Seven years
It’s been seven years since 9-11.
Seven years, a Biblical number. I’m not sure whether they were seven lean years or seven fat ones on the whole. But one thing I do know is that they’ve been seven astonishing and gripping ones.
Things I never imagined back on September 11, 2001:
—That we would not be attacked again within the next seven years.
—That a mere seven years later, the attacks would seem as though they happened a very long time ago.
—That I would end up admiring a great deal about George Bush.
—The growth of the blogosphere, and my place in it.
—The widening and increasingly bitter divisions in our country.
—A war that would open up the wounds of the Vietnam era and teach me to reconsider things I thought I already knew.
—That I’d ever vote for a Republican President, and even volunteer to help elect one.
—So many readers who would enrich my life immeasurably.
… which you’ve helped to perpetuate right here.
I’ve been on a parallel evolution with you and have felt many of the same emotions. Thanks for being so articulate and prolific in the way you have captured the thoughts and feelings of so many others!
I think Vietnam was some of a relay, a hand off, of French Imperialism and something of a fight that we didn’t need to fight, hind sight is 20/20, I mean we should have and could have ended it in 67, 68 or 69; in Iraq we’ve rescued a people from a most more brutal regime than North Vietnam, we’ve listened to the military commanders on the ground and enacted the surge, and we are disengaging from and hand over authority to a people who have chosen a federal constitution of their choosing; if we were, and some what justifiably so in the context of the Cold War, acting Imperially, it is heartening to see American power used for something good in the world, and at the same time disengage from a road to Imperialism that we may have embarked on.
I wonder how advocating a strong defense for America or challenging beliefs in appeasement of our enemies qualifies as perpetuating divisions in our country?
sorry, no have coffee yet and my tendency to not proof read and my general unschooledness is a bad combination.
Dan–I can answer your question. If you disagree with the left’s bien-pensants, you are perpetuating division because you disagree with them.
Once you take as a premise that your position is the only reasonable one, disagreement does indeed look like divisiveness.
Without undue modesty, I can say that 9/11 sharpened my viewpoint but did not change it. I had figured out by the time I was a senior in high school (mumble mumble) years ago that the Viet Cong were not spontaneously rising agrarian reformers and the North Vietnamese government was basically a bush-league Stalinist regime.
I think George Bush has been a pretty lousy president domestically. However, in the realm of foreign policy he got one thing right, and that was a pretty big thing.
Incidentally, watch for the new trope, that Obama will reduce terrorism directed against us by lessening the level of anti-Americanism. That could happen, but only in the sense that Lucy Lawless could be about to ring my doorbell and ask to come up and get out of these wet clothes.
Much more likely his election will be a signal that the US will seek “soft” power, and soft power comes up badly when it faces honest to goodness hard power.
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The fact remains, uknown numbers of people simply want us, our children and our way of life killed in any way possible. That hasn’t changed in 7 years.
Well, I never felt particularly “united” after 9/11. United in blubbering and weeping? United in leaving little teddy bears at Ground Zero? United in going shopping? United in moo-ing over and over “Islam is a religion of peace.”? No thanks. I’d be surprised if another 7 years pass without another 9/11 or worse. Perhaps then we’ll be united in the emotion we were not allowed to express back in ’01.
Every few decades we get in a dither about things in our wonderful country. I think that our tension is kind of healthy and uncomfortable at the same time. I too have voted, with good intentions, for some Democrats and for the first time I will be putting an election sign in my front yard.
Thank you McCain/Palin for giving us a choice.
– yeh, there is still some killing that must be done. I never did much tongue clucking over self defense……
Good post Neo.
I hope we all take a moment today to remember and be thankful that, that terrible day has not been repeated.
It’s the next seven years I’m more concerned about.
Today I see on Drudge that Russian bombers have flown to Venezuela.
Russia’s invasion of Georgia has been obscured by lipstick smears in the media.
Pakistan is becoming dangerously de-stabilized, which bodes ill for Afghanistan.
Domestically, political polarizations still deeply divide us and there still exists a sizable contingent of people in this country who stillthink that it would be better to cut & run and then bury our heads in the sand.
Bush has done well against islamo-fascist terrorism, but I suspect that the years ahead may be even more challenging than the last seven.
Iran’s threat is orders of magnitude more dangerous than all Al-Qaeda plots. Only two years left before it get its bomb, and do not fool themselves that it will try it on Israel first. They know that they would be destroyed after first nuclear detonation, so why go to hell with the Little Satan, if you can strike the Big One? I see now no way to prevent such devastation except strike Iran first. All these imperatives – need for preemption, need to prepare the strike in full secret from everybody, so that nation would get news of the event only after all is over – make next presidency exceptional in many ways.
A lot of classical liberals, Neo, had to make the decision to side with the Democrats and their fake liberal ideology or with the conservative GOP alliance.
The nomination of Sarah Palin, the invasion of Iraq, the invasion of Afghanistan, all have helped to expose the patent falseness, deception, and manipulations of not only the Left, but of the Democrats in the US.
… which you’ve helped to perpetuate right here.
A true revolutionary of the Left, as you are, would not blink an eye at ravaging the nation with fire and sword to erase the foundations to pave the way for a better world.
Sergey,
What you suggest can’t happen, and shouldn’t happen, without the tacit consent of the other nations in that region, particularly yours. But for whatever reason it seems that only the US and Israel are worried about Iran having the bomb.
Foolish me: I thought the country would unite in wreaking vengance. I am so angry with, and disappointed in, the Dems, that sometimes I welcome the vision of a 2nd Civil War.
“It’s only politics” is a hollow rejoinder. The Left is speaking to the voters in order to get more votes, so unity against a common foe is not achievable.
We are priviledged to sit on a cusp of history, a seat I find most uncomfortable. I lack the objectivity of a passive observer.
test
Meanwhile on somebody else’s blog…
(http://img264.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ayersblogof4.jpg)
Sorry about my manners. The above comment is off topic but I thought it a contrast to neo’s openess.
“A lot of classical liberals, Neo, had to make the decision to side with the Democrats and their fake liberal ideology or with the conservative GOP alliance.”
This makes no sense — I’m a classical liberal and I don’t have a fake liberal ideology — i have a real liberal ideology; it’s the ”new left” with the fake liberal ideology.
Seven years ago I believed that America would unite after attack, as it happened after Pearl Harbor. For several months it seemed so. But this unity faded out so quickly! The shock was not strong enough to overcome entrenched illusions that history is over and a new era of world-wide peaceful cooperation already began. What needs to happen to dispell these charms?
Toes ;
widening and increasingly bitter divisions in our country.… which you’ve helped to perpetuate right here.
I didn’t realize that Neo had helped perpetuate bitter divisions in Canada, Toes’s country.
Hey Toes, when are you going to enlighten us about your opinions about Human Rights Commissions in Canada? After all, things are done better in Canada, and you are chomping at the bit to inform those bible-thumping knuckle dragging yahoos south of the border how things are done in a country that DOES THINGS BETTER?
BTW Toes, if you haven’t done so already, you might be interested to see how Neo’s liberal friends reacted to her change of political views. (Leaving the circle: political apostasy). Also note that a high proportion of readers here, myself included, used to be Liberals. Contrary to your apparent stereotype of conservatives, I have never been a churchgoer.
Just wondering, Neo: any resemblance between Toes and poster John Spragge ?
Toes, I do recognize that you have no problem with the many Americans who think the way you do. You just have a problem with those knuckle draggers who do not agree with you.
Sorry about the boldface.That is the problem when there isn’t Preview.
Hmm, seems to be me Russia has been helping Iran with its nuclear reactor, and such.
One problem with America uniting is that we listened to too many progressive BS artists, such as Toes, who convinced too many of us that our enemies were really oppressed third-world victims we were treating cruelly, and our allies (such as Israel) were really evil imperialists.
As for Iran, and its reactor. . as armchair pessimist points out, only America and Israel really seem to be concerned about that. Certainly not Russia. . .
I did not forsee, in 2001, the way cyber conversations and relationships of all different levels would develop. They are new types of relationships. It’s unlikely I will be attending any cyber friend’s funeral, or taking chicken soup to any cyber friend. Yet, they are – to use neo’s word – enriching relationships nevertheless: of choice, of a present moment, which I may reaccess/refresh each time I choose to click on a website or a comment section, so as to investigate a cyber friend’s thoughts. And of course I will disagree, over various things, maybe with each and every cyber friend I have, yet I still have a love for each in my heart.
The blogosphere is a reminder of what love is and is not. Love is not agreement. I can disagree and still love. Love is not syrupy. I don’t wish to waste more than the briefest sliver of time skimming past and skipping over certain comments and commenters (at OTHER blogs of course. How could I help but to hang onto every word and every syllable written here?). Love is not always in the front of my consciousness. It sometimes needs to be consciously accessed.
Which ties into 9/11/01. I’ve seen mentioned, here and other places, how our nation metaphorically came together and then split back apart after 9/11. I think such is the Creator’s design. I think 9/11 represented, amongst other things, a reminder of this for all of us. We can disagree with each other yet still love each other. We can be disgusted with each other yet still love each other. Our love is not syrupy. Our love is not always in the front of our consciousness, yet it is always consciously accessible. Our love is founded on a higher plane, a higher level, than that of mere intellectual agreement. 9/11 was, amongst other things, a reminder of this, and a reminder of how fleeting is our overt consciousness of this.
“Everything has been said, and well said, yet one must always be reminded.” – Frithjof Schuon
What I did not foresee is how many today would insist on blinding themselves to 9/11 and its lessons.
Then again, I remember the days where so many of my peers chanted “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh!”…so I should have remembered that those idiots are still around.
Here’s an idea, for all of us, this 9/11;
The history of the 20th Century has been one of “idealistic” ideologies and proposed Utopias which have turned out to be nightmares for the very poor they purported to help.
When some progressive comes up to you, telling you you really ought to hate yourself because you’re so: American, Christian, Jewish, Conservative, Capitalist, etc., etc., etc., don’t listen to him. And stop listening to all the dizinformatzion-cheks and propaganda artists who assure you that their dictator is really a nice guy, that their brand of tyranny really, REALLY works, and that all you have to do is give them your unquestioning obedience and lots of American tax dollars, and all well be swell.
Do not listen to any romantic paeons to any “Master Race” (such a thing doesn’t exist), the “Golden Age of Islam”, “The People’s Paradise”, or whatever. And don’t listen to them when they make excuses for their glorious nation’s attacks on other, smaller nations, or ethnic groups; don’t excuse genocide, be it in Indonesia, Kashmir or Georgia.
The question isn’t “Why do they hate us?” it’s “What makes them so hateful?”
Sergey Says:
“What needs to happen to dispell these charms?”
Old soviet era propaganda has taken on a life of its own (like anti-Semitism). Even here, 10-13% of the population seem willing to accept any anti American argument regardless of its absurdity. As a cheering section sometimes their argument jump to the mainstream. They largely broke up any US 9/11 consensus via groups like Moveon mainstreaming their fringe narratives to the democratic party.
So what to do? Get more moderate dems to regain control of their party would be a good first step. There were many past purges of leftwing extremists from the Democratic Party. Time for another…. Maybe if they loose this election it will be leverage to argue their way is not only wrong, it doesn’t work.
My blood pressure rises whenever lefties say George Bush is divisive. He’s not been divisive; in my view, they have. Post 9/11 unity lasted only until the lefties figured out what party line to adopt, and then began demonizing Bush.
You’re right, Thomass, it’s old Soviet propaganda, living on, poisoning everything around it, like toxic radiation.
I do wonder if Soviet Russia is ever going to face up to its ugly past, or if it’s going to continue b*****g itself about it’s allegedly glorious past, swooning over would-be Tzarist/Stalin types, and continuing to wreak misery in the world?
I honestly don’t know if the Democratic party can be saved at this point or not. I think it’s gone too far round the bend. We need a two party system, but I think we need a new party. (Hey, I don’t think the Republicans are doing that well either.)
That Osam bin Laden still would not have been brought to justice.
Propaganda is only a tool of ideology, and socialist ideology originated long before Russian revolution, and not in Russia, but in France. Even if Soviet Union never existed, popularity of this ideology in the West hardly were now less. Dostoevsky dissected these malignant ideas since 1870, and has shown its deep psychologic and religious (may be, better to say, anti-religious) roots. Socialist utopian thinking was wery alive even in 17 century, and Marx himself honestly named his predecessors, from Thomas More (1515) to Tommaso Campanella (1602).
George Bush will someday be remembered as a near-great president based on his willingness to resist the terrorist.
His greatest failing I think will be remembered as his unwillingness or inability to effectively rebut and refute the massive disinformation foisted on the American public by the media and leftist.
Toes. I completely disagree with you about Neo-neocon. Her tone is one of the most moderate and thoughtful on the web. Her site is one of the few where I read all of the posts.
I’m glad you’re here, neo.
Thank you for being here. It’s always a pleasure and sometimes a discomfort (in a stimulating way) to read your work.
Lumpenscholar:
“sometimes a discomfort”
Well, she makes us think.
And THAT’S hard work for some of us (at least for me). 🙂
So, Sergey, you’re saying that the gulags, the Cold War, the Ukranian famine, the Soviet propaganda campaign against the US, its support of terrorist groups, such as the PLO, throughout the 20th Century and various other merry stuff was actually all the fault of France? Oh yes, and Thomas Moore, and Campanella? It was their fault!
Yah. Right.
I mean sheesh, even for dizinformatizion, that’s pretty lame!
Dostoevsky might have dissected socialist ideas, but his dissection didn’t do much to stop Lenin, Stalin or the KGB.
(Ya know, I always thought that Thomas Mooore had kinda a shifty look in his eyes from his Holbein portrait! Ayup, ayup, Moore invented socialism! The 20th Century was his fault! Who’da thunk?)
And Sergey, how do you know that Marxism would’nt have been as popular as it is today, without the backing, financial and philosophical, of the Soviet state, which worked mightily to spread it around the world? What proof do you have of this? Other societies, including some in the United States, tried the socialist experiment, but it always petered out, and socialism, as a philosophy/political movement never really took off until the Soviets started using it as a tool of domination.
Without the Bolsheviks, and their allies in the West, socialism/marxism might have fizzled out as an obviously unworkable idea (which it is); without Soviet propgaganda, their military, Soviet puppets like Castro and the army of dizinformatzioncheks, obedient to Moscow, Marxism might have quietly withered away.
At the time the Bolsheviks took over it was going to happen *somewhere*. Russia would have *never* had the global influence it did if what Sergey said was not true – they were simply there to take advantage of it. While most were not believers they were not *non-believers* – they either didn’t care or thought it sounded good.
All those countries that quickly fell were not initiated by Russia, they were already there and Russia just did what they needed to do to allow it to happen.
We need look no further than home – how far has one party come on the idea of “fairly taxing the rich”? How far has that party come by saying they want to federalize a large number of private industries to make things “fair”. How far has that party gone by talking about how the Rich are riding on the backs of the poor and taking what the poor should truly have.
Go read Marx and it is *exactly* what he wrote, then go read those people he quotes and it is, again, *exactly* the same ideas. All that talk resonates within a large part of our electorate, yet if they simply replaced rich with bourgeoisie and poor with proletariat those same people would instantly realize it was marxist ideas being trotted out and rebel against them. Marx understood that making sound new and exciting would get rid of most of the dislike people had for the ideas and *that* was mostly all he did.
Sergey is correct, and all it took was to simply update the terms to one that normal Americans use and the same old class warefare is back complete with all the wedges being driven in the same places they have for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Just now it is “progressive” and will work (just as people thought it was this brand new shiny stuff called socialism and communism and would now work when Marx updated the language to his time)! It’s never worked and never will, no matter how much one updates the terms to make it sound not like the old failed ideas.
That’s poetically expressed, Ymarsakar. You’re mixing metaphor, but I like the proximity of eye with ravaging.
There is nothing new or “progressive” in socialist utopia. It is very old and reactionary and sends us directly to Late Paleolith, to cavemens, to the epoch before private property or even notion of privacy arose. Ancient Egypt was very socialistic. Plato’s “Republic” was the first known socialist utopia. Like original sin, utopism run in our veins, and can became in vogue everywhere and in any time. Pastor John and his “People Temple” – remember him? – was a communist, who hardly ever heard about Marx or Soviet Union: he found it in the Bible. Communist heresies rolled across Europe in 14 century! This simply silly to see Russian influence in every outbreak of this mental epidemic which can infect any weak social organism which does not properly defends its basic cultural heritage.
Communism may not have come exclusively from Soviet Russia, but it was Soviet Russia that had the funds and used it to spread that view across the world for decades on end.
Even guerrillas, insurgents, and revolutionaries need to eat. They can’t do anything without money.
Sure they can. They can loot and pillage, just like the conquerors of old. They can hold villages hostage; they can murder for their daily bread.
Conquerors of old needed money to pay their armies and mercenaries. Can’t hold villages hostage without weapons and money buys weapons, not promises.