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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The crying shame of it is if you were to treat anyone promoting Bell's thesis as they deserve to be treated it would most definitely be considered "over reaction," and punishable by law.
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."
I wonder if the good Dr Bell considers this a bad thing that (so far) America has "only" lost 6,500 people?
Can you imagine the outrage if Ameica was taking the number if casualties we did in WWII?
America's Wars: U.S. Casualties and Veterans
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004615.html
World War II (1940–1945)3
Total servicemembers 16,112,566
Battle deaths 291,557
Other deaths in service (nontheater) 113,842
Nonmortal woundings 671,846
(Do the math)
You might try reading the WHOLE article, before commenting. I know this is a radical idea, but give it a shot..you might be suprised.
Unfortunately it is the belief of one major American party, huge part of American population and probably majority of all the world. So, this stupidity does require a proper response - a counterargument in this info-war we are in. Lee Harris supplies good ammunition here.
The last paragraph is the opinion of the author of the article, not the professor.
Or at least get past the headline.
Yes, that would have been an overreaction. IMHO one mushroom over where Kabul had been if the Taleban hadn't surrendered Ol' Slimey Ben Rotten within 72 hours would have been a measured reprisal, and would have saved lives on both sides.
No it isn't and no it isn't.
It is a recondition that our current civil society like all societies rests on a very fragile foundation. It will only last as long as the people in it are not willing to put up with it being otherwise.
A few days ago four girls beat and stripped another woman in Target. They were able to do so not because they outnumbered the other people in the store or over powered them but because everyone else lacked the will to stop them.
All the terrorists have to do is want to enslave us more then we want to be free.
It is necessary to be ready to fight to correct wrongs, regardless of a concern about "proportionality." The story of ancient Troy & Sparta - and the abduction of Helen, and the epic story of the 10 year battle (and thousands of deaths) to free one woman is but one example.
In ancient Roman times, foreign cities would not harm a Roman citizen, because to do so could cause the entire might of the Roman Empire to come down on the city, exacting a fearful payment. Being a Roman citizen meant one could travel fairly safely. And a city that harmed a Roman city might be totally destroyed and all inhabitants killed - over the harming of a single Roman citizen.
At the start of the 20th century, being an American citizen also had certain protections. Theodore Roosevelt sent Marines in many times when American lives might be at risk.
Robert Heinlein wrote in his "Starship Troopers" - where Ricco is instructed by his History and Moral Philosophy Instructor, Maj. Reid - that fighting - going to war, even a war that could kill thousands, or millions, can and should be done over just 1 individual. If we treat men as potatoes - then perhaps the deaths of less than some number of men is insufficient to raise the ire of a nation and go to war, but if the enemy exceeds that threshold, then we do go to war. Over time, that threshold level continually raises, and the nation becomes soft and will be in decline.
We saw that threshold raise as we did nothing about the terrorist attacks. We did nothing about Saddam's assaination plot against Bush(41). We did nothing about the continued violations of UN resolutions, we did nothing about Saddam's continued shooting at our airplanes. We were soft, and willing to take the insults, because we didn't have the stomach to stand strong. All in all, my guess is that the Democrats basically allow perhaps 10,000 civilian deaths a year to be inadequate justification to go to war. With the Democrats - men are potatoes.
Mike
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