A Decade of 9/11: To Fear Only from Fear

The moral of 9/11 is that democracies are a lot stronger than their enemies. Bin Laden’s death and the disintegration of al-Qaida prove this.

On Sept. 12, 2001, the hottest theory explaining what was happening was the “clash of civilizations” theory. The book by Samuel Huntington supplied to everyone, from President George W. Bush, to a dumbfounded civilian in Manhattan and Tel Aviv, a nicely wrapped explanation in familiar terms: [these are] two great powers, organized civilizations (if not from the standpoint of governance, then ideology), engaging in a struggle for world dominance, just like the Cold War days.

A decade passed by. If you still hold to this theory, it must be clear who has won. Not just becuase Osama bin Laden is dead and al-Qaida is crumbling, but rather because the West has not changed its ways of life — with all due respect to the fact that it takes longer to board a flight — and even the Muslim world has pretty much distanced itself from bin Laden. The ones who won were the Internet and satellite broadcasts, CNN and YouTube, Facebook and McDonalds; not the tanks Bush sent to Afghanistan and Iraq.

It’s just that the condition of the winner is not really good, either. Bush’s wars cost the U.S. trillions of dollars, and added up to a wanton economic policy which led the American economy, and the economy of the Western world, to a giant crisis. And within the United States, there’s a feeling of sickness and disorientation, originating not only from the rise of other powers, — China in the first place, but mainly from the loss of identity and the undermining of the faith that the American way is the most just and efficient.

Domestic Processes and Not an External Threat

In 2004, Samuel Huntington published his book “Who Are We?” that dealt with the real issue scaring American conservatism: the transformation of America from the inside, in the wake of huge waves of immigration — every second child in the United States today is not white or Anglo-Saxon — which no longer automatically accept the established American values. The wars that weakened America stemmed from the fear on the inside, much more than from a threat from the outside. The damage caused by bin Laden is not making a per mil of what has been lost because of the old world’s way to handle it.

That’s the big sin of the “clash of civilizations” adherents: their interpretation of events was not taken from an understanding of the new world, but instead forcing on the latter a view of the old world, as a way to explain what frightens them in reality — inner processes and not an external threat.

Bush, Cheney, Rice and a bunch of neoconservatives whose world had been shaped during the Cold War, did what Eisenhower or Reagan would do: They responded with a military force without restraint or concern for the price (and in Iraq also without justification), and at the same time, ignored the domestic adjustments in the United States that were necessary.

Instead of Staying Cool, a Hysterical Recklessness

An American saying goes that a liberal is a conservative who has not been mugged yet; this means that real life experience disabuses a person from his naive belief. American conservatives are people who were violently attacked on Sept. 11, and reacted according to their previous beliefs, for this is the only thing they know how to do.

In the very same period, Israel was coping with the threat of terror that reached unprecedented dimensions over the two following years. Boogie Ya’alon*, a local neoconservative figure, said then that “Israeli society is the weakest link in Israel’s national-security chain.” In practice, Israeli society is the one that has won in that confrontation. Its life force, the economic and democratic power it produces, gave the defense establishment almost three years until the formula for fighting terror was found, and quickly restored what was destroyed by the terrorism way that is much harsher than 9/11.

This is a 9/11 word to the wise: democracies are far stronger than their enemies. It’s only their fears that turn fanatic criminals, nevertheless them being of little influence like bin Laden, into an enemy that should be grappled with a hysterical savagery, instead of chasing him firmly but cold-bloodedly. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” said President Roosevelt in his [first] inaugural address. That has remained true both on Sept. 11 and today.

*Translator’s Note: Moshe “Boogie” Ya’alon is an Israeli politician and former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces.