The Lessons of 11 September 2001 A.D.

Many will write over the next few days regarding the events of 3 years ago. Most such writings, no matter how good they are, will fall into a fairly predictable set of bounds and few will be truly challenging or discomforting. Well, so much for that.

I will launch straight into what I believe to be the most critical lessons learned from the events of 11 September 2001 as well as their precursors and their aftermath.

As early as 1943, Western liberal intellectual utopians were hard at work constructing what they believed to be their greatest works. According to them, what had caused World War 2 was not the lack of Allied military preparation or resolve, but rather, the lack of world government. Therefore, world government was the ultimate answer. By the utopians' logic, if only we could outlaw all future procrustean behavior using global laws written by a global legislature and enforced by a global police force and military, then we should theoretically never have to face another Hitler. Except for one problem - what about Stalin and Mao? Here lay the essential contradiction. In laying out their designs for the United Nations, they could not very well prevent any of the current procrusteans, who, due to idiocies of a few years past, were considered "allies" against the Axis, from joining. Neither could they keep out any of the various up and coming, post colonial, anti Western small fry. So much for great ideas.

Somewhat related to this was the utopian response to the political killings, numbering in the tens of millions, which had occurred, not only in the Axis countries, but also in the USSR, between the years 1925 and 1945. We exhumed the Nazi concentration camps, and now have memorials galore as well as museums. But here, the utopians missed opportunity number one to decry and discredit all political murder and all procrusteanism. The sad fact was that realpolitik, as a result of the shameful inclusion of the Soviet Communists in the Alliance, prevented any sort of general addressing of political murder, genocide and procrustean evil. Which brings us to missed opportunity number two.

By failing to not only liberate the Axis areas but also the Communist dominated ones, the mother of all hypocrisies was allowed. I have heard and read all the standard excuses. These include, but are not limited to, our lack of military build up during the period 1919 - 1936, the relationship between Stalin and Roosevelt, the reputed "war weariness" of the allies, and, the fears about the deployment of nuclear weapons and all that such deployment implied regarding any continuation of war after Summer 1945. Each of these excuses can be crushed either by way of previous bad decisions which any clear thinking Clausewitzian would not have made, or, by after-the-fact mitigation and recovery strategies. In any case, Western society followed the utopians and not the Clausewitzians, and brought us a world thought to be more globalized, but in reality inclusive of the distractions and interference of the United Nations, and characterized by a distinctly anti Clausewitzian and murky stance regarding matters between states.

By the late 1980s, the predictable flacidness was epidemic throughout the West. Sensing the opening, the anti Western nations, led by the USSR, proposed a broad restructuring, and, at least on the surface, an ending of the greatly restrained facade of "containment" and a move into "engagement." The West, weary this time of a war that never was allowed to be fought, declared victory, and proclaimed a New World Order. Now, according to the emerging logic of the utopian class, we were beyond the end of history, and, ready to settle down into a global life of peaceful world trade and building of strip malls from Tierra Del Fuego to Murmansk. Now the long envisaged world of a global federation of secular, commercially oriented, technology savvy states could form up. Oh sure there would be a few stragglers, whom we would label rogues. But the innate pressure of this global community of free trading peer states would slowly but surely quell them. Again, like the utopian response at the close of World War 2, all of this was nice in theory.

In reality, firstly, there was nowhere near a majority of Western minded, commercially oriented states in consensus. In fact, the only thing that had changed versus the Cold War or World War Two or the 1930s, was the proclamation of Perestroika by the USSR and the changing of some of their terminology, along with the appearance of liberalization of the Soviet hold over Eastern Europe. Other than that, the existing Communists remained so, and, remarkably, some of those who had been Western allies during various parts of the Cold War changed their tune into an anti Western one, often with radical Islamist overtones.

We could now see a pattern. With each utopian inspired "soft ending" to each phase of global conflict, instead of ending up with a world more in tune with the West, and more in favor of the USA, instead we experienced incremental hostility. As every good Clausewitzian, as well as every child in a hard scrabble neighborhood, knows, the bullies will generally bully harder the softer we make our stance. The same goes for fanatics and procrustean despots.

There is not much more to write in this section, regarding the wrong headed nature of the utopians. The rising series of attacks and more subtle moves against the West since 1991 reached an interesting point on 11 September 2001. And the utopians are squarely to blame for the situation which has resulted.

This is the old motto of the Republic of Venice. The full motto is "Happy is the city which, during a time of peace, prepares for war." Naturally, given the fact that the West followed the utopians, and not the men-of-war, during most of the 20th century, we did not follow this motto. In fact, we are still not following it. We are not preparing for world war. Of that there can be no doubt. And if we are not preparing for world war, which is the kind of war which would most imperil our survival, then we are not taking war seriously.

At the time of the attacks on New York City and Washington D.C. on 9/11, we were not even prepared to fend off that level of attack. We had no process in place for interdicting the hijacked airliners prior to their striking. After all, we had consciously decided, in 1945, to never fight another world war, and, in 1989, to no longer fight even a cold war. All we believed we needed military action for was to police rogue nations, given our belief that we were beyond the end of history, and that we had created, with our commercial wisdom, a New World Order. So naturally, we had shut down most of our military bases and told most of our men-of-war that we no longer needed them in that role.

No doubt, those who planned the attacks had studied all of this very well. They knew what sort of psychology they were dealing with. Could it be that those who planned the attacks had been studying us for a very long time, perhaps all the way back to 1918 or so? If not, then those who planned them certainly did benefit from studies made of us by our enemies since the early 20th century. For those who attacked us were men-of-war, not utopians. There is a certain clarity which men-of-war have.

To be fair, there have been attempts to do this. Unfortunately, the scope of operations proposed was insufficient. In war, one must take advantage of the element of surprise. One must also confound ones enemies. Noting what I wrote in the previous section regarding our enemies having studied our utopian nature, there must have been, even after the 9/11 attacks, a certain expectation on the parts of all other nations in the world, regarding how we would respond. Certainly, there was some disappointment amongst other utopian liberal nations that we did not take, exactly, the course that Bill Clinton would have taken. We certainly were more Clausewitzian than that. However, by the same token, we did not entirely depart from such a course. From the outset, our rhetoric was that of injured utopians who still believed in the New World Order and the end of history. We held as our goal, a restoration, as quickly as possible, of what we believed to be an inevitable procession toward all those strip malls from Timbuktu to Thule. We couched things in terms of rogue nations versus the reputedly civilized world. This latter, remarkably, was said to contain nations such as those of the "former" USSR as well as the People's Republic of China, who, in spite of retaining nuclear rocket forces designed to destroy the West, were thought to be civilized!

We failed to truly take pause. We failed to question both the wisdom in concept, and the degree of actual realization of, the reputed New World Order. We did not take the attacks as a warning wave with regards to the stochastically inevitable next great world war between major powers. And therefore, we did not shock the world with our response.

How might we have shocked the multitudes? Essentially, there are a few key dimensions to consider. Firstly, had we adopted an aggressive, break-neck-paced program to implement civil and military defenses and offenses meant to fight and win all possible wars which we might reasonably expect to encounter, we would have shocked many. Secondly, had we declared an end to utopian directed statesmanship, national strategy, and economic views, we would have awed many both within and without. Thirdly, had we couched our analysis of geopolitical reality in an unrestricted, dual, perspective, drawing from both Von Clausewitz and Sun Tzu, we would have gained a completely new understanding of required tasks and actions. And in executing to the requisite action plan, we would have both shocked and awed the world. Therefore, I argue that we have yet to fully and properly respond to 9/11, and, in our delay, we have lost the element of surprise, at our peril.

I hope that with these words, I have helped to set the stage for some badly needed discussion, analysis and re engineering. At very least, I have set forth, from the depths of my own ethical being and conscience, words that I feel must be shared. This is here for all to harvest. Act with wisdom and strength. God Bless America. God Bless Western Civilzation.

The Dem/Dan Rather forgeries are nothing compared to what the Soviets can pull.

Putin is already pulling a fast one on the Beslan affair...

and we still have people claiming the US should surrender possession of our security to Russia by asking them to join us in the war on terror... without any understanding or real possession of the problem at hand inherently.... notwithstanding that Putin blamed the US for the Beslan affair.

So we cannot trust our gov with Patriot act, but we can trust Putin?

Give me a break.

The paranoid mania of thinking that exporting our manufacturing under Chinese gov hands is free entreprize - because the US gov. should not interfere! but it's ok for China! - has now extended to begging Russia to improve our security...

That Putin and Russians have already problems of their own and certainly cannot afford to help us, that they blame the US for Beslan, that the symbolics of 911 are about the destruction of the US (only possible through Russia) and that we have no control whatsoever on the funds or New Age Missionary help to Russia's forces ultimately, is the slave's menial mentality.

Amazing.

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