9-11 In Perspective

We had a 9-11 Remembrance Ceremony at work today. It was very moving. It featured the reading of a letter from the Civil War, as well, which was apropros even if from another era. A young lady even fainted. Another, woman sang America the Beautiful at the end.

Still, I was uncomfortable. I am an American. I find the attention paid to this day of tragedy somewhat out of place in a country whose contributions to the triumph of freedom are unrivaled in the history of the world. I wore a white shirt and a purple tie today, with purpose. As citizens of a great land, we are the equals of the ancient Kings of Rome, who founded a dynasty that established the rule of law throughout the known world, albeit if without democracy. I believe our contributions will eventually be judged the greater, if we stay the course with a commitment to liberty. Ultimately, the events of 9-11, however great they loom in popular imagination now; will be judged a trifling. The attackers are not in possession of a rival ideology that can threaten ours, unlike the communists and nazis who preceded them as our enemies. Islamic jihadists can only threaten to kill a few of us; we are the only threat to our own way of life.

It is time to put those events behind us. Perhaps the completion of a new structure on the site of the twin towers will lay to rest the feelings of fear engendered by the attacks. We should not forget, but we should put those events in perspective and get on with the business of remaking the world through our example of freedom and strength. America the Beautiful? Yes, but also America the Liberator.

P.S., I have only visited Manhattan once, but I loved the place. Filled with bustle and purpose, it is in a sense, the capital of America, because it is the center of American business. I recommend the visit to any American.

Note from Today's 9-11 Prayer

Our pastor prayed today on the subject of the 9-11 attacks. One part of his prayer caught my attention:

There will always be those who have chosen a way of life that is incapable of producing the great wealth and benefits of our society. Out of their envy, they seek to tear down that which they can not build themselves. This is part of why we are called not to envy others. For out of that envy springs anger and hatred towards our fellow man.

Amen.

Our attackers claimed to have attacked us in the name of Allah. Most Muslims claim that the attacks were a perversion of their faith. Fair enough. However, I have never heard a reasonable theological argument as to why they believe this is so. Christians would say that such an attack on the innocent could not be performed at God's direction, because, even though God is all powerful; He chooses to be bound by his promises and his word, the Bible, which forbids murder. Further, He is a God of reason; and the attacks on the innocent were unreasonable. I echo the questioning of the current Pope, who asked if Muslims believe that God is capable of ordering murder or even idolatry from his followers, because his will is all powerful. I have yet to see a cogent reply. With so much destruction in the current age done in the name of Islam, I think we are owed an explanation. (I know that horrific deeds were performed in the name of Christianity in past ages. But our answer is that those were contrary to God's law and we repent of them and actively abhor them in this age. I am asking for the philosophical or theological basis for the Muslim claim that the hijackers operated outside of the bounds of their religion.)

Conspiracies - Pearl Harbor and 9/11

I listened to a Pearl Harbor survivor today who described in somewhat horrific detail his experiences on the USS West Virginia on December 7, 1941. He was a dynamic speaker, with a great memory for detail, especially considering he celebrated his 90th birthday recently. What struck me was that towards the end he brought up his belief that the U.S. government was aware the attack was coming and did nothing to prevent it. It made me think of the "truthers" in our generation who want to blame 9-11 on a conspiracy. It seems that there are always conspiracy theories to explain events with complex causes, because we can't accept their complexity. Even the sinking of the Maine has been attributed to a conspiracy by the U.S. government.

As someone who has experience in government, as well as some knowledge of intelligence operations, I can tell you that hindsight is a great thing to have, when discussing the clues that some untoward event was going to take place. In a government as vast as ours, with responsibilities for intelligence gathering split, by necessity among so many agencies, it amazes me that we figure out anything ahead of time. I liken the problem of predicting adversary actions based on intelligence to solving a jigsaw puzzle, except that you don't have the picture available to guide you and some joker has added thousands of extra pieces to a puzzle of only a few hundred.

Stupid things happen, people are occasionally incompetent, agencies protect their own turf rather than share. All this is human nature as it manifests itself within government. "Never ascribe to malice what can be explained by stupidity" is a good rule of thumb for evaluating a bad situation.

B-Daddy's 9/11 Perspective

I was in the U.S. Navy on September 11, 2001. For our armed forces, the day was truly a watershed event. We were continuing the changes that accrued to the end of the cold war. Base security had become very light, for example, in an effort to save money. At the time, we were still primarily focused on the continuing threat from Russia and the rising threat from China, as well as the possibility of regional conflict with Iran and North Korea. (LCR has a post that sheds light on the same issue.) 9/11 immediately changed that view. The initial efforts to establish greater base security were haphazard, and obviously inadequate. It took years of work and hundreds of millions of dollars to adequately put in place technology commensurate with the threat. Despite, those efforts our armed forces at Fort Hood in Texas suffered from the success an insider attack, for which we were unprepared.

But the military changed, and will ultimately rise to the full challenge of the changed environment, I have no doubt. I am far more concerned about the ways that we have allowed the war on terror to reduce our liberties. It is not a coincidence that the Obama administration carried on many of the same policies of the Bush years. Certainly the threat is real; but it is the predilection of government to establish greater control over we the people in the presence of a threat. This must be resisted; by legal means of course, but resisted none the less. Some of my concerns:

• What is the legal basis for targeting U.S. citizens abroad for assassination? What check exists on Presidential power?
  
• How can we ensure the the privacy rights of those making overseas phone calls? Surely we do not lose our rights just because the call went overseas.
• Why has no action been taken to effectively oversee the FBI's prolific use of national security letters that are essentially a subpoena with little judicial oversight and have been abused?
• Why does boarding an airplane amount to consent to being strip searched?

That's a short list, there are more.

In the meantime, we should also remember that al Qaeda is not an ideological threat to our nation, the way fascism and communism were. They sought to attack us in an effort to incite revolution in the Muslim world. That would be dangerous to us, but not in the same way that communism or fascism were; which found adherents in our own country. Defeating al Qaeda on its home turf appears to have been the correct strategy. But at some point the Arab and Persian masses who hate the West will have to abandon their fantasy that the world will conform to their vision. If their vision is achieved, it will impoverish their societies, because the West will no longer be shipping dollops of cash for the oil wealth of the region. Their autocratic, uneducated and illiterate societies would quickly collapse without Western wealth. One hopes that the "Arab Spring" is a movement towards a greater acknowledgement of the power of freedom, but that is yet to be proved.

Our interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya have certainly changed the landscape in the region. Perhaps it is time to reduce our involvement and allow events to play out, given the huge uncertainties. We could certainly benefit from the reduction in spending. The
is now being played out, but we should remember that it was always a gamble.

Who's Afraid of Islam?

The news story about a small Florida Christian group that plans to burn the Koran got me to thinking about all of the angst surrounding Islam. But first, some questions about their hare-brained idea. Why associate yourself with Nazism? Why pick September 11, when we should be remembering the bravery and sacrifice that prevented the tragedy of those attacks from being worse? Why give evidence to those who find a moral equivalence between Christianity and Jihadism? (Warning: Last link may induce vomiting.) Are you guys crackheads? I just can't figure out any other explanation.

But I digress. There seems to be a great fear of Islam among conservatives. My only fear is that some jihadist moron will slip through our crack security system and kill some of us. With regards to the larger issues, Western culture and religion will prevail over the medievalist interpretation of Islam for a number of reasons, religious, cultural and political.

1. Religion. Fundamental Islam has not reconciled itself with modernity. Its treatment of women is appalling, even if considered enlightened by 8th century A.D. standards. By contrast, Christianity fundamentally considers every man and woman equal in the eyes of God. Further, Christianity has thousands of years of intellectual tradition from some of the finest scholars to explain its tenets. The Bible is translated into far more languages than the Koran and there is not even general agreement in Islam that the Koran should be translated out of Arabic. Judeo-Christian values suffuse the moral compass of most of the world, even that of Western atheists, not that they would admit it. Christianity has a way of renewing itself to meet the challenges it faces in the world. African Episcopalians are leading the fight against Anglican church's acceptance of homosexuality, for instance, because they must compete with Islam for the hearts and souls the people on that continent.

2. Culture. The culture of Islam is too puritanical to succeed indefinitely. Even if Western culture is often too "decadent" or infused with the culture of pornography, it is not hopelessly so. Taliban prohibitions on alcohol, requirements for the burqa, and rules about which vegetables men or women may handle do not strike the educated as sensible. Further, Western culture is richer in content and more liberating than Muslim culture. But strict Islamists reject every facet of Western culture and cannot cope with the inevitable intersection of cultures that result from a global, networked economy.

3. Political. Fundamental Islam is antithetical to democracy. This was articulated during the insurgency in Iraq, where al-Qaeda in Iraq actually argued that they had to kill fellow Muslims to prevent them from voting, because by voting, they might commit a sin by voting against Allah's will. This is not a serious ideological challenge. No serious person, except maybe Thomas Friedman, thinks that any other form of government is preferable to democracy. How can one take seriously a political challenge from an ideology that advocates theocracy? Even Kim Jong Il call his country a Democratic Republic for crying out loud, but Islamists are unapologetic in their disdain for democracy. Are you kidding?

For these reasons and so many others, I am supremely confident that radical Islam is not up to the challenge of Western democracy, particularly as practiced in America. Fell free to build a mosque, but stand by for an onslaught of the most successful political-economic system the world has ever seen.