Another 9/11?
The awful response that we dare not speak about.
So what would the United States do the next time we are hit? Strike who or what — and where, when, and how? The problem with the likes of a supposedly nation-less bin Laden, Zarkawi, or their copy-catters, we are told, is that they are like metastasizing brain tumors whose ganglia are deeply embedded in the surrounding tissue. Surgery or chemotherapy often kills the host as well as the cancer. They and their stealthy patrons both know and count on just that ambiguity and imprecision — as if Americans never operate on malignant brain tumors.
Thus the genius of the jihadists is that they provide psychological rewards on the cheap for millions in the Arab Street without costs, and in turn thrive on “credible deniability” of their tacit hosts. They smirk that postmodern Western liberality precludes Shermanesque collective punishment against the pre-modern. After all, a Christiane Amanpour can be at the front in 24 hours before a live 60-million-strong global audience to yell to U.S. troops on patrol “Don’t step on that child!” — even as her husband advises the Kerry campaign back home. But do they also know that another 9/11 would throw such restraint out the window?
If he doesn’t read Steven den Beste at least he also understands what would happen if there were another major attack. A lot of the anti-war types think we on the pro-this-war side are warmongering, bloodthirsty types. A good many of us understand what would happen if America ever loses its temper. We see this war as the only thing that has a hope of preventing an attack that would provoke that type of response.
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On 9/11/01 Air Force One took off from Florida and first landed at Barksdale AFB outside of Shreveport, La. The first thing President Bush saw there was a big herd of B-52s being loaded out for an exercise. I’ve often wondered what the world would be like if Owl Gore had been on that airplane. Given that the official policy of the last two Dem Administrations for handling foreign policy emergencies seems to have been get everyone in a room and run around like headless chickens, it’s a scarey thought.
I used to say to my friends that the world had not really seen the US angry since 1945. Anything you thought was anger was not, it was just mild annoyance. I thought 9/11 would see the gloves come off, but we have been quite restrained.
The Bush Administration has deliberately chosen a long-term strategy for this war, of which the Iraq Campaign is a part. People of simplisme, who lack subtlty, foresight, and nuance, like John Kerry, have a hard time understanding it as a result.
The only deterrence I have been able to think of is to bluntly inform those countries, like Iran and North Korea, that might deliver WMDs to terrorists, that if we receive a WMD terrorist attack we cannot identify the source of, we shall assume they provided the means to the terrorists and destroy their states by all means necessary. That includes nukes. If we are wrong we’ll apologize later. Won’t that be gracious of us?
The problem is that we cannot stand on the defensive against such threats. We cannot defend everywhere. The only effective strategy is to hit the terrorists, through their enabling states if necessary, before they hit us. We must destroy the terrorists before they get a chance to strike. If that makes the UN sad, or gets in the way of French profits, or annoys tyrants who worry they might be next, tough.