Posted on 02/16/2007 12:33:58 AM PST by neverdem
Did America overreact to 9/11?
This is a question that is much in the air today. Consider, as one example, the essay that recently appeared in the Los Angeles Times written by David A. Bell, a professor of history at Johns Hopkins. The title of the piece is "Putting 9/11 into perspective," and its by-line reads: "The attacks were a horrible act of mass murder, but history says we're overreacting." But does "history" in fact tell us any such thing?
Simply put, Bell's argument goes as follows: There have been wars in the past, global wars, in which millions have died: 50 million, for example, in the Second World War. On the other hand, if you compute the number of Americans who died on 9/11, and "even if one counts our dead in Iraq and Afghanistan as casualties of the war against terrorism," this yields only 6,500 dead Americans. Then, as a way of putting this figure into perspective, Bell says that "we should remember that roughly the same number of Americans die every two months in car accidents."
There is a bit of history in this argument, though the number of people who died in World War II is not exactly a trade secret of historians; but where exactly is Bell's logic? For example, let us suppose a man comes into your house and shoots your favorite dog in cold blood. You explode in rage and fury, whereupon a calm Professor Bell appears to inform you that during WWII whole families and their dogs were brutally murdered, or that in America thousands of dogs are run over by cars each year. Now both of these facts are true. No point in trying to deny them. But does either of these facts put "into perspective" the wanton killing of your beloved pet? Upon hearing Bell's recital of these indisputable facts, would you immediately say to him: "How right you are, Dr. Bell, and how wrong I was to fly into a rage over the killing of a single statistically insignificant dog. Thank you for putting the matter into perspective for me."
If a madman chops your hand off, will you be appeased if he tells you, "Well, be grateful. My previous victims, and there have been hundreds of them, had both their hands and both their feet chopped off. You are lucky, indeed, that I was so merciful." Would his words persuade you to take a detached view of your detached hand?
When a person or a group suffers an unprovoked attack, their first thought is seldom, "Let's put this into perspective." Instead, there is an adrenaline rush of outrage and anger, and this automatic reaction has been programmed into our species by what Charles Darwin called the universal struggle for existence. The famous Fight or Flight response has been designed to assure our long term survival. One may well die fighting or perish by fleeing; yet both responses are far more conducive to survival than waiting for a professor to put the attack into "historical perspective" four years after it occurred. It may be true that others have suffered even more outrageous attacks than the one you have suffered. But what's that to you? The only attack that concerns you is the attack that you must immediately defend yourself against. You must respond now, or never.
Professor Bell argues that the 9/11 attack did not genuinely endanger our national survival, and that the terrorists lack the capacity to "threaten the existence of the United States." Now if by this Bell means that they cannot kill us all, or even more than a few thousand at a time, then history seems to have proven him right—at least, so far. But what Bell overlooks is that in the struggle between human groups, it does not require a threat to the survival of the whole group to activate the Fight response. Far from it—groups begin fighting for reasons that strike outsiders as trifling or absurd. Is this irrational? To professors ensconced in the comfort of a university no doubt, but not to those who have to exist in a dog-eat-dog world.
The inmates of any jailhouse know that even mildest acts of aggression must be instantly and firmly challenged. If you are a newcomer and another inmate demands that you give him your candy bar, the worst thing you could possibly do would be to try to put the incident into perspective. You cannot say, "Well, it's only a candy bar, after all. No big deal," because, in this context, your candy bar is a big deal. It means everything. If you hand it over on demand, then you have also handled over your dignity. You have thereby informed not only the inmate making the demand, but all the other inmates watching you give into his demand that they too can all walk on you at any time. They too can take from you anything you have. They too can make you their flunkey or slave.
Of course, in defending your candy-bar, you may have to risk your life. But it is absurd to say that you are risking your life "only" for a candy bar when you are in fact risking it to maintain your autonomy and independence. The danger in such a situation is not overreaction, but, paradoxically, the failure to overreact.
The same principle applies to groups, tribes, and nations. If any group wishes to preserve its dignity and autonomy, there will be times when it is forced to act like the inmate defending his candy bar. In terms of a cost analysis, this kind of "overreaction" will seem utterly irrational. Is the candy bar really worth risking your life over? But to you, the refusal to take this risk involves a loss that cannot be measured by statistics—namely, the loss of your status as an independent moral agent that others will be careful not to push around or walk over.
Professor Bell wants us to believe that history tells us that America overreacted to 9/11. What history tells us, on the contrary, is that men have repeatedly gone into brutal and bloody wars over the moral equivalent of mere candy bars. The casus belli of the Franco-Prussian war was the fatal Ems telegram. The First World War began with the murder of a Crown Prince. The American Revolution began with a tea party.
It is far too early to be invoking the august judgment of history on America's response to 9/11; it may well turn out that the USA, instead of overreacting, failed to react strongly and forcefully enough. 9/11 as an act of unprovoked aggression is without parallel, and those who celebrated it throughout the Muslim world did so with complete impunity. In the eyes of our enemy, our failure to respond immediately and indiscriminately to the attack has not been chalked up to our humanitarian zeal, but to our weakness. Like the inmate who hands over his candy bar without protest, those who were watching us for our reaction to 9/11 may be drawing conclusions about us that we did not intend to convey to them, and that are not in our long-term interests.
Lee Harris is author of Civilization and Its Enemies: The Next Stage of History.
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What should be put into perspective is the 3000 dead in this war so far.
If the media were following each car crash victim the way it follows each of the war dead, we'd have Americans afraid to leave their homes.
There are approx. 40,000+ deaths on the highway each year.
Bell is arguing that a response on the scale of the World War 2 Soviet Union would be unjustified. Nobody to my knowledge has alleged that our response rises to that level. He does not compare the responses at all, he merely invites the inference that they are somehow equivalent or proportional, which makes them excessive in light of what he claims to be a smaller threat.
Since our response is demonstrably not equivalent to Stalin's response to the Nazi invasion, Bell's analogy is absurd on its face. It is miserable and deceptive logic, a smart man aiming a message at a stupid and pretentious audience. He certainly has them pegged, but I give his presentation an "F."
And exponentially more have been wounded. I'm not saying they might as well be dead, but their lives have been irreparably damaged by combat in Iraq. A lot of those wounded would have been killed even 15 years ago, but for the advances of emergency medicine.
Is it worth the cost? Yes - but only if we're fighting to win, and fighting a war we can win. I'm not convinced of either.
Nope.
America under reacted before 9/11.
After 9/11 Bush did what we should have done long ago.
I'd say we've also under reacted to the threats of radical Islam since 9/11. The rest of the world has done next to nothing.
We continue to under-react. Death by a thousand cuts. That's our punishment for failing to see the enemy for what it is and act accordingly.
"o point in trying to deny them. But does either of these facts put "into perspective" the wanton killing of your beloved pet? Upon hearing Bell's recital of these indisputable facts, would you immediately say to him: "How right you are, Dr. Bell, and how wrong I was to fly into a rage over the killing of a single statistically insignificant dog. Thank you for putting the matter into perspective for me."
Ah, then I might consider to turn and shoot the guy who shot my dog and the good prof as well. Amen.
And exponentially more have been injured in car crashes.
The point is that we can make it seem like a horrendous bloodbath if we control the media. Without that control we don't have that option.
Why?
Because there are 300,000,000 people in this country. That means that to date a death in Iraq has touched 1 out of 100,000 people. That would be like getting a movement going because 3 people in a town the size of Cincinnati, Ohio had had tragedies in a 4 year period. It ain't gonna happen.
Not without the media playing it for all it's worth, that is.
Not by a longshot.
Proffesor Bell is liberal egghead who wouldnt know reality if it hit him between the eyes.
Its a shame the 9/11 planes didnt hit his ivory tower
I think that we should have left Iraq alone and let them continue defying the UN Security Council Resolutions that had been put in place from the begging of the cease-fire in the spring of '91 through to late 2002, just before we resumed combat operations. After all, we were sending the wrong kinds of peaceful messages during this time frame. In fact, maybe we should not have interfered in the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait the first time around -- because, well, you know, that's their business and let me just stay here, in America, and champion social justice cause for human rights issues at the nearest university with my cup of Starbucks.
Dear Lee Harris,
Did America over-react?
Are you complete nuts?
What if I walked up to you with a Loiusville Slugger and belted you in the teeth?
Would you be pissed? Would you have any teeth left?
You you want to come after me?
Of course you would you moron.
9/11 was an unprovoked and surprise attack on the United States. It have to be met with retaliation.
We can't rest until every terrorist in the world is DEAD!
The author sums up my sentiments in the last paragraph. Or as my wife likes to say, "Why can't we just bomb them all?"
Had we reacted to the Iranian hostage taking outrage more forcefully and brutally there would have been no 9/11.
DAVID A. BELL
ANDREW W. MELLON PROFESSOR IN THE HUMANITIES
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
Curriculum Vitae (updated May, 2006)
Department of History phone: 410-516-7578
The Johns Hopkins University fax: 410-516-7586
3400 North Charles Street e-mail: dabell@jhu.edu
Baltimore, MD 21218 web page: www.davidbell.net
EMPLOYMENT
Johns Hopkins University, Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities (2005- ).
Johns Hopkins University. Professor of History (2000-5).
École Normale Supérieure (Paris), Visiting Professor (March, 2005).
Johns Hopkins University. Associate Professor of History (1996-2000).
Yale University. Assistant Professor of History (1991-96).
Yale University. Lecturer in History (1990-91).
The New Republic (Washington, DC). Magazine reporter (1984-85).
EDUCATION
Princeton University. Ph.D. in History, 1991. Thesis advisor: Prof. Robert Darnton.
Thesis title: "Lawyers and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Paris (1700-1790)."
Princeton University. M.A. in History, 1987, with grade of "distinction" on general
examinations.
Ecole Normale Supérieure (Paris). Foreign auditor in History (1983-84).
Harvard University. A.B. in History and Literature, 1983, magna cum laude. Phi Beta
Kappa.
If you do a little research you will find that Bell's main study has been France. It's no wonder he's arguing for capitulation.
Did America show a measured, even response? Lets go with the short answer. Yes!!
...One may well die fighting or perish by fleeing; yet both responses are far more conducive to survival than waiting for a professor to put the attack into "historical perspective" four years after it occurred. It may be true that others have suffered even more outrageous attacks than the one you have suffered. But what's that to you? The only attack that concerns you is the attack that you must immediately defend yourself against. You must respond now, or never.
...Is this irrational? To professors ensconced in the comfort of a university no doubt, but not to those who have to exist in a dog-eat-dog world.
...If any group wishes to preserve its dignity and autonomy, there will be times when it is forced to act like the inmate defending his candy bar. In terms of a cost analysis, this kind of "overreaction" will seem utterly irrational. Is the candy bar really worth risking your life over? But to you, the refusal to take this risk involves a loss that cannot be measured by statistics - namely, the loss of your status as an independent moral agent that others will be careful not to push around or walk over.
...It is far too early to be invoking the august judgment of history on America's response to 9/11; it may well turn out that the USA, instead of overreacting, failed to react strongly and forcefully enough. 9/11 as an act of unprovoked aggression is without parallel, and those who celebrated it throughout the Muslim world did so with complete impunity. In the eyes of our enemy, our failure to respond immediately and indiscriminately to the attack has not been chalked up to our humanitarian zeal, but to our weakness. Like the inmate who hands over his candy bar without protest, those who were watching us for our reaction to 9/11 may be drawing conclusions about us that we did not intend to convey to them, and that are not in our long-term interests.
If you are not familiar with Lee Harris, take a time to read some of his classics -- the following articles are the reason why I started paying attention to what Lee Harris says. I am sure you will find these articles interesting :
Al Qaeda’s Fantasy Ideology By Lee Harris (FR post) "Al Qaeda's Fantasy Ideology," (original)
The Clausewitz Curse (FR post) The Clausewitz Curse (original)
Given our uncertainty, what alternative does this, or any, administration have?Our World-Historical Gamble (FR post) Our World-Historical Gamble (original)
The collapse of the liberal order and the end of classical sovereignty.The Intellectual Origins Of America-Bashing http://www.policyreview.org/dec02/harris.html
America-bashing has sadly come to be “the opium of the intellectual,” to use the phrase Raymond Aron borrowed from Marx in order to characterize those who followed the latter into the twentieth century. And like opium it produces vivid and fantastic dreams.
His book: Civilization and Its Enemies : The Next Stage of History
Lee Harris: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/k-leeharris/browse His articles at the TechCentralStation are archived here: http://www.tcsdaily.com/Authors.aspx?id=218
Nailed It!
Moral Clarity BUMP !
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This guy is a moron! Or does he simply believe that the problem with Islamofacism has been solved, and we are now more safe than we were before 9/11? In fact, IMO the world is a much more dangerous place, as our very existence as a part of western society is being threatened. This is so because we have failed to react with the force necessary. Our failure to use our technology to achieve a decisive victory is the real problem.
What a stupid question!
It was the biggest underreaction in the History Of Civilization and continues to be so at our own peril.
You surely mean prof Bell and not Lee Harris who says that if anything we did not react enough.
Please re-read.
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