"Year
One "
"The nullity of Bloomberg's planned ceremony is an acknowledgment, even in the most sorely wounded city in America, that one year on there is no agreement on what Sept. 11 means. To some, it calls forth righteous anger and bestselling kick-ass country songs. To others, far more influential in the culture, it demands 'healing circles.'" (Mark Steyn)
News and commentary summing up "Year One" and on the first
anniversary of the September 11 attacks.
September 2002
"Liberty Wins - So Far" (Jeffrey Rosen, The Washington Post Outlook, 2002/09/15)
"We Will Prevail" (Theodore Olson, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/09/15)
"My Name Is Adolf" (Ann Coulter, FrontPageMagazine, 2002/09/12)
"The Best and Worst of 9/11/02" (Jonathan V. Last, The Weekly Standard, 2002/09/12)
"President's Remarks to the Nation" (George W. Bush, The White House, 2002/09/11)
"Returning to the Battlefield" (Donald H. Rumsfeld, National Review, 2002/09/11)
"Remarks of Harvard University President" (Lawrence H. Summers, Harvard University, 2002/09/11)
"US pays tribute to the dead" (BBC News, 2002/09/11)
"The Wages of September 11" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 2002/09/11)
"Europeans are on the wrong side of the new Berlin Wall" (James Bone, The Times, 2002/09/11)
"The imperial era begins" (Tony Blankley, The Washington Times, 2002/09/11)
"U.S. vs. Them" (Francis Fukuyama, The Washington Post, 2002/09/11)
"The Great Refutation" (George F. Will, The Washington Post, 2002/09/11)
"How Have They Changed?" (Martin Kramer, Sandstorm, 2002/09/10)
"The Left and 9/11" (Adam Shatz, The Nation, from the 2002/09/23 issue)
"Never Forget - Why 9/11 still matters" (Andrew Sullivan, Time/andrewsullivan.com, 2002/09/09)
"View From The Patriotic Left" (Christopher Hitchens, FrontPageMagazine/The Boston Globe, 2002/09/09)
"London to host Islamic 'celebration' of Sept 11" (Thair Shaikh, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/09/08)
"Flying the flag" (Mark Steyn, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/09/07)
"A year after Sept. 11, and what has changed" (Rasheed Abou-Alsamh, Arab News, 2002/09/07[?])
"Remembrance And Resolve" (Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, 2002/09/06)
"The triumph of American values" (Mark Steyn, The Spectator, from the 2002/09/07 issue)
"School-sponsored 9-11 Remembrance Day to exclude patriotic symbols and religious references" (Steve Sexton, The California Patriot, 2002/09/04)
"9/11 Outrage In Colorado" (Steven Plaut, FrontPageMagazine, 2002/09/05)
"MESA Culpa" (Martin Kramer, Middle East Quarterly, from the Fall 2002 issue)August 2002
"Year One" (Charles Krauthammer, The Weekly Standard, from the 2002/09/09 issue)
"Sept. 11, 2002: A Time to Speak Up" (Andrei Cherny, The Washington Post, 2002/08/31)
"Don't Dianafy 9/11" (Mark Steyn, National Post, 2002/08/29)
"Teaching 9/11 lies" (George F. Will, New York Post, 2002/08/25)
"For the NEA, history is farce" (The Washington Times, 2002/08/20)
"NEA delivers history lesson" (Ellen Sorokin, The Washington Times, 2002/08/19)
"Liberty Wins - So Far" (Jeffrey Rosen, The Washington Post Outlook, 2002/09/15)
"In the course of researching the state of liberty and security after 9/11, I've been especially struck by how restrained America's legal response appears when contrasted with that of our European allies. Although they weren't directly attacked, the countries of the European Union passed anti-terrorism measures during the past year that are far more sweeping than anything adopted in the United States. ... The Bush administration has tried to emulate its European allies by expanding executive authority in similarly dramatic ways. ... What distinguished America from Europe, however, is how quickly all three of these extreme positions met with opposition from the other two branches of government. ... The executive branch tried to increase its own authority across the board, but the courts and Congress are insisting on a more reasoned balance between liberty and security. Of all of the lessons about America's strength that have emerged since the attacks, this is one of the most reassuring.""We Will Prevail" (Theodore Olson, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/09/15)
"But never before in our history have so many civilian citizens, engaged in the routines of their daily lives, who neither individually nor collectively had done anything to provoke the savage attack that they were to experience that day, been brutally murdered for the simple reason that they were Americans, and because they stood, in their countless individual lives, for all the things that America symbolizes. ... The terrorists of Sept. 11 cannot prevail in a world occupied by the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and its Bill of Rights, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Gettysburg Address, the Statue of Liberty, the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, the Capitol, the Supreme Court and the White House. They cannot coexist with these ideals, these principles, these institutions and these symbols. So they cannot survive, much less prevail, in the same world as America. ... The very qualities that bring immigrants and refugees to this country in the thousands every day, made us vulnerable to the attack of Sept. 11, but those are also the qualities that will make us victorious and unvanquished in the end.""My Name Is Adolf" (Ann Coulter, FrontPageMagazine, 2002/09/12)
"Among the patriotic lesson plans for 9-11 was one proposed by the National Council for Social Studies, which recommends a short story titled "My Name is Osama." Calculatedly inciting hatred toward white American boys, the story is about a nasty little boy, "Todd," who taunts an Iraqi immigrant named "Osama." This is the lesson to commemorate the biggest hate crime in history – committed by someone named "Osama" against people with names like "Todd." How about a 1942 lesson plan titled 'My name is Adolf'?" (See also: "NEA delivers history lesson" (Ellen Sorokin, The Washington Times, 2002/08/19))"The Best and Worst of 9/11/02" (Jonathan V. Last, The Weekly Standard, 2002/09/12)
"In the Seattle Times, Jafar Siddiqui rang the PC bell, lamenting that after September 11, "the president's lieutenants began their war. Their targets were Islam, Muslims and Arabs..." Which is a nifty coincidence, since all of the hijackers were Muslims. But never mind; as Siddiqui somberly informs us, "The climate of fear had set in." "As our administration comes after Arabs and Muslims, they do so with the participation by silence of the people of this free country and by the silence of Congress," he writes. "One thinks of other places where such events have taken place, that we call dictatorships." His conclusion boggles the mind and strains any assumption of good faith: "It appears that the tragedy of Sept. 11 is being compounded by a silent but greater tragedy, a constitutional tragedy under which the rights and freedoms of every person in these United States may be imperiled for generations to come." [emphasis added] ... Over in Britain, where the anti-Americanism is born not of stupidity, but belligerence, John Pilger wrote in the Mirror that "the lesson of September 11 ought to be understanding the rampant nature of the dominant power of the world..." and that "the far greater threat comes not from the Islamic world, but from the West." "The difficult truth," Pilger declares, 'is that Osama bin Laden and Bush/Blair are two sides of the same coin. That is the lesson of September 11.'" (See also: "Muslim Americans still bear brunt of backlash" (Jafar Siddiqui, The Seattle Times, 2002/09/10). Pilger's piece seems not to be available online.)"President's Remarks to the Nation" (George W. Bush, The White House, 2002/09/11)
"This nation has defeated tyrants and liberated death camps, raised this lamp of liberty to every captive land. We have no intention of ignoring or appeasing history's latest gang of fanatics trying to murder their way to power. They are discovering, as others before them, the resolve of a great country and a great democracy. In the ruins of two towers, under a flag unfurled at the Pentagon, at the funerals of the lost, we have made a sacred promise to ourselves and to the world: we will not relent until justice is done and our nation is secure. What our enemies have begun, we will finish." (See also: "President's Remarks at the Pentagon" (George W. Bush, The White House, 2002/09/11): "We fight as Americans have always fought, not just for ourselves, but for the security of our friends, and for peace in the world. We fight for the dignity of life against fanatics who feel no shame in murder. We fight to protect the innocent, so that the lawless and the merciless will not inherit the earth. In every turn of this war, we will always remember how it began, and who fell first - the thousands who went to work, boarded a plane, or reported to their posts.")"Returning to the Battlefield" (Donald H. Rumsfeld, National Review, 2002/09/11)
Remarks delivered by the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon's September 11 memorial ceremony: "The road ahead is long. But while we have not yet achieved victory, we know, in one important sense, that the terrorists who attacked us have already been defeated. They were defeated before a shot was fired in Afghanistan. They were defeated because they failed utterly to achieve their objectives.
The terrorists wanted September 11th to be a day when innocents died; instead it was a day when heroes were born.
The terrorists wanted September 11th to be a day when hatred reigned; instead, it was a day when we witnessed love beyond measure.
We saw it in the rescue workers who rushed into burning buildings to save lives, knowing they might never emerge.
We saw it in the passengers on Flight 93, who learned what was happening, and decided it was better to fight and die in a grassy Pennsylvania field, than allow the terrorists to reach our nation's capital. ... The fruits of September 11th were not hatred, fear or self-doubt, as the terrorists intended. They were faith, hope and love - charity and courage - patience and perseverance. We have cause for hope, because we have seen evil reveal itself in our midst - and then watched it humbled by the power of simple goodness.""Remarks of Harvard University President" (Lawrence H. Summers, Harvard University, 2002/09/11)
"As we grieve for each innocent life lost, we cannot evade the truth that what we commemorate here today is more just than the tragedy of human lives lost multiplied thousands of times over. It is the result of a calculated plan to murder unsuspecting people, innocent people - not because of anything they did or even anything they stood for - but because they were members of this national community enjoying the fruits of freedom. Those who killed on September 11 and those who celebrate the killing remind us of the eternal existence of evil. And we regard the world with understanding and openness, but we must also face it with moral clarity. We may debate the nature of truth, but there are truths beyond debate. Pursuit of that truth is OUR particular objective.""US pays tribute to the dead" (BBC News, 2002/09/11)
"New Yorkers have been taking part in a moving ceremony at the site of the fallen twin towers exactly one year after the attacks on the World Trade Center - with the names of each of the 2,801 people who died there read out. The ceremony at the site now known as Ground Zero began at 0846 local time (1246GMT/1346BST) with a minute's silence to mark the moment when the first of two hijacked passenger jets was crashed into the World Trade Center.""The Wages of September 11" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 2002/09/11)
"Indeed, as the months progressed the problems inherent in "the European way" became all too apparent: pretentious utopian manifestos in lieu of military resoluteness, abstract moralizing to excuse dereliction of concrete ethical responsibility, and constant American ankle-biting even as Europe lives in a make-believe Shire while we keep back the forces of Mordor from its picturesque borders, with only a few brave Frodos and Bilbos tagging along. Nothing has proved more sobering to Americans than the skepticism of these blinkered European hobbits after September 11.""Europeans are on the wrong side of the new Berlin Wall" (James Bone, The Times, 2002/09/11)
"Crossing the Atlantic this summer was like riding the S-Bahn in the bad old days between West and East Berlin: It was a scarily schizophrenic experience. Never since I first moved to New York two decades ago has the mutual incomprehension between the United States and Europe been quite so profound. Though still nominally allies, Europe and the United States exist in different realms. I'm convinced, though, that the division between them is not so much geographical as it is temporal. This is a Berlin Wall in time. ... The terror attacks last September 11 were one of those extremely rare one-day events - like the storming of the Bastille or the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand - that inaugurate a new era. ... Europe, however, is still lingering at the Checkpoint Charlie of this new era, uncertain whether it really has to cross over through the time- lock or whether it can succeed in barricading itself in the familiar fortress of the past. ... The European public, mired in what has suddenly become the past, really has no understanding of America's new stance. But for anyone living in the new era, it is quite easy to comprehend. Since September 11, America has been forced to jettison the defence doctrine of the Cold War and embrace the pre-emptive posture of Israel - with whom it now shares the emnity of the Islamist movement and much of the Arab world. ... European politicians and the public whose votes they court would do well to face up to the future by themselves, before President Saddam Hussein or one of Osama bin Laden’s followers forces them to do so.""The imperial era begins" (Tony Blankley, The Washington Times, 2002/09/11)
"The defining feature of this new mentality is the awareness (gained for most of us one year ago, today) that for the first time in human history, the advance of technology makes possible the killing of millions of Americans by just a handful of other people on the other side of the world. ... Now, vigilance is not enough. Now, only constant action may reduce the risk. ... And we have not yet found our stride. The more we fear, the more we will look. And the more we look, the more danger we will find. And the more danger we find, the more intrusions we will carry out. Who can gainsay the logic and necessity of such efforts? And thus, the imperial period of our history starts. ... While we will not plant our flag on foreign lands, nor claim them for ourselves, we will insist on intruding and searching and managing. To do less would be criminal negligence on the part of our leaders. But in doing it we will be cursed, like the Flying Dutchman of legend, to wander the globe until the day of judgment.""U.S. vs. Them" (Francis Fukuyama, The Washington Post, 2002/09/11)
"A year after Sept. 11, one of the most notable features of international politics is how the United States has become both utterly dominant and lonely. ... Americans are largely innocent of the fact that much of the rest of the world believes that it is American power, and not terrorists with weapons of mass destruction, that is destabilizing the world. And nowhere are these views more firmly held than among America's European allies. ... While it is tempting to say that this is simply a matter of the Bush administration's often sharp-elbowed approach to issues such as the International Criminal Court, a much deeper matter of principle is involved. ... Americans believe in the special legitimacy of their democratic institutions and indeed believe that they are the embodiment of universal values that have a significance for all of mankind. This leads to an idealistic involvement in world affairs, but also to a tendency for Americans to confuse their national interests with universal ones. Europeans, by contrast, regard the violent history of the first half of the 20th century as the direct outcome of the unbridled exercise of national sovereignty.""The Great Refutation" (George F. Will, The Washington Post, 2002/09/11)
"Ideas have consequences - indeed, only ideas have large and lasting consequences - so history is, at bottom, the history of mind. The acts of war a year ago made up our nation's mind, as one restores order to an unmade bed. We made up our mind to fight, of course, but also to become virtuously intolerant of a certain kind of nonsense, including the notion that tolerance is everything because everything else is nothing - nothing but opinion or chimera. The postmodern plague of quotation marks - the punctuation of disparagement that labels as superstitions "virtue" and "heroism" and most of the other things that make life worth living - was erased by men running into burning buildings, men who had not been disabled by today's higher learning. The quotation marks remaining after the Great Refutation surround two words: 'Let's roll!'""How Have They Changed?" (Martin Kramer, Sandstorm, 2002/09/10)
Kramer agrees with Bernard Lewis (see below) on Islamist contempt for America: "In an address almost a year ago, I listed what had to be done to squelch that contempt: "You must smite your enemy in a decisive and demonstrative way. This requires two things. First, you must get rid of the Taliban regime. The United States has not deposed a regime in the Middle East in fifty years. It must do so now. Second, you must get Osama bin Laden - and not in one, two, or sixteen years. Every day he lives is an affront to American credibility. Let me be clear: nothing you do will ever even the score for September 11. But do these two things, and you will rebuild the gaping hole left in your wall of deterrence. Do these two things, and you will create awe and fear among the multitudes. Fail, and you will engender derision and contempt - and the fear will be yours." So the crucial question, one year after, is not how we have changed, but how they have changed - above all, have they learned to fear us? ... But with bin Laden (and Mullah Omar) still at large along with much of al-Qa'ida's leadership, Afghanistan in a tenuous state, and America's leadership under question even by its allies, the authors of 9/11 still have room for hope. And to judge from the new terror alert, the fear is still ours." (See also: "Address to the 2001 Weinberg Founders Conference" (Martin Kramer, www.martinkramer.org, 2001/10/20))"The Left and 9/11" (Adam Shatz, The Nation, from the 2002/09/23 issue)
An analysis of the Left's response to 9/11: "The prowar left and the antiwar left have both tended to view the conflict through ideologically tinted prisms. Reflexive anti-Americanism is one such prism. As Don Guttenplan, a London-based correspondent for The Nation, observes, for a small but vocal section of American radicals, "there is only one imperialism, and if it isn't American it's not imperialism." In the past decade this theology of American evil has assumed increasingly twisted forms, including, in some cases, a creeping sympathy for Serbian nationalism. It has also produced a highly selective solicitude for the oppressed: "Muslim grievances" are to be heeded when they emanate from Palestine, but ignored or even repudiated when they arise in Bosnia or Kosovo. This has damaged the left's moral standing and widened the chasm with human rights activists, who should be our natural allies.""Never Forget - Why 9/11 still matters" (Andrew Sullivan, Time/andrewsullivan.com, 2002/09/09)
"And most of us know that there is no moving on from September 11. It wasn't a random tragedy for which grief is a slow-acting salve. It was a massacre - a cold-blooded, fanatical murder of civilians by men possessed by a theocratic ideology. It was an invasion - the violation of sovereign American soil, the erasure of a visible monument to American success and energy and civilization. It was a crime - the filling of the air of a great city with the irradiated dust of innocent human lives. It was a statement - that radical Islam intends to attack and destroy the very principles of the Enlightenment that underpin the American experiment - freedom of religion, of conscience, toleration and secularism. The appropriate response to this act of nihilism and evil is therefore not grief or remembrance or sadness or reflection, although each of those has its place. The appropriate response is rage. ... A whole generation will grow up with this as their most formative experience - a whole younger generation that knows that there actually is a right and a wrong, and that neutrality is no longer an option. That generational power has only just begun to transform the culture. In decades' time, we will look back and see what a difference it made.""View From The Patriotic Left" (Christopher Hitchens, FrontPageMagazine/The Boston Globe, 2002/09/09)
"There's no time to waste on the stupid argument that such a deadly movement represents a sort of "cry for help" or is a thwarted expression of poverty and powerlessness. Osama bin Laden and his fellow dogmatists say openly that they want to restore the lost caliphate; in other words, the Muslim empire once centered at Constantinople. They are not anti-imperialists so much as nostalgists for imperialism. The gang that kidnapped and murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl - and proudly made a video showing the ritual slaughter of a Jew - issued a list of demands on that same obscene video. One of those demands was for the resumption of US sales of advanced F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan. Only a complete moral idiot can believe for an instant that we are fighting against the wretched of the earth. We are fighting, as I said before, against the scum of the earth.""London to host Islamic 'celebration' of Sept 11" (Thair Shaikh, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/09/08)
"Extremist muslim clerics will meet in London on September 11 to celebrate the anniversary of al-Qaeda's attacks on America and to launch an organisation for Islamic militants. The conference, which will be attended by the most radical mullahs in Britain, will argue that the atrocities were justified because Muslims must defend themselves against armed aggression. It will launch the Islamic Council of Britain (ICB), which will aim to implement sharia law in Britain and will welcome al-Qa'eda sympathisers as members.""Flying the flag" (Mark Steyn, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/09/07)
"The stampede started almost immediately. On September 12, the Ottawa Citizen ran a column by Susan Riley headlined "At Times Like This, We Thank God That We're Canadians". Oh, God, I groaned, not the usual moral preening. But no, Ms Riley skipped that and went straight for naked self-interest: "Our best protection may be distancing ourselves a little more explicitly from US foreign policy … pursuing a reasonable and moderate course in the world's trouble spots." I've heard it a thousand times since and I still don't get it. By "distancing yourself" from the victims of September 11 you move yourself closer to the perpetrators, closer to barbarism. It may be "reasonable and moderate", but it's also profoundly self-corroding. This isn't a "clash of civilisations" so much as a clash within civilisations - in the West, between those who believe in the values of liberal democracy and those too numbed by multiculturalist bromides to recognise even the most direct assault on them; and in the Islamic world, between what's left of the moderate Muslim temperament and the Saudi-radicalised death-cult Islamists. I don't want to be "moderate and reasonable" in the face of Mohammed Atta. A world that "distances" itself from the US to get closer to him is a world that's more misogynist, bigoted, corrupt and superstitious.""A year after Sept. 11, and what has changed" (Rasheed Abou-Alsamh, Arab News, 2002/09/07[?])
Found via Little Green Footballs: "While some moderate Muslims have had the courage to speak out against the growing amount of violence and terrorism done in the name of Islam, it hasn't been enough to drown out the hatred of those Muslims who are intent on destroying the West. The governments of many Muslim countries are squarely to blame for this sad state of affairs. For decades now they have looked the other way or even given money to extremists within our societies, allowing them to spread their message of hate and intolerance. Don't say hello to non-Muslims, shun them and never befriend them. This has been the message of extremists for far too long. How is the Muslim world supposed to interact with the rest of the world, be they Christian, Jewish, Hindu or Buddhist, if they are told to hate them first?""Remembrance And Resolve" (Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, 2002/09/06)
"The war in Afghanistan enjoyed breathtakingly broad national support. Yet here we are a year later, and things are different. It doesn't feel like war. The very suddenness and relative painlessness of the victory in Afghanistan, coupled with the fact that at home no second shoe dropped, has helped return us to a state of suspension, of confusion. We feel the uncertainty. But our enemies do not. Which is why the challenge of this Sept. 11 is to remember the feeling of last Sept. 11. Not just the pain, but the danger. It endures. And so it will until we have destroyed those who did the deed, those who support them and those who would emulate them.""The triumph of American values" (Mark Steyn, The Spectator, from the 2002/09/07 issue)
A brilliant celebration and appraisal of the heroism on Flight 93: "The Flight 93 hijackers might have got lucky. They might have found themselves on a plane with John Lahr ('You guys are working for Bush, right?') or an Ivy League professor immersed in a long Harper's article about the iniquities of US foreign policy. They might have found themselves travelling with Robert Daubenspeck of White River Junction, Vermont, who the day after 11 September wrote to my local newspaper advising against retaliation: 'Someone, someday, must have the courage not to hit back but to look them in the eye and say, "I love you."' But, granted these exceptions, chances are any flight full of reasonably typical Americans would have found a group of people to do the right thing, to act as those on Flight 93 did. When you face these terrorists, when you 'look them in the eye', you see there's nothing to negotiate. Flight 93's passengers were the first to confront that - to understand that what they were up against was not 'courage' (as I erroneously identified it a year ago) but a psychotic death-cultism in which before committing mass murder one carefully depilates and cleans one's genitalia because paradise is a brothel. ... But, on Flight 93, Todd Beamer, Jeremy Glick, Thomas Burnett, Mark Bingham and others did not have the luxury of amused Guardianesque detachment. So they effectively inaugurated the new Bush Doctrine: when you know your enemies have got something big up their sleeves, you take 'em out before they can do it.""School-sponsored 9-11 Remembrance Day to exclude patriotic symbols and religious references" (Steve Sexton, The California Patriot, 2002/09/04)
Found via Little Green Footballs: "The "Star Spangled Banner" is too patriotic, divisive and political, so organizers of UC Berkeley's day-long tribute to the victims and heroes of 9-11 are excluding it. "God Bless America" is doubly excluded. Not only is it patriotic, but it also mentions God, something else that is taboo next Wednesday. ... [Jessica Quindel, president of the Graduate Assembly, a key player in the planning], a self avowed hater of the American Flag, the federal government, and the "Star Spangled Banner," said she is still patriotic. "It depends on your definition of patriotism. Everyone has a different definition," she said. Patriotic songs may exclude and offend people, Quindel said, "because there are so many people who don't agree with the songs." "God Bless America" is "very exclusive" because it mentions God, she said. ... Also, to prevent the exclusion of those who don't believe in the American Flag, there will be no tribute to the flag. "The flag has become a symbol of U.S. aggression towards other countries. It seems hostile," Quindel said.""9/11 Outrage In Colorado" (Steven Plaut, FrontPageMagazine, 2002/09/05)
"Osama Bin Laden was apparently not available to address the students at Colorado College on the first anniversary of the September 11 Islamist atrocities. I say this because I doubt there could be any other plausible explanation for why Colorado College saw fit to ask Hanan Ashrawi, the most prominent spokesman for Palestine's war of terror in the west, to address its student body for the First Anniversary of America's second Pearl Harbor. Colorado College president Richard F. Celeste, a former Ohio governor and ambassador to India during the Clinton administration, has defended the college's choice of this speaker, saying the invitation was intended to "provoke critical and engaged thought." Oh really? He might just as well have invited Holocaust Denier David Irving to address the campus on Holocaust Memorial Day, or to invite the head of the Klan to appear on Martin Luther King Day." (See also: "Hanan Ashrawi, Apologist For Terror, Should Be Disinvited From Colorado Symposium On 9/11 Anniversary" (The Zionist Organization of America, 2002/08/30) and "Hanan Ashrawi's Propaganda" (Camera, 2000/11/08))"MESA Culpa" (Martin Kramer, Middle East Quarterly, from the Fall 2002 issue)
If he isn't busy throwing stones at Israelis, Edward Said will receive the WOCMES Award for Outstanding Contributions to Middle Eastern Studies on September 11. The scandal of Middle East studies continues: "Said is the Columbia University celebrity professor who has made a career of accusing all and sundry of misrepresenting Islam. In the process, he has committed not a few acts of misrepresentation himself. For example, in introducing the latest (pre-9/11) edition of his book Covering Islam, Said ridiculed "speculations about the latest conspiracy to blow up buildings, sabotage commercial airliners and poison water supplies." Such talk is based on "highly exaggerated stereotypes." ... A contribution to an academic discipline usually takes the form of some epistemological breakthrough. Said's attack on Middle Eastern studies, made in his 1978 book Orientalism, prompted an epistemological breakdown. Yet he never provided a serious alternative, just a kind of floating over-identification with political causes like Palestine, Arab nationalism, and Muslim anti-imperialism. ... The decadence that pervades Middle Eastern studies today, the complete subservience to trendy politics, and the unlikelihood that the field might ever again produce a hero of high culture - all this is owed to Edward Said." (For more on Said, see also: "Edward Said and the War Against Terrorism" (Ronald Radosh, FrontPageMagazine, 2002/03/08) "Complex Nonsense" (Rich Lowry, National Review, 2001/10/11) and "The Scandal of Middle East Studies" (Stanley Kurtz, The Weekly Standard, from the 2001/11/19 issue). And, of course, the third chapter of Kramer's "Ivory Tower on Sand", "Islam Obscured" (ivorytowers.org, October 2001): "The closest Said came to an account of Islamism was to blame the orientalists: according to Said, Muslim Orientals, subjected to orientalist demonization, had entered a reactive mode, "acting the part decreed for them" by the experts. ... By this logic, Said could trace every Islamist excess to Western prejudice, and eventually he did. ... This mode of argumentation conveniently absolved Said and followers of the difficult job of accounting for Islamist deeds. Instead, each Islamist action became another opportunity for the repetitive and ritual denunciation of Western prejudice against Islam.")"Year One" (Charles Krauthammer, The Weekly Standard, from the 2002/09/09 issue)
"Before the first year was out, it was back, all of it. Irony. Triviality. Vulgarity. Frivolousness. Whimsy. Farce. All the things no healthy society can live without. We returned to normality. ... Can you doubt it is back when the culture king of 2002 is Ozzy Osbourne, now locked with Anna Nicole Smith in a race to the cultural bottom? ... National character does not change in a day. September 11 did not alter the American character, it merely revealed it. It allowed - it forced - the emergence of a bedrock America of courage, resolve, resourcefulness, and, above all, resilience. What the enemy did not know (nor at that time did we, fully) was that beneath the shallowness and the triviality, the outward normality of America in post-Cold War repose, lay the sleeping giant that Admiral Yamamoto knew he had awakened on December 7, 1941, and that Osama bin Laden had no inkling he had awakened on September 11, 2001. ... Success will require that both sides of the American character - the visible fluff and the (once) buried steel - remain in play.""Sept. 11, 2002: A Time to Speak Up" (Andrei Cherny, The Washington Post, 2002/08/31)
"Moments of silence will be observed. But unfortunately the silence will extend to political leaders, whose voices are needed and whose guidance is required. In a moment still crying out for context and guidance, our democratically elected officials have decided to turn to the ideas and words of the past. Instead of offering their own thoughts that day, New York Gov. George Pataki will recite Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey will read from the Declaration of Independence, and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will recount Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms. ... From the shadows of those fallen towers soared a renewed spirit of community and patriotism. But a year later, that spirit has withered away, and the status quo ante seems to be the rule of the day. On 9/11, America was challenged as never before. Yet today, with al Qaeda intact, Osama bin Laden's whereabouts unknown and little required of us at home save witnessing the bizarre spectacle of old ladies being patted down at airports, some wonder whether America is ready to meet that challenge. ... In 2002, we know that America has yet to come to terms with the events of last year. Whatever they may mean, the attacks on America have become part of history. Now our political leaders need to not just read history, they need to write it." (See also: "Don't Dianafy 9/11" (Mark Steyn, National Post, 2002/08/29))"Don't Dianafy 9/11" (Mark Steyn, National Post, 2002/08/29)
"And there seems to be an effort to do on the anniversary what they were unable to accomplish on the day: to make September 11th 2002 an occasion for "coping." ... If you think America's largest teachers' union is just some minor fringe group of no consequence, then what are we to make of the ceremonies at Ground Zero itself? New York's woeful mediocrity of a mayor, Mike Bloomberg, has decreed there are to be no speeches: Instead, Governor Pataki will recite the Gettysburg Address, just as the third-graders do on small-town New England commons on Memorial Day. The Gettysburg Address is a fine address, but it's nothing to do with September 11th. It's as if at Gettysburg Lincoln had been told, "Well, this speech looks a little controversial. Couldn't you just stand up and recite the Declaration of Independence?" The nullity of Bloomberg's planned ceremony is an acknowledgment, even in the most sorely wounded city in America, that one year on there is no agreement on what Sept. 11 means. To some, it calls forth righteous anger and bestselling kick-ass country songs. To others, far more influential in the culture, it demands 'healing circles.'""Teaching 9/11 lies" (George F. Will, New York Post, 2002/08/25)
Will on NEA's suggested lesson plan for the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks: "The results, on the NEA's Web site (www.neahin.org), illustrate three things that make the public education establishment a national menace. One is distrust of parents, whom the NEA obviously considers imbeciles. Another is a politically correct obsession with "diversity" and America's sins. Third, and most repellant, is a therapeutic rather than an educational focus - an emphasis not on learning but on feelings, not on good thinking but on feeling good. ... But should that day really become an exercise in self-absorption? Why should a commemoration of mass murder be an occasion to "feel better?" ... Many NEA ideas defy caricature, such as the suggestion that 12th graders soothe their souls by reading Dr. Seuss books. The NEA represents, and presumably reflects the mentality of, the people who are delivering - inflicting? - public education. That is as frightening, in its way, as any foreign threat." (See also: "NEA delivers history lesson" (Ellen Sorokin, The Washington Times, 2002/08/19))"For the NEA, history is farce" (The Washington Times, 2002/08/20)
"The nation's largest teachers' union has essentially used the September 11 massacre to peddle its own version of moral equivalency. And when it becomes impossible to avoid assessing blame, the reliably left-wing union recommends pointing the finger at the United States in a classic blame-America-first fusillade. NEA staff have apparently busied themselves this summer preparing lesson plans cautioning teachers not to "suggest any group is responsible" for the terrorist airliner hijackings that led to the massacre of more than 3,000 innocent people on American soil on September 11. "Blaming is especially difficult in terrorist situations," the NEA bemoans, "because someone is at fault." Yes, the wholesale murder of thousands of innocents does tend to cause some to become obsessed with finding the blameworthy perpetrators." (See also: "NEA delivers history lesson" (Ellen Sorokin, The Washington Times, 2002/08/19))"NEA delivers history lesson" (Ellen Sorokin, The Washington Times, 2002/08/19)
"The National Education Association is suggesting to teachers that they be careful on the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks not to "suggest any group is responsible" for the terrorist hijackings that killed more than 3,000 people. Suggested lesson plans compiled by the NEA recommend that teachers "address the issue of blame factually," noting: "Blaming is especially difficult in terrorist situations because someone is at fault. In this country, we still believe that all people are innocent until solid, reliable evidence from our legal authorities proves otherwise." But another of the suggested NEA lesson plans - compiled together under the title "Remember September 11" and appearing on the teachers union health information network Web site - takes a decidedly blame-America approach, urging educators to "discuss historical instances of American intolerance," so that the American public avoids 'repeating terrible mistakes.'" (See also: "Remember September 11" (NEA, August 2002) and "Teaching Tolerance for Terror" (Little Green Footballs, 2002/08/19))
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