Reflections on the 25th Anniversary of the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks

For those of us who vividly remember September 11, 2001, it is difficult to believe that 25 years have passed since that horrific, historic day when 19 Muslim hijackers took control of four airplanes; the hijackers crashed two of the airplanes into the World Trade Center and one of the airplanes into the Pentagon before passengers on the fourth airplane made sure that it crashed in an open field instead of hitting its designated target, most likely the U.S. Capitol building. That morning, I was at my parents' house when the first airplane crashed into the World Trade Center. For a fleeting moment, it was possible to believe--or at least hope--that this was a terrible accident, but after the second airplane crashed into the World Trade Center 17 minutes later we knew that we were under attack. I will never forget one of the TV talking heads saying something to the effect that we will have to spend millions of dollars to investigate this attack and find out who is behind it. I ruefully said to my parents, "They can save that money or send it to me, because I know the answer: Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and Osama bin Laden."

My point was less about my intelligence and more about the willful stupidity of our leaders and our media members. Just eight years earlier, Islamic terrorists bombed the World Trade Center, causing extensive damage while injuring over 1000 people and killing six people, an attack that should have been foreseen and prevented if the U.S. government had thoroughly investigated the assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane, as I explained in "Our War is With the Jews": Main PLO Faction Admits the Truth:

[Y]ears later (after the 9/11 attacks) "a Congressional investigation revealed that bin Laden had paid the legal fees of El Sayed Nosair, the man who murdered Rabbi Meir Kahane on November 5, 1990. Failing to distinguish between good and evil prevented U.S. authorities from fully investigating the Kahane murder and discovering the connections between Nosair, Omar Abdel-Rahman (the 'blind Sheikh') and bin Laden's al Qaeda; at the time, Kahane's murder was blithely dismissed by the media and by the U.S. government as a radical Arab killing a prominent Jewish figure but we now know that this crime was the first terrorist act committed on American soil by the group that eventually attacked the World Trade Center in 1993: bin Laden's confederates failed to bring down the Twin Towers that time but the next group that bin Laden sent succeeded eight years later. The idea that Kahane and bin Laden are equally radical and equally dangerous is an example of the pernicious, fallacious thinking that Vladimir Nabokov called 'poshlost.' There are not two equally valid sides regarding Kahane and bin Laden; Kahane proposed political solutions (with which one is free to agree or disagree), while bin Laden proposed (and delivered) mass murder around the globe; it is impossible to act correctly without making correct distinctions."

The failure of Western governments to sufficiently confront the nations and groups that foment Islamic terrorism has repeatedly led to suffering. Instead of defeating her enemies, Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005. Soon after, Gazans elected Hamas to power. On October 7, 2023, Hamas conducted a mass casualty terrorist attack in Israel during which more than 1200 people--mostly Jews--were killed, more than 3400 people were injured, and over 250 people were taken into Gaza as hostages. Proportional to population size, Israel's casualties on that day were the equivalent of more than 10 times the casualties that the U.S. suffered on 9/11. 

Too many media outlets focus on so-called "Islamophobia" instead of reporting about the openly declared jihad that is being waged by Islamists against the West. It is painful to see the large numbers of young people who have been seduced by the toxic marriage of Leftist political and economic ideas with Islamism.  

It may seem unpleasant to some people to speak of killing one's enemies, but I began Violence, Non-Violent Non-Cooperation, and Human Nature by noting that violence is "an inescapable reality of life": 

Violence is an inescapable reality of life. It is not possible to survive without committing violence and, indeed, one's ability to survive is directly proportional to one's capacity to both withstand and deliver violence. If you doubt this premise then just consider how you obtain food, water and shelter: none of those essential commodities can be procured without committing violence against other life forms, from tiny microbes to large plants and animals. Killing is an essential part of living.

Non-violence is an aspirational ideal for human beings interacting with other human beings, but elevating non-violence as the highest ideal can sometimes endanger the most innocent and vulnerable among us. The truth of that seemingly paradoxical statement can be seen by closely examining the concept of non-violent non-cooperation. Mahatma Gandhi's campaign of non-violent non-cooperation is credited with ending the British Empire's rule over his native India. Gandhi instructed his followers to not fight the British militarily, but to refuse to cooperate with the British through boycotts and other measures. Gandhi's goal was to highlight the inequities inherent in British control over the Indian people. Gandhi did not view the British as inherently evil; rather, he sought to expose the evil inherent in colonial rule, and thus exercise moral suasion over British society to end such colonial rule.

Gandhi's ideal of non-violent non-cooperation worked in India because Britain, while flawed, was a nation built on the rule of law. Similarly, when Dr. Martin Luther King adopted Gandhi's principles as cornerstones for the Civil Rights Movement in America, he operated under the basic assumption that non-violent non-cooperation would force the American people to see the evil inherent in Jim Crow laws/segregation, and thus exercise moral suasion over American society to end Jim Crow laws/segregation. Britain and America did not seek to annihilate the Indian and Black people respectively, and thus it was possible to awaken the collective consciences of those countries to the injustices inherent in the way those countries treated Indian and Black people respectively. 

Non-violent non-cooperation can be very effective in open, democratic countries that have racist laws and/or racist subcultures. Non-violent non-cooperation is much less likely to be effective in closed, non-democratic countries that consider mass extermination to be an acceptable policy choice. Failing to distinguish between open, democratic countries, and closed, non-democratic countries is to engage in what Vladimir Nabokov termed "poshlost," for which he gave the following explanation: "Poshlost speaks in such concepts as 'America is no better than Russia' or 'We all share in Germany's guilt.' ...Listing in one breath Auschwitz, Hiroshima, and Vietnam is seditious poshlost."  

Western civilization is involved in a war that it did not choose--but must win--versus people and nations who do not value life or place any importance on the protection of human rights; these people and nations proudly chant, "We love death more than you love life."

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush declared, "Whether we bring our enemies to justice, or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done." It took nearly 10 years to find and kill Osama bin Laden, but the U.S. finally accomplished that necessary task, and the U.S. along with her allies must continue to eliminate not just terrorist leaders but the rank and file members of terrorist groups who seek to destroy our society. This mission requires clear thinking that distinguishes good from evil, the kind of thinking that is the opposite of the Leftist ideology that challenges the foundational concepts of Western civilization, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism and neutral principles of constitutional law.

The painful lesson of 9/11 can be summarized by an ancient piece of Jewish wisdom that is quite fitting to quote on the eve of Rosh Hashanah: "Anyone who has pity on the cruel, will show cruelty to the merciful." The self-proclaimed "progressives" who pretend that they care so much about Gazan civilians are siding with the very people who elected Hamas and who stormed into Israel side by side with Hamas terrorists, and they are making common cause with Iran while slandering both the U.S. and Israel; by having pity on the cruel, such people are not only being cruel to the people who are most in need of protection but are endangering the very survival of Western civilization. If you doubt that, then just consider how many Jews around the world need armed protection to publicly observe Judaism. Jews are being openly hunted while Leftists cheer--and if you think that the hunting will stop with the Jews, then you have not only failed to learn the lesson of 9/11 but you have failed to understand the difference between Western values and the Leftist/Islamist ideology seeking to destroy the West.

Moral Clarity and the Death of Osama bin Laden

"Whether we bring our enemies to justice, or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done."--President George W. Bush, Address to a Joint Session of Congress following the 9/11 Attacks

When I learned that Osama bin Laden had finally been killed I immediately thought of President George W. Bush's clarion call to action; President Bush has become a polarizing figure who is regarded with great esteem in some quarters and with great revulsion in others but he spoke truth to power in the wake of the worst terrorist attack ever committed on American soil: the people who did this attack are evil, they are our enemies and their leaders must either be brought to justice or have justice brought to them.

It is not fashionable to speak of good and evil; those words are considered to be inflexible, hardline and reactionary--but the simple, powerful truth is that good and evil exist, that evil people act with tremendous force and unrelenting cruelty and that evil must be answered with tremendous force.

What the United States should have done in Iraq and Afghanistan--and what the United States should do now in Libya and other countries run by despotic, evil regimes--cannot be simply answered in soundbites and superficial rhetoric; these are questions of both strategy (whether or not to act militarily) and tactics (how to deploy the military most effectively if the decision is made to act militarily). It is certainly possible to question or critique President Bush's strategy and/or tactics--but the most valuable service that President Bush provided is that he strongly framed the 9/11 attacks in the proper moral context: the attacks were committed by evil men who took orders from evil men and those evil men must be brought to justice or have justice brought to them.

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President Barack Obama gave the final order to execute the mission that resulted in Osama bin Laden's death but that act of justice would not have been possible without President Bush's clarion call or without the military and intelligence structures that President Bush put into place. It is interesting to speculate about why bin Laden was able to avoid justice for so long only to be taken down suddenly and relatively easily; this is reminiscent of how the Unabomber got away with his crimes until his own brother turned him in to the authorities. I suspect that at least some of the people who were sheltering bin Laden decided that the terror mastermind had become more of a burden than an asset. I am not taking anything away from U.S. intelligence and I certainly am not taking anything away from the brave Special Forces' unit that brought justice to bin Laden but I think that without information from someone close to bin Laden the United States might have spent many more years looking for bin Laden in empty caves in Afghanistan.

Speaking of those caves, if it is true that the United States has given upwards of $10 billion to Pakistan over the past decade to fund anti-terrorism efforts then the United States is due a refund--and more--in light of the obvious fact that the Pakistani government gave aid and comfort to Public Enemy Number One. It is outrageous that bin Laden lived for years in a well-secured mansion in Pakistan while American soldiers fought and died in Afghanistan trying to find bin Laden in the mountains and other rough terrain; Pakistan should issue death and/or disability payments to every U.S. soldier who was killed or injured in Afghanistan.

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In a seemingly unrelated--and yet very related--recent story, CBS reporter Lara Logan was recently brutally assaulted, sexually violated and nearly killed by a mob attack in Egypt; she was in the country to report on the uprising against Hosni Mubarak. Two things struck me about Logan's account of her harrowing ordeal: (1) The crowd attacked her because they thought that she was an Israeli and/or a Jew; (2) Logan said that until this happened to her she never realized how prevalent brutality against women is in Egypt.

What does this have to do with bin Laden? President Bush spoke truth to power about bin Laden, al Qaeda and the Taliban, using "old fashioned" concepts about good and evil; everything is not relative and there are not always two sides to every story: sometimes there is just right and wrong, good and evil. After the 9/11 attacks, a Congressional investigation revealed that bin Laden had paid the legal fees of El Sayed Nosair, the man who murdered Rabbi Meir Kahane on November 5, 1990. Failing to distinguish between good and evil prevented U.S. authorities from fully investigating the Kahane murder and discovering the connections between Nosair, Omar Abdel-Rahman (the "blind Sheikh") and bin Laden's al Qaeda; at the time, Kahane's murder was blithely dismissed by the media and by the U.S. government as a radical Arab killing a prominent Jewish figure but we now know that this crime was the first terrorist act committed on American soil by the group that eventually attacked the World Trade Center in 1993: bin Laden's confederates failed to bring down the Twin Towers that time but the next group that bin Laden sent succeeded eight years later. The idea that Kahane and bin Laden are equally radical and equally dangerous is an example of the pernicious, fallacious thinking that Vladimir Nabokov called "poshlost." There are not two equally valid sides regarding Kahane and bin Laden; Kahane proposed political solutions (with which one is free to agree or disagree), while bin Laden proposed (and delivered) mass murder around the globe; it is impossible to act correctly without making correct distinctions.

The Egyptian crowd nearly killed Logan merely because they thought that she was Israeli and/or Jewish; this is a powerful testimony to how much hatred has been instilled in the Arab/Muslim world against Israelis and against Jews: Arab and Muslim dictators do not have the ability and/or inclination to improve the lot of their people but these dictators have discovered that scapegoating Israelis and Jews is a great way to distract their citizens from the real causes of their countries' economic, scientific and political backwardness. Many Israeli and/or Jewish men, women and children have been killed by people whose minds are poisoned by hate, people who think and act just like the ones who attacked Logan precisely because they assumed that she was Israeli and/or Jewish (to cite just one example, in October 2000 two Israelis took a wrong turn into Ramallah and were literally ripped apart limb from limb). If Logan truly does not know about such attacks or about the virulent nature of this hatred then this is likely because she has bought into a narrative (very popular in the mainstream media) that teaches that there is not good and evil but rather two (or more) equally valid narratives; it is this kind of thinking that reacts to the 9/11 attacks by assuming--or even declaring--that some supposedly legitimate grievances explain and/or justify killing innocent civilians just because they are Americans (or Israelis or Jews). The Western media far too often covers up the racism, antisemitism and misogyny that is prevalent in the Arab and Islamic world because the media's preferred narrative is that Israel is persecuting Arabs, not the other way around--an odd (which is to say false) narrative when one realizes that the Arab/Muslim population of Israel has been steadily increasing for decades while the minority populations of Arab/Muslim countries have been steadily declining and face constant persecution.

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It is powerfully symbolic that the U.S. carried out President Bush's vow to bring bin Laden to justice or bring justice to bin Laden but it will require clear thinking and decisive action to ultimately defeat al Qaeda and other groups/nations that are motivated by evil ideologies and that act with tremendous violence and unrelenting cruelty--and clear thinking must start with understanding the distinction between good and evil.