiance
to what is relative and of the moment, rather than to what is absolute
and of the ages. This new species of upscale and pampered terrorist
hates America for a variety of complex reasons. He despises, of
course, his own attraction toward our ease and liberality. He recognizes
that our freedom and affluence spur on his appetites more than Islam
can repress them.
But just as
importantly, these terrorists realize that there is an easy aristocratic
guilt within many comfortable Americans, who are apologetic about
their culture. Few, when pressed by critics, are able or willing
to defend their values and way of life when a simple "I'm sorry"
or "It's our government, not me" will ease the tension.
And in this hesitance, our new enemies sense both decadence and
weakness. Rather than appreciating Americans' self-confidence or
simple manners when we accept rebuke so politely, our enemies despise
us all the more, simply because they can — and can so easily,
and without rejoinder.
September 11
has taught Americans that we need to return to being the confident
moral force we once were, and fast — to act resolutely and
to follow principle. We must expect, but ultimately ignore, the
carping; be polite, but forgo the apologies; and let our critics,
not us, worry only about the tension and hurt that follows.
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