John Scalzi has challenged AOL Journals writers to post our memories and thoughts on the second anniversary of al-Qaeda's 9/11/01 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
In light of more recent events, one thing that especially sticks in my mind is how much I, along with other Americans, processed the event through the historical memory of Pearl Harbor. My wife even asked me that day to play a recording of Franklin Roosevelt's speech to Congress after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
It remains a stirring speech today: solemn, unifying, defiant, inspiring. It's full of vivid images and memorable phrases like the peroration at the end: "No matter how long it may take us ... the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory."
Everyone who grew up going American schools knows what "Pearl Harbor" means: an undeserved sneak attack, to be be followed by a just war to avenge the attack and defeat the evildoers.
But the 9/11 attacks were not Pearl Harbor. And the "war on terrorism" is not World War II. It's not a new Cold War. And understanding the experience as a "Pearl Harbor" made us all more susceptable to appeals that wee need to respond by war in the conventional sense. Or, more accurately after the experiences of the last two years, an endless series of conventional wars.
I supported the Afghan War, which is far from over. It was a reasonable and necessary response against the main stronghold of the enemy (al-Qaeda) that attacked us.
But the Iraq War was not a response to the 9/11 attacks. For all its evils, Saddam's Iraq was not involved in the 9/11 attacks. It was not cooperating with al-Qaeda. And it had no "weapons of mass destruction" - at least none of which evidence has come to light - to give to terrorists. If Iraq is now the main front in the "war on terrorism," it's because the invasion and occupation of Iraq made it so.
Even the concept of a War on Terrorism is misguided. Jerry Brown sensibly asked, how do you make war on a technique? And how do you know when you've won?
The main defenses against terrorism include things like effective secruity at airports, power plants, nuclear waste facilities, major buildings and bridges. Like good screening procedures in ports. Like good intelligence on hostile groups like al-Qaeda. Like cooperation with other countries on arresting terrorist suspects and interdicting their flows of money. Like making sure the public health infrastructure can cope with the release of a biological weapon.
None of these things provide easy opportunities for filming campaign commercials on an aircraft carrier with a "Mission Accomplished" banner in the background. And the blunt reality is, there is no perfect defense against someone like the 9/11 hijackers who are determined to give their own lives to kill other people. Especially when they're willing to target civilian non-combatants.
Now we are in a guerrilla war in Iraq which - whatever it may contribute to our overall national security - makes the short- and mediium-term danger of anti-American terrorism greater. Our understandable, but in retrospect sadly mistaken, tendency to see the 9/11 attacks as a "Pearl Harbor" event has unfortunately contributed to that result.
- Bruce Miller
Hearing:
Kasey Chambers, "Ignorance"
Kasey Chambers, "Tear Stained Eyes" (Sun Volt)
Tags: 9/11, global war on terror, iraq war, war on terror
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