After Sept. 11, 2001, no one thought five years would pass without additional attacks.
Everyone believed a vast and sinister hidden army would roll out the horrors — sacks of anthrax dumped into mall ventilation shafts, smallpox vials snapped open in every major city. It felt as if we'd spend the next year punching at shadows until we blew the Axis of Evil into cinders and settled back to enjoy the newly crimsoned sunsets. Or until we curled into a ball and asked them to stop kicking us.
But thanks to diplomacy and restraint, it all ended happily. As we approach the solemn anniversary of the tragedy of 9/11, let us revisit how the war on terror was won in six weeks without a single combat casualty.
What truly turned the tide had nothing to do with America's military power, but the overwhelming revulsion towards terrorism that swept the rich and diverse Muslim world.
Clerics in every center of Islamic theological cogitation began to warn of "infidelphobia" — which they defined as an inexplicable dislike of non-Muslims — and to encourage an end to the crippling sense of victimhood and seething resentment that had come to characterize their relationship with the West. Just as an American newsmagazine put "Why Do They Hate Us?" on its cover after 9/11, so did a Saudi magazine ask "Why Do They Regard Us With Indifference and Annoyed Exasperation, When They Think of Us At All?" And so the dialogue began.
Some violence was necessary, of course. Osama bin Laden was captured and put on trial, and that ended international terrorism. Leaderless, the rest of al-Qaida went back to their jobs as car salesmen, farmers and theoretical physicists. The 357 percent increase in patent applications from Middle Eastern nations was directly attributed to bin Laden's removal. Even if bin Laden's sentence is overturned on appeal, as some predict, his influence has waned.
The people of Afghanistan continued to live under a miserable regime, but the nation was diplomatically contained. To this day, the U.N. is prepared to deny credentials should the Taliban request them.
Iraq was the real surprise, of course. Proving the Clinton administration right, the Baathist regime owned up to al-Qaida ties and ongoing WMD programs, discontinued its support for Palestinian suicide bombers, and held free elections. The world was stunned when Saddam Hussein handed over power to a hitherto unknown politician who'd been a cleaning supply salesman and student of Gandhi.
Iran, shamed, held its own elections, and the mullahs were rejected. Less than a year after the attacks, the world had reordered itself, and the era of peace began.
Imagine America had taken a bellicose path after the tragedy of 9/11. Imagine the red mist of madness had descended, and the U.S. had invaded two sovereign states to impose "democracy" on unready people best left to their own traditions.
Imagine the government had built military bases near Iran, forcing the popular secular reformers to embark on a crash program to build nukes. (And they had just changed the national slogan from "Death to America" to "Health to America, and a Nice Fig Torte, Too." Now this!)
Imagine we had given in to paranoia and suspicion, and intercepted the conversations of suspected "terrorists" without asking the permission of The New York Times editorial board. How many attacks would we have suffered?
We have no time to ask such questions, of course; we've other pressing matters.
There is still the war in Sudan, where U.S. troops have been engaged in a peacekeeping mission for the last three years at the cost of several thousand lives. President Kerry vows to stay until the nation is stable, and he is correct. As a wise man once said: We will pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
Unless the price is too high, the burden too great, the hardship too hard, the friend acts disproportionately, and the foe fights back. In which case, we need a timetable.
