Happy Warrior

ARE we in the post-post-9/11 world? I’ve had a strange flurry of letters to that effect in the last few weeks. And obviously at some point my correspondents will be proved correct. Even if September 11 was “the day that changed everything,” the everything it was changed to will, in turn, be changed itself, to something else.

So is “the 9/11 era” over? Well, in one sense, yes. It’s not just that, for warmongers, the momentum of Afghanistan and then Iraq has stalled but that, for defeatists, the quagmire’s stalled, too. After the fall of Saddam, there was the insurgency, and the election, and more insurgency and more elections, and more of the dull hard slog of nation building. But, while the Democrats may still be clamoring for an “exit strategy,” it seems to me the American people have psychologically exited already and that “the war” is waning as a domestic issue. Terrible things still happen there but not, on the whole, to U.S. forces: It’s one group of Muslims killing other groups of Muslims, and by definition the American people have less at stake in that. Iraq is a matter for the Iraqi people now. Whatever awaits them, it’s beyond Kerry and Murtha and Biden.

About the Author

Mark Steyn

Mark Steyn is an international bestselling author, a Top 41 recording artist, and a leading Canadian human-rights activist.

ARE we in the post-post-9/11 world? I’ve had a strange flurry of letters to that effect in the last few weeks. And obviously at some point my correspondents will be proved correct. Even if September 11 was “the day that changed everything,” the everything it was changed to will, in turn, be changed itself, to something else.

So is “the 9/11 era” over? Well, in one sense, yes. It’s not just that, for warmongers, the momentum of Afghanistan and then Iraq has stalled but that, for defeatists, the quagmire’s stalled, too. After the fall of Saddam, there was the insurgency, and the election, and more insurgency and more elections, and more of the dull hard slog of nation building. But, while the Democrats may still be clamoring for an “exit strategy,” it seems to me the American people have psychologically exited already and that “the war” is waning as a domestic issue. Terrible things still happen there but not, on the whole, to U.S. forces: It’s one group of Muslims killing other groups of Muslims, and by definition the American people have less at stake in that. Iraq is a matter for the Iraqi people now. Whatever awaits them, it’s beyond Kerry and Murtha and Biden.