23 years into the long war, no end’s in sight
Twenty-three years ago, on the sunny morning of Sept. 11, 2001, close to 3,000 people were murdered on American soil by 19 terrorists.
I knew two of the victims. One was working in the World Trade Center. The other was a passenger on the hijacked jet that struck the Pentagon.
That was one reason why my life, like the lives of so many other Americans, was transformed on that terrible day.
Another reason: In early 1979, I spent several months reporting on the revolution in Iran. I arrived just after the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had returned from exile in France. Within weeks, a revolutionary council guided by his theology took power.
Books and music regarded as “anti-Islamic” were banned. Women were forced to conceal their bodies under chadors. Lashing, stoning, and summary executions were among the punishments meted out to those whose beliefs, sexual orientation, or conduct were disapproved of by the Ayatollah.
In Iranian mosques, chants of “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!” echoed.
What I was witnessing — though I didn’t fully understand it at the time — was the birth of the first modern nation-state committed to Islamic imperialism and jihad: religious war against the Judeo-Christian West.
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The founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran by Persian Shiites both humiliated and galvanized a cohort within the Sunni Arab world. They asked themselves: Who within our tribe is committed to the re-establishment of the caliphate and to defeating the Americans?
From that seed, did al Qaeda sprout.
In the weeks after 9/11, I sat down with Jack Kemp, a Republican politician who had been close to President Reagan, and Jeane Kirkpatrick, a political scientist and self-described “AFL-CIO Democrat” who President Reagan appointed his ambassador to the UN. Also in these discussions: a visionary philanthropist to whom they introduced me.
We began organizing a think tank which we named the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD). It was our conviction that, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US had taken a “premature peace dividend” and “a holiday from history.”
We correctly foresaw that this would be a long war. We incorrectly believed that, after 9/11, no one in a position of authority would defend terrorists.
Before long, there were prominent journalists and academics asserting that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”
That led, ineluctably, to what we now see: Herds of ignorant students, tenured activists, and professional agitators trampling over American campuses in solidarity with murderers, rapists, and baby killers who, at this very moment, are torturing hostages.
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On Sept. 20, 2001, President George W. Bush announced the Global War on Terror (GWOT) which, he said, would not end “until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.”
Before the year’s end, the Taliban, which ruled Afghanistan and had hosted al Qaeda, would be ousted from power. Two years later, Saddam Hussein would be toppled in Iraq.
In 2011, President Obama withdrew all US military forces from Iraq, leading to the rise of the Islamic State, aka ISIS, and further opening Iraq to Tehran’s influence.
In 2021, President Biden withdrew all US military forces from Afghanistan. That proved that Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, planner of the 9/11 attacks, was correct when he told his CIA interrogators that jihadis can be confident of victory because: “We only need to fight long enough for you to defeat yourself by quitting.”
For many years, Americans hoped that Russia and China would side with us in the GWOT. Surely, the arc of post-Soviet Russian history was bending toward liberal democracy. In June 2001, President George W. Bush said he found President Vladimir Putin “very straightforward and trustworthy.”
Near the end of 2001, the People’s Republic of China was welcomed into the World Trade Organization in the hope that as China grew wealthier, its rulers would moderate.
It soon became apparent that this experiment failed — though many influential Americans and Europeans still refuse to see that.
In March 2023, Waller R. Newell, perhaps the world’s leading expert on the history of tyranny from ancient times to the present, joined me in writing a column on what we called the “Axis of Tyrannies.”
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Xi Jinping, China’s Communist ruler, and Putin, Russia’s neo-imperialist dictator, had agreed to a “no-limits” partnership in February 2022, just days before Russian troops invaded Ukraine. Both went on to establish close relations with Ali Khamenei, the Islamist “supreme leader” of Iran.
Khamenei has begun sending ballistic missiles to Russia. There are numerous other examples of military cooperation among the members of what is more often now called the Axis of Aggressors. North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela also are members.
Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran are building their military capabilities as fast as they can. Bipartisan commissions have found the US defense budget and the size of the military inadequate given this expanding threat matrix.
The US is failing to deter the Tehran-backed terrorist militias who have attacked American forces more than 170 times in Syria and Iraq. The US has been unable or unwilling to defeat the Houthi terrorists — also armed, trained, and instructed by Tehran.
And while President Biden has been supporting Ukrainians fighting to retain their independence, and Israelis fighting genocidal enemies, his preference is for “ceasefires” and “negotiated settlements.” That’s not how tyrants and terrorists are deterred, much less defeated.
Are Americans capable of understanding that, 23 years after the 9/11 attacks, we’re in an even more dangerous era — no time for peace dividends and holidays from history?
Maybe. If they elect Americans leaders who understand the stakes and are willing to make the case for the urgency of defending America and helping America’s allies defend themselves.
