Some sayings become hackneyed just because they’re so true. Sept. 11, 2001, for example, really was the day everything changed.
For Americans, it was the blackest day since Pearl Harbor. On both, they awoke to a firestorm of implacable hostility that few had suspected. On Sept. 11, however, the shock was too great to be absorbed and the confusion too deep to be dispelled. Obscure enemies with primitive means had struck the harshest blow Americans had ever known.
Thousands of families were bereaved, property damage was immense (and cascaded throughout the global economy), the symbolic loss immeasurable. Only the bravery of the first responders, the resistance of passengers aboard Flight 93, and the firmness of New York City’s Rudolph Giuliani and, subsequently, of George W. Bush offered Americans beacons of pride and hope.
The years since have proved chastening for Americans. The Second World War became an object of nostalgia, the “good war,” victory in which was America’s proudest national achievement and service in which defined the “greatest generation.” The staggering public debt incurred would recede amid the surging postwar prosperity of a globally dominant U.S. economy.
The magnificent advances to follow, notably the civil-rights movement, were forged in the crucible of that war, as was American resolve in waging the Cold War. The two impulses converged in John F. Kennedy, the superstar of postwar presidents. His carefully nurtured glamour was martial, derived from wounds incurred in one of the riskiest branches of service.
The 9/11 legacy will be different.
Mr. Bush assumed the presidency with no foreign policy goals. Barack Obama hopes to get the world off his back. The first presidents, save for Bill Clinton, not to belong to the “greatest generation,” they shared none of its lofty ambitions. Neither entered office prepared to wage long war on an elusive enemy. Mr. Bush reluctantly shouldered this burden; Mr. Obama has sought a graceful exit.
The initial response to 9/11 required little justification, given that the assailant’s identity and his whereabouts were both well known. Mr. Bush easily persuaded Americans to retaliate against al-Qaeda and oust the Taliban, their indulgent host. That operation succeeded brilliantly, with America’s crack Special Operations forces killing jihadists by the hundreds. Would the wound of 9/11 be stanched?
But Osama bin Laden slipped away from Tora Bora, the CIA slipped into renditions and waterboarding, and the Patriot Act aroused intense controversy. Last but not least, with Afghanistan still unsettled, the Bush administration invaded Iraq.
In toting up the balance of this decade, we shouldn’t forget that Saddam Hussein was a monstrous tyrant or that Iraq, for all its problems, is one of the Arab world’s few democracies. The war that achieved this was costly, messy and, for much of it, botched. The Bush administration first tried to wage a cheap war; it persisted in maintaining a “light footprint” when what was needed was a heavy one. It gave Iraqis too little assistance and allowed them too little authority.
Even as Iraq descended into chaos, the war remained distant to most Americans. Not only was there no conscription, there wasn’t even additional taxation. Mr. Bush’s main injunction to civilians was to keep on shopping. But if the war demanded little, it also afforded little satisfaction. Because no weapons of mass destruction were found, the link with 9/11 was never forged, and objections to the war never effectively rebutted.
Eventually, the “surge” reduced the insurgents to mere terrorists and bought Iraqis valuable time. Then the focus shifted back to Afghanistan, where the Western allies, including Canada, strive to build a nation in a vastness that has never known one. And then there’s Libya, the new land of hope.
Fearing an Afghan quagmire, Mr. Obama has pursued a dual track. Using drone technology, he has waged a relentless war of decapitation against al-Qaeda. He has thereby achieved, among many other deaths, the cathartic elimination of Osama bin Laden. Beyond this, his commitment to victory has been limited to defining it down. The question is no longer how to keep the Taliban out but how to let them back in. Thus may America’s post-9/11 wars end with both a bang and a whimper.
Pearl Harbor was a terrible shock, but America weathered it. Japan’s unconditional surrender was obtained in just four terrible years. It’s now 10 years since 9/11, and everything remains undecided. This conflict won’t end with a ceremony on the decks of a battleship. Al-Qaeda may be down for the count, or just packing its vans for Yemen. Whichever, the continuing threat of Islamist terrorism is not resolvable by drone. The Islamic world remains in turmoil, and the U.S. enjoys little leverage there. Airports remain armed camps. 9/11 endures as a symbol not only of sorrow but of continuing anxiety.
Clifford Orwin is a professor of political science at the University of Toronto and a distinguished fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.
