Redstate

By Estes Posted in User Blogs — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

From Diaries...

For those who had lived through the cynical politics of the 1990s and the bitter, win by any means tactics of the 2000 recounts, the prospect of a renewed American purpose and greatness seemed very distant that September morning. The beginning of the downturn had set in with revelations of the false marketing of the 1990s boom starting to loom large. The markets had taken a hit on their long road back to reality.

We had seen partisanship erupt with the battle over tax cuts in the Spring, resulting in the party jumping of Sen. Jeffords and the subsequent embargo of a variety of concerns by the newly minted Majority Leader, Tom Daschle. Among the novel things being held up for political reasons were key projects in the Defense Appropriations bill as well as most of the President's judicial appointees...

We were a country that had no great purpose anymore. After being carried through the conclusion of the Cold War by the singular strength of will of Ronald Reagan, we were all too ready to take our economic rewards as a peace dividend - as though the freedom and safety for millions of human beings around the world was not sufficient. We took that dividend and then some and began generating great wealth at home while the dark corners of the world were left to gather the strength to do us harm. "It was the economy stupid" and the world would take care of itself.

And then there was fire.Others will speak and recall those moments and hours that came four years ago this morning. You will see it on every news outlet today - replayed again and again. For many it will be set into memory like Pearl Harbor or the JFK Assassination. It will not seem present to us. It will seem that four years have come and gone with no more 9/11-like events on our shore. And, it will seem that because of this, the peril has passed or that it was exaggerated the entire time.

This latter view is the fundamental faith of the hard Left in this country - that the peril was exaggerated for political gain while at the same time being a sort of unbalanced justice that America's many failings had coming. Some fringes - mirroring the inexplicable claims of Holocaust deniers where ideological agenda subverts all truth - even claim that the events of 9/11 were an "inside job" orchestrated by the government. Meanwhile, some elements on the Right saw it as a parallel act of balancing to our immoral extravagance ever since the '60s - though this has been handily criticized and rebuked by the mainstream elements on the Right.

Since that day, the country has gone through tireless recriminations in our search for how America could have prevented 9/11. In that, we harbor an arrogance of omnipotence - that with proper planning and foresight we can prevent all evil. This has not and never will be the case. It only tempts the arrogant among us in the political class to make claims as to why they should be placed into power. We see these same streaks in the Katrina reaction, only amplified by opportunism and greed for power. But, once again, this has been dealt with here, here, and here.

On the subject of preventing 9/11, whether it is the Clinton political cowardice in the unwillingness to use appropriate energy to take out this enemy before they could strike or the Bush distraction in strategic priorities that allowed the appropriate strategy only to be delivered for approval on the morning of 9/11, the vast amounts of time spent trying to set right and rationalize the past are acts of people more concerned with our own justification than with unifying on the appropriate response. Think about that as you debate the claims of Able Danger or the series of "ignored warnings" to the Bush Administration that "could have prevented 9/11."

The point is not that the attacks were inevitable, but that our country's priorities as determined by our leaders left us more at risk. We left the world to itself while evil persisted and stengthend. We tucked tail and ran when an engagement like Somalia looked far more challenging than we bargained for. It did not fit our national priorities of amassing wealth and being morally nonjudgmental. The debates of the 1990s were driven by budgetary and tax policies, political ethics and corruption, personality, and entitlement refactoring. The concern for how many people were oppressed, how much international corruption trampled on human freedom, and how much help emerging regimes needed to establish burgeoning democracies were of tangential importance. They were polled as "Foreign Policy" and as such, barely polled at all.

All of this changed that September morning. The world did not come knocking. It kicked in our front door.And in a flash of feature film quality terror, America was jarred from its complacency.

While 9/11 gave us terror, it also gave us hope. The America after 9/11 was an America that had to be mindful of life and death, good and evil, and the true fundamental concerns of the human condition that should unify all people of goodwill. The America after 9/11 was an America that set its priorities as setting right evils in the world that only it has the power to do something about. America could not wall itself up against an Asymmetric War. No vast Navy or Air Force could defend us from operatives like Mohammed Atta. America was forced to change the world to minimize the possibility of a Mohammed Atta. Specifically, we could not allow a person of that ideology and intent to have the financial means, training, and supporting personnel and resources to make another attack possible. America had to become an army of liberators again. In so doing, the petty debates of the 1990s were put into perspective. After all, how can the freedom of millions be put on the same political priority list as "targeted tax cuts"?

We have no Reagan now who can stir us with his courage, passion, and argument to take steps to fight a great evil before it comes to our shores. While President Bush has, in moments of greatness, summoned us to a "calling beyond the stars" he has, most of the time, sent us mixed messages that the world is back to normal and that he feels more comfortable expending his political capital reforming Social Security instead of preparing us for the next front of this War or the next stage in America's grand purpose. In his Second Inaugural Address, President Bush hit this message with more courage than any modern President:

America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one. From the day of our founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights and dignity and matchless value because they bear the image of the maker of heaven and earth. Across the generations, we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave.

Advancing these ideals is the mission that created our nation. It is the honorable achievement of our fathers. Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation's security, and the calling of our time. So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.

Now with Katrina, it seems domestic circumstances will rob the Global War of Liberation from Terror and Tyranny of center stage. We will be in a race to see who can give the most money to the needy as quickly as possible in the hope of garnering those voter's loyalties in the future. Do not take this statement as a lack of compassion for those who are in need there - we can and we must help them with an outpouring of wise and thoughtful support. At the same time, the suffering of those displaced does not -contrary to sensationalist media reports - rival a typical day in the slums of Nairobi, the slaughter of the Darfur region, or the numbers wrongfully abused and imprisoned in China or Iran for seeking freedom.

The President must lead with dexterity and finesse both a domestic reconstruction that is fraught with the peril of fraud, graft, and political exploitation while restoring the nation's focus on our larger calling. The work in Iraq cannot be seen as necessary follow through for U.S. credibility, but as a moral and wise enterprise that was inevitable. Particularly, the vast evidence tying Iraq to terrorism around the world should be gotten out into the broad public psyche so that the irrationality of the critics of the Iraq War are unmasked for the political opportunists that they are. Bush has to decide that he is playing to win instead of playing not to lose in Iraq (which is why the conservative base has ceased to be as vocal in their support for the past few months).  

More important than what the Administration or the Congress should do is what we should do. We should remember the lessons of 9/11 and carry it into every conversation. We should resist with all of our will the temptation to be drawn into petty fights on the issues that dominated the 1990s if they are not put subordinate to the national concern of Winning the Global War on Terrorism and Tyranny that we will likely fight on a variety of fronts for the next 50 years. While the Islamic extremism portion of the War could be mostly complete within the decade, there will be other fronts to prevent Africa from becoming the next festering dark corner of the world as the Middle East is now. There will be the front of bringing freedom to China through a strategic chess match that allows time for our ideals to permeate their population and the people to gradually reform their system despite their autocratic leadership. After all, it will likely not be guns that liberate China - it will be the Internet. Instead of fighting over who gets the most here at home - which is the debate that the Left is always trying to foment - we should talk about how we apply and enhance America's strength in the world to better achieve our national calling. All other issues flow from this. The alternative is to look inward and toward ourselves and hope the world will get better as we attend to our own desires.

The America after 9/11 is the America after Pearl Harbor and the America of Ronald Reagan. It is the America that will use its privileged yet morally justified condition of human freedom here at home to see freedom on the march around the world. Right now, we are in a malaise because we see freedom "holding its position." In the words of General Patton, we should be "advancing constantly" and not holding on to anything. Unfortunately, we have let ourselves be distracted by the constant opportunistic backbiting. We should deal with the Left that is undercutting the current effort (and by that, I don't mean all Democrats, though I wish those who care about the values espoused here would stand up and show it by calling down the many vocal members of your party who don't) by ferociously undercutting their criticism with the facts of the stakes involved (cf. Iraq earlier) and the moral argument that America's mission in the world is the primary reason of our politics. But, for any given contrarians, we should only respond once. After that, if they are unpersuaded ,we most move on, ignore them and transcend them. Like a petulant child that will not give up there opinion no matter the irrationality, they can only be disciplined and managed until they mature. In most cases, the criticism will eventually be revealed as a great doubt and suspicion about the goodness of America and that argument will always lose.  

The memory of 9/11 should not be fodder for history or a cathartic self-indulgence. It should be ever present as a reminder of the disparity between our concern for ourselves and the concern for our fellow man. The heroism of the NYPD, FDNY, Port Authority, other first responders, members of the military who charged back into the flames to save their brothers and sisters at the Pentagon, is the living metaphor of the great American mission. At the other end of the pole in modern history is the Fall of the Berlin Wall. It stands as the vindication of the investment of America in promoting freedom around the world. It is the fruit of an attitude of concern for our fellow man.  

Now comes a grim warning: Our current America is not the America of post 9/11. It is the America of the 1990s that set the stage for 9/11. And that America was only awoken by fire. My hope is that we can re-summon the courage in our populace to charge through the fire without that fire being here at home. May we charge through the fires of oppression in the Middle East to support those that long for freedom. May we charge through the fires in Africa of those who live poverty, disease, or face barbaric oppression. May we - the fighters of the online world - charge through the firewalls of the Chinese autocracy to bring the truth to those who live behind the propaganda curtain in Asia.

As you pray for the families of the lost today and for the men and women who have died defending us since that day, pray for wisdom and pray for courage that America may find them again without another 9/11.