9/11 World: This Is the Way We Live Now (Wonder Land)

The Wall Street Journal ^ | Friday, September 10, 2004 | DANIEL HENNINGER

[presidio9]

That bloody carnage at a grade school in Beslan, Russia, last week made one thing clear: Now we are all living in 9/11 World.

9/11 World, defined by Islamic bombs that are designed to blow to pieces the bodies of civilians where they reside, work or go to school, now rings the world from New York to Moscow, Madrid to Jakarta, Jerusalem, Rome, Nepal and Fallujah. The rubble of New York looks like the rubble of Beslan.

This is 9/11 World, where tears flow constantly for the bleeding and burial of innocents. Three Septembers ago in America, children buried their fathers and mothers. This September in Russia, fathers and mothers bury their children. Even this universal ceremony of grief is desecrated by the designers of 9/11 World, for they leave little or nothing to bury.

It is appropriate, with the slaughter of children in Beslan, that the people of the United States should have the chance to issue a collective opinion about the reality of the world we live in now -- this constant murdering of people engaged in the mere act of urban life. The U.S. is holding a presidential election. If there really is such a thing as a war on terror -- that is, an active, sustained effort to unplug its principal actors -- then we know it will happen only if the United States leads it. The statements of resolve this week by the presidents of Russia and Indonesia are welcome. But absent active U.S. leadership, Islamic terrorism will come to be tolerated by other national leaders -- as was the Balkans, as is Darfur -- as inevitable and unfortunate phenomena, like hurricanes. France, Germany and Spain have proven that.

[GBA]

Muslims have long complained, falsely in my opinion, that the West is against them. But this just might be a self fulfilling prophecy. At them moment, we recognize that all muslims aren't radical Islamist terrorists, but we wonder why the moderate muslim doesn't speak out with us against these acts of terror. What the moderate muslims don't seem to understand is that their more radical brethren are pushing our society to a kind of critical mass that will lead to a backlash against all Muslims.

I think we are a tolerant people, but when innocents are targeted and attacked, tortured and brutally killed, we are driven to respond. Our values keep our desire to respond in kind in check, but we will reach a breaking point. That breaking point will happen and the moderate muslim had better realize that his radical muslim brother is painting a target on him with each act of terror.

Think it can't happen? Look at our movies, our heroes, our wild-west culture. Remember we make up a gun toting society that won't keep turning its cheek much longer. Our sense of decency, our values and even our need for justice are being challenged. Know it's a challenge we will rise up to meet.

This rant is Not a threat. I'm only wondering how much we Americans, as well as other countries, can tolerate until we decide we can't tolerate it any longer. We have a breaking point and that's something muslims, particularly the moderate muslims need to ponder before we all cross that point of no return.

[OESY]

CONCLUSION:



Sen. Joe Biden on this page yesterday offered a Democratic alternative worth a debate, based on "reinvigorated diplomacy." Sen. Biden explicitly says the Democrats would run out the negotiations clock longer than Mr. Bush did before launching a military attack. Well, this may be the Clinton foreign policy, but it's at least a choice. Perhaps most Americans want more talking; perhaps they think the time for talking is over. One wishes Mr. Kerry would break free of his internal polling, drop the bizarre link between Iraq and afterschool programs and put a real choice before the voters. It will be awful for our divided politics if come November, Democrats are blaming their loss on a flawed candidate rather than on what they proposed to do about terror.

Tomorrow at 8:30 a.m. in downtown Manhattan begin the official ceremonies commemorating the anniversary of September 11. But in fact at the site where the Twin Towers fell, every day is the anniversary of September 11. No matter the weather, knots of out-of-town visitors -- from the U.S. and other nations -- are always at the site's chain-link fence, reading the historical accounts hung on the fence or staring into the big pit....

It is people like this who are going to pick the next American president. It is people like this who live in the country's presidential battleground towns, counties and states. Visited constantly now by the caravans of Bush-Cheney and Kerry-Edwards, they live in places like Appleton, Wisconsin, or Chillicothe, Ohio, or Moosic, Pennsylvania. My guess is they're going to pick the candidate who can see straight from Ground Zero to Beslan.