The Attack that ‘Changed Everything’?

It didn’t change what it should have.

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Friday will be the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. I watched on TV as the second plane hit, and I saw the towers collapse.

It was a shock, for sure. But others were a lot more shocked than I was. President George W. Bush said, “It became evident … that the world had changed.” His secretary of state, Colin Powell, said the same thing: “The world has changed.” The Baltimore Sun ran a story the next day, “Everything changed yesterday.” British Prime Minister Tony Blair said the attacks “changed everything.” Even now, people are still claiming that it was “the day that changed the world.”

Everything changed? Hardly. And the things that should have changed didn’t.

Twenty-five years ago, American Renaissance was a monthly newsletter, and the attacks were the cover story, with the title, “Will America Learn the Lessons of Sept. 11?” I wanted just two things to change.

First, I thought that after 19 Arabs killed 3,000 Americans, it would jolt people out of the idea that diversity is a strength. I pointed out that this band of murderers had been in the country for months, despite illegal entry, visa overstays, and all kinds of suspicious behavior, and that many of them couldn’t even speak English.

They attracted no attention because there were already millions of Arabs in the country, and they blended right in.

I wrote this: “If, because of these terrible attacks, the country manages to turn a calculating eye on the costs and benefits of playing host to millions of Arabs, the red-ink dead-loss bottom line should raise questions about other groups. What earthly good do Cambodians, Nigerians, Guatemalans, Haitians, and all the rest of them do the country?”

I was so naïve. I thought the damage Muslim Arabs had done was so great, it was obvious we’d be better off without them, and people might begin to wonder about other newcomers. Instead, President W. visited an Islamic center and told us Muslims were terrific! “Islam is peace,” he said, and America would grind to a halt without it: “America counts millions of Muslims amongst our citizens, and Muslims make an incredibly valuable contribution to our country.”

The attack that had changed “everything” didn’t change blind adoration for diversity.

The other thing I hoped would change was that Americans might seriously wonder why those 19 men were willing to blow themselves to bits trying to kill Americans. But just nine days after the attack, President Bush went before a joint session of Congress and said something abysmally stupid.

“Americans ask, ‘Why do they hate us?’ . . . They hate our freedoms. They hate our freedom of religion, freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.”

Are we really supposed to think Osama and the boys sat in their caves, thinking, “Those Americans have too much freedom. We better kill a bunch of them”?

Both before and after the attack, Bin Laden explained his reasons, most specifically in his “Letter to the American People.” Wikipedia lists his number-one reason: American foreign policy in the Middle East — particularly as it applies to its support of Israel.

I remember people at the time saying, “That’s not the real reason. You can’t believe a word that terrorist says.” On the contrary, if someone goes to that kind of trouble to make a point, he’s going to be very clear about why he did it.

But Mr. Bush and his pals insisted it’s because we are so wonderful. Congress gave up the power to declare war, and voted to let the president kill anyone he likes, whenever and wherever he likes, so long as it’s part of the War on Terror. And boy, has there been a heap of killing, especially the estimated 200,000 Iraqis we shot and blew up because of weapons of mass destruction that weren’t there, not to mention the fun our lady prison guards had at Abu Ghraib.

At the Nuremburg Trials after the Second World War, we hanged Germans for a crime we had just invented, called “waging aggressive war.”

If ever there was an aggressive war, it was our invasion of Iraq. But, of course, no one will swing for it, because you get to do this kind of thing when people attack you simply for being wonderful.

So, have we learned anything? Yes and no. During his first campaign in 2015, Donald Trump announced he was “calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”

Until the country figured out what was going on? That sounded like a permanent ban.

He got nothing like a total ban, but he tried. And in his second term, he wanted a ban on 75 countries, of which 29 were majority Muslim, but got Supreme Court approval for a ban on only 39 countries, of which 17 were majority Muslim.

From this President we get no more mush about Islam, the religion of peace, and he has twigged to the idea of looking at countries one by one and saying, “We want none of those people.” And that includes non-Muslim counties, such as Jamaica and Haiti.

This is a tremendous breakthrough. It’s the very opposite of low-IQ Geoge W. trying to justify letting in people who hate us.

But how about understanding why Muslims don’t like us and staying out of the kind of war for which we hanged Nazis? Any Democrat would have been better. We are now six months into a war that was supposed to end in a couple of weeks with “unconditional surrender.”

At a cost of $40 billion, 18 dead, hundreds wounded, and $7 billion in lost aircraft.

Curiously, it’s Democrats who now understand the danger of the entangling alliances that George Washington warned us about.

Only 8 percent of Democrats support the attacks on Iran, while fully 69 percent of Republicans do.

To their credit, however, Republicans are stumbling towards a more realistic understanding that we are not all the same.

I call this progress, of sorts. Of course, Dems and Republicans hate each other so much, that we get only half a loaf with each. However, I see a lot more potential for improvement from Republicans. Once Mr. Trump and his deference to Israel are gone, the party could nudge us towards policies that really are America first, and help us rebuild a country fit for white people.