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Kathryn Jean Lopez: How were we morally and intellectually unprepared for Sept. 11?
William J. Bennett:
We were all unprepared for September 11th — not just in the sense
that our intelligence services, our policies, were flawed, although that
is certainly true. You can see the intellectual and moral confusion of
the average American who asked, "Why do they hate us?" and "Did
we bring this on ourselves" and "Shouldn't we work on getting
rid of poverty and oppression — the root causes of terrorism?"
Many of these Americans, it should be said, were and are supportive of
our military campaign in Afghanistan. But that these questions arose —
and in some cases arose immediately — bespeaks lessons that have
been forgotten and, for the young among us, have not been learned at all.
We have forgotten why America is, in Lincoln's words, the last, best hope
of earth. Lopez: Do
most Americans know why we fight this war? Lopez: How is our military doing in terms of morale and Americans support for them? Bennett: I think our military is doing very well. I don't think you could ask for a better commander-in-chief and secretary of defense at such a time. And I think every indication is that the American people remain fully behind them. Lopez: Do
you see the relativism and pacifism that has been so much a part of elite
and academic culture becoming a dominant view as Sept. 11 starts to fade
into history and the war continues — casualties, European criticism,
and all? Lopez: What
is it that needs to be drilled into Americans so they can be behind this
war effort for the long-term? Is there some kind of mantra we can teach
schoolchildren? Lopez: Why
is it that Muslim groups like CAIR, that support Islamist groups, and
in some cases terrorist organizations, are so mainstream in the U.S. and
why are some many — journalists, commentators, politicians (with
a few notable exceptions) — so reluctant to expose them? Lopez: How's
President Bush's moral clarity? Has he lost some of his moral clarity
when it comes to Israel? Lopez: Speaking of moral clarity: In Why We Fight you mention, as one example, Xavier High School in New York City. Many faculty, students, and alumni were intimately affected by the Sept. 11th attacks. But they had a built in community, built, nurtured, and sustained by faith, that could respond in ways some others could not. To what extent are these rich Catholic communities of faith, specifically, threatened by the priest scandals that we've been hearing so much about in the past few months? Bennett: I don't think there's any indication that a large number of Americans have lost faith in the Catholic Church in the wake of these revelations. That is not to say that they are trivial: On the contrary, they are terrible, grave evils that must be addressed. But I think most Catholics love and trust their parish priests, and I think most Catholics realize that the flaws of the humans in the institution are not flaws of the Catholic faith. — William J. Bennett, secretary of education under President Reagan and "drug czar" under President George H. W. Bush, co-director of Empower America, is author of Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism, written after Sept. 11, in bookstores today. (You can purchase it online from the NRBookService.)
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