On 9/11

[Not surprisingly, I had originally intended that this post would publish on September 11, 2026, but life’s obligations intruded and the importance of this milestone demanded that any note not be rushed.]

It is the tritest to observe that September 11, 2001, was one of the darkest days in American history.  It strikes a visceral chord within all who remember the attack that day on New York City’s World Trade Center (“WTC”) and other sites (collectively, “9/11”).  We have relatives in the New York area who knew victims lost in the attack.  It is now known that 9/11 has exacted an even greater toll in American lives than the approximately 2,500 who perished that day; recently issued reports indicate that the poor air quality arising from the rubble is almost certainly responsible for tens of thousands developing cancer in the quarter-century since.  One can never forget the heroism of the police, firefighters, other first responders and regular citizens who charged into the World Trade Center to save others that day – many themselves falling victim to the buildings’ collapse — and the ordinary Americans who sacrificed themselves to take back control of Flight 93.  That said, I would suggest that 9/11 is one of the darkest days in our history not only due to the wanton destruction of life wrought, but in a perhaps less apparent sense that I suspect few if any commemorative speakers across the nation mentioned last week.

9/11 is often conceptually paired with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, as the two deadliest foreign attacks on American territory in our history.  Each marked a turning point in our existence.  I would submit that such is where the comparison ends.  Our nation’s respective responses to the attacks placed us on very different paths.

Looking back at Pearl Harbor, we can still feel the deepest sympathy for those, all or virtually all now at rest, who experienced the agonizing pain of losing a loved one in the Japanese assault.  In addition to the tragic human loss, the American Pacific Fleet was virtually destroyed.  After the attack, President Franklin Roosevelt refrained from publicly describing the true extent of the naval devastation in order to confuse Japanese intelligence and maintain American morale; in fact, the United States then had virtually no remaining defense between Imperial Japan’s formidable navy and our west coast.

And yet, that attack also marked the day that America began its transition from being but an occasional international dabbler to the world’s leading force for democratic order and human rights.  Prior to the attack, Mr. Roosevelt recognized the threat the Nazi Wehrmacht would pose to the United States if left unchecked, and understood that the United States’ best hope of maintaining its freedom lay in formally aligning itself with the United Kingdom before it fell to the Nazis.  A majority of Americans, believing the oceans lapping our shores insulated us from the outside world’s challenges, remained opposed to our participation.  The Pearl Harbor attack – coupled with Germany’s almost immediately subsequent declaration of war on the United States – shattered those illusions.  We were in.

William Shirer wrote in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich:  “[The Pearl Harbor attack] transformed the European war … into a world war, which … would seal [Adolf Hitler’s] fate and that of the Third Reich.”  British Prime Minister Winston Churchill wrote in The Second World War:  “[Upon hearing of the Pearl Harbor attack] I knew the United States was in the war …. So we had won after all!”

By contrast, 9/11 found us led by an inexperienced and arguably under-qualified President.  When we elected President George W. Bush the preceding year (in this context, put aside all the electoral controversy), it didn’t seem to matter that much whether we selected him or then-Vice President Al Gore (by today’s standards, both were moderates); America’s economy was booming (the cracks we now see between the well-to-do and the impoverished not yet generally apparent), we had a balanced budget, and America’s place as the world’s preeminent superpower was unquestioned.

But it did matter.  While 9/11 was indeed an attack on our nation, and it was natural for our leaders to guard against the worst in the first days following 9/11 and to pledge retaliation against those who had attacked us, Al Qaeda was not an imperial nation with a formidable military.  Once the earliest shock passed, it was obvious that our democracy was not at risk.  We did not need to go on a wartime footing.

But we did.  Article 5 of the NATO charter was invoked.  We launched an invasion of Afghanistan.  Although the invasion was not unreasonable since the Taliban did not deny that it was shielding al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden – the invasion generally enjoyed wide American and domestic international support — we ultimately sustained approximately 2,500 deaths and another over 20,000 wounded in battle.  (I don’t believe that these casualty numbers include such as individuals who have succumbed or will succumb to causes such as toxic fume inhalation from open-air burn pits.)  The reported cost of the incursion is $2.26 trillion.

Today, the Taliban control Afghanistan.

In March, 2003, America invaded Iraq, led by Saddam Hussein.  To quote Google’s “AI Overview” reference to the Council on Foreign Relations:  “The administration of President George W. Bush argued that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and posed a threat in the wake of 9/11, though no active WMD programs were ultimately found.” [Emphasis Added]  Our allies were markedly less supportive of our Iraq invasion than they had been of our Afghanistan incursion – as it turns out, with good reason.  Our international relationships began to fray; trust in American judgement was placed in question.  Those of us old enough to remember the buildup that preceded the Iraq invasion well recall the Bush Administration’s juxtaposition of 9/11 with the threat it perceived to be presented by Iraq, certainly creating the impression in some Americans that Saddam had played some part in 9/11.  He had not.  When no WMDs were found, the object of the mission suddenly transformed from ridding us of a WMD threat to saving the Iraqi people from Saddam, because he was a really bad guy.  Well, he was a really bad guy … but there are a lot of other really bad guys in the world. 

We finally withdrew from Iraq in December, 2011.  It is reported that we sustained approximately 4,500 deaths and another over 32,000 wounded in battle.  (Again, I don’t believe that these casualty numbers include such as toxic fume victims.)  It has been estimated that we spent $3 trillion on the incursion.

In 2023, Stephen A. Cook of the Council of Foreign Relations wrote, “Iraq is not yet what political scientists might refer to as a ‘consolidated democracy.’”  I’ll let you decide, given what has been going on in the Middle East, whether Iraq’s democracy is more “consolidated” today than it was in 2023.

According to the Human Rights Watch:  “[During the Middle East conflicts] the Bush administration authorized coercive interrogation practices by the CIA and the military that amounted to torture … Indeed, many were, including Canadian national Maher Arar who described repeated beatings with cables and electrical cords during the 10 months he was held in Syria, where the US sent him in 2002.”  Mr. Bush has admitted that he himself authorized waterboarding prisoners of war.  While only naïve American would believe that Americans had refrained from such practices in earlier wars, those conflicts seemed long ago and far away.  The Bush Administration’s practices made clear that the world’s supposedly foremost advocate of human rights was no better than anybody else.

Although there were undoubtedly earlier indications, for me these military debacles hastened our descent from truth to tribalism.  It is now common for pundits to excuse Mr. Bush and his team for the blunder of the Iraq invasion on the ground that they made decisions based upon faulty intelligence.  To me, that is and was no excuse.  Chief Executive Officers of multi-billion dollar corporations make “bet the company” decisions regularly.  These CEOs don’t dream these decisions up – they have an inclination, but finally give approval to major new initiatives based upon the marketing, financial and other projections of their subordinates.  When these major decisions turn out to be that wrong, they lose their jobs.  That is what I expected to happen when Mr. Bush stood for reelection in 2004, as it had with President Herbert Hoover in 1932, with President Jimmy Carter in 1976, and would have happened with President Lyndon Johnson had he stood for reelection in 1968.  Instead, winning became everything; the Bush Campaign employed a war mentality to our political discourse as well as to our foreign policy.  Republicans smeared the military service of Democratic Presidential Nominee and decorated Vietnam War veteran U.S. MA Sen. John Kerry while trying to make Mr. Bush (whose flight status was suspended during his military service for failure to appear for a mandatory physical exam) into the next coming of William Tecumseh Sherman and Dwight D. Eisenhower.            

Would we have reacted in the same way had al Qaida attacked earlier, during President Bill Clinton’s second term?  One can only guess, but I genuinely don’t think we would have.  Although Messrs. Clinton and Bush were both born in 1946 – and at this point, are personally as close as brothers – they would have been very different men when confronted with the crisis.  Mr. Clinton would not only have had markedly more experience a president than Mr. Bush did; he’s a more nuanced thinker and – perhaps most crucially — the two men unquestionably came away from our Vietnam experience with very different impressions of the utility of American military power.  Mr. Clinton would have taken aggressive action of some sort – the American people would have demanded it, and Mr. Clinton was extremely sensitive to his people’s views – but he was also a master at managing American opinion and expectations.  Afghanistan?  Maybe.  Torture?  Unlikely.  Iraq?  No.  This is, of course, but the sheerest speculation, and which of the parties’ 2000 presidential nominees would have succeeded Mr. Clinton – and what course we would thereafter have taken — would have depended almost entirely upon Americans’ assessment of the Clinton Administration’s response following the attack.

But for me the notion lingers:  that in the same way that certain martial arts stress the use of leverage – manners in which smaller, weaker opponents can catch larger, stronger opponents off balance, tip them over, and win a struggle – bin Laden and al Qaida, probably without realizing it, caught us at a time when we were overconfident as a nation, and led by leaders who meant well but ultimately proved to be ill-equipped to deal with the challenge the terrorists placed before them.  9/11 caused us to go in directions, both internationally and domestically, that it is hard to fathom that we would have taken had al Qaida not struck us at just the time it did.

On this past September 11, I heard MSNOW’s Morning Joe’s Joe Scarborough scoff at the suggestion that “bin Laden won.”  I would offer — notwithstanding and in NO WAY taking away from the heroism and sacrifice of those on 9/11, the heroism and sacrifice of our military and related personnel in two Middle East wars that spanned so many years, ended or marred so many lives, and cost us so much financially, and the Bush Administration’s successful thwarting of many undisclosed terrorist attacks in the years following 9/11 – that bin Laden could not have dreamed when he launched the 9/11 attack that it could have had such a deleterious effect on us, thrown us as far off course, as I believe that it did.  Sure, we ultimately killed him.  Who can doubt that he would have gladly given his life for the havoc he wreaked?

Be angry with me if you wish.  Call me an idiot (you undoubtedly already have and will, with ample justification).  I express this with the deepest regret, but cannot escape the belief:

bin Laden won.