America the Changed

History is loaded with dates that changed our country forever: The signing of our Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The start of our civil war on April 12, 1861. The attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

Add Sept. 11, 2001, to that list. A year has passed since that day when thousands died, mighty towers fell and part of the Pentagon became an inferno. We are just beginning to grasp how our lives have changed.

I’ll never forget that day. I was conducting a discussion on free trade in one of our conference rooms when I heard that a plane had hit the Pentagon just minutes after two other planes had slammed into the World Trade Center in New York.

“Oh, God,” I thought as I saw black smoke rising over Washington through our office windows. The unthinkable had become undeniable: America was under attack.

Suddenly, the issues that government was concerned with, such as health-care reform and education, seemed trivial. Meanwhile, other issues, such as whether we should field a missile-defense system, became more crucial than ever.

America has re-evaluated its resources and refocused its abilities to define a new agenda for the world. My Heritage Foundation colleagues did the same and began studying homeland security and terrorism more closely—two issues I never thought would take center stage when I became Heritage’s president in 1977. Some elements of that new agenda include:

Defense. We didn’t respond to international terrorism as if it were a crime by convening grand juries and issuing subpoenas. We selected a major target, Afghanistan, and removed a major sponsor of terrorists, the Taliban. Now there is serious talk of conducting a similar mission with Iraq, another major exporter of terrorism.

There are reports that Iraq is preparing for the worst and, judging by what we accomplished in Afghanistan, it should. For one thing, we didn’t fight the Taliban with one hand tied behind our back, as we often fought the communists in Vietnam. We hit Afghanistan with nearly everything we had and fought them in every way we knew how. We went after terrorists financially by freezing funds of so-called Islamic “charity” groups. We went after them diplomatically by building coalitions against terror. And militarily, we not only used the latest in high-tech weaponry, we also delved into our past to better kill the enemy. For example, many units of the U.S. Special Forces hunted down Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters not in tanks or trucks, but on horseback.

This all-out approach to fighting terrorism was a major change for the United States. In the past, we and other nations “outlawed” hijackings, hostage taking and other activities. We brought terrorists to trial and even convicted them. Yet on Sept. 11, our enemies showed the bankruptcy of this approach. So the United States reverted to the wiser tactics of the past.

We also accelerated our plans to develop a missile defense. We did that in the past year by rejecting such outdated frameworks as the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty.

Some said that missile defense should be further down the list of priorities in fighting terrorism, but think about it: The death and destruction we witnessed almost a year ago were the result of commercial airliners, loaded with combustible jet fuel, crashing into their targets at high speeds—much like a missile. It’s only a matter of time before a real missile, possibly with nuclear or chemical weapons, is aimed at America.

Sound far-fetched? No more so than the idea of jet planes slamming into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Like it or not, what was once unimaginable has become all too real. We can’t underestimate the capabilities and craziness of those who wish us harm. We learned the hard way that defending America means closing down avenues of attack that once would have seemed the stuff of a Tom Clancy thriller.

Economy. Unfortunately, some attitudes haven’t changed much after Sept. 11. For example, I thought America was past the point where you just throw large sacks of money at a problem. But apparently that’s not the case, as the government threw billions at the airline industry this past winter, which was ailing financially before the attack.

Later, in the name of national security, President Bush and Congress created a farm subsidy law that benefits wealthy “agribusiness” and “farmers” such as basketball star Scottie Pippen and media mogul Ted Turner—not the small, family farmers who might actually need help.

The urge for government to support the airline and agriculture industry might have felt like the right thing to do. But one of America’s greatest strengths is its economy, which is strong in large part because government more or less takes a “hands-off” approach toward it. As the philosopher Friedrich Hayek noted 57 years ago in the classic “Road to Serfdom,” when government takes a role in planning the economy in war, it likely will want to plan the economy in peace—and that means less freedom for everyone.

Energy. Before Sept. 11, President Bush’s energy plan seemed to be fading like an old light bulb. The rolling blackouts predicted for California two summers ago never happened and the debate about drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) almost slowed the plan to a halt.

But now, more than ever, we need a national energy policy that encourages more U.S. oil production because we can see how closely it’s linked to national defense. America currently imports about 60 percent of its oil from OPEC nations that aren’t always friendly to us. Back in the early 1970s, an embargo by OPEC nations nearly crippled the nation—and we were importing a mere 40 percent of our oil back then.

We can’t afford to let that happen again. But Congress has been stalling on the president’s energy plan for months now, so history might just repeat itself.

Security. One of the more obvious changes after Sept. 11 was the attention given to improving security in America. At U.S. airports, for example, security is tighter than it ever was before—right down to inspecting passengers’ shoes for bombs.

But some of the measures done in the name of security have bordered on the ridiculous. The American press often carries stories about people who were forced to give up such innocent items as nail clippers in the name of security. Even former Vice President Al Gore was stopped by airport security twice on a recent trip. Although some measures were long overdue, others need to be rethought and applied more wisely.

Society. One of the biggest changes in America that occurred after Sept. 11 was life itself. People bought more cell phones to call loved ones in an emergency. Some designed “safe” rooms in their homes in case of another attack. New words and phrases cropped up in everyday language such as “homeland security,” “daisy cutter” and “first responder” Before Sept. 11, few Americans even knew what “Al Qaeda” meant in Arabic, let alone what it was. (It means “the base.”)

But not all the changes that happened among Americans were negative. A renewed sense of patriotism swept the country as thousands volunteered to serve their country in the military, intelligence agencies and elsewhere. The American flag was no longer reserved for special holidays as the Fourth of July; displaying it became a full-time commitment. And singing the national anthem at baseball games and other sporting events went from being a ritual to a moment of true pride.

America will never be the same. There are many areas where we have moved ahead to promote our national interest, which is to preserve freedom and prosperity around the world. And someday—probably not as far off as we think right now—those goals will be in the national interest of every country on Earth.

The Day Everything Stayed The Same
Curmudgeon Emeritus -- Francis W. Porretto
September 10, 2002
One year.
A year of shock, rage, mourning, and more than perfunctory introspection and self-criticism, not all of it necessary or wise.
All the major media outlets are doing treatments of Black Tuesday for its anniversary, and on one point they're unanimous: it was "the day everything changed." A noncontroversial point, one everyone knows. And like a lot of other noncontroversial things that everyone knows, it's dead wrong.
To show how wrong it is, all we need do is unpack it, break it down into specifics.
The Black Tuesday atrocities killed about 3000 Americans. They destroyed about $15 billion in property and caused an estimated $100 billion in total economic losses. With no intent to denigrate the losses, nor belittle the agony of the victims or the grief of their families, I note that our armed forces inflicted many times that much damage in individual sorties, during World War II and the 1991 Persian Gulf War -- then came back to do it again the next day.
America's reaction to the unprecedented assault was:
To pursue al-Qaeda militarily and topple its protector, the Taliban regime of Afghanistan; To allow the FBI greater latitude in wiretapping; To establish a new Cabinet Office for Homeland Security To intensify security procedures at our airports. Virtually no one in the United States has endured more than occasional, fleeting inconvenience as a result of these things. In defiance of my prediction of a year ago, we still congregate in large, nominally vulnerable groups for both work and play. Aside from a decreased willingness to fly, the average American's life has not been affected.
Osama bin Laden and his henchmen took their best shot at a country that was entirely unready for it, and America shrugged it off. If that's the worst our most bloodthirsty foe can do, Americans' attitude of confidence would seem well justified.
The consequences to our international relations have been slight. America is still the world's power, unchallengeable in any arena where it cares to assert itself. Europe and the Muslim Middle East still resent us for our military might, cultural influence, and commercial success. Communist China still seeks a way to challenge our police protection of its neighbors, notably Taiwan. Russia is still a muddle, and Japan is too busy trying to dig out from under its economic wreck to be of current concern.
On the domestic scene, we still have a sharply divided Congress and a "disloyal opposition" that will pull any maneuver, however low or tawdry, to frustrate the Bush Administration's economic and judicial agenda. To their credit, Dubya and his appointees have maintained near-perfect civility and unshaken determination to do what they believe right. Leftists still keep a tight grip on the schools and colleges, but are slipping into irrelevance everywhere else.
The "battle of ideas" hasn't been affected at all. The Left insists that we should be tolerant and understanding of the divergent ways of others, even when those ways reap innocent lives in New York, Washington, or Jerusalem. The Left also wants to blame the Bush tax cuts for our current economic doldrums and federal deficit. The Right wants to laugh, but the matter has proved too serious for that.
The Right is still pushing for the reinvigoration of the military and the foreign-intelligence services. Some on the Right want to erect a security state with a full-blown secret police apparatus and the capacity to monitor all communications traffic of any kind, both domestic and international, but they wanted that before Black Tuesday, too. The rationale has simply changed from drugs to terrorism.
So what's really changed, and by how much?
Americans are more willing to express patriotism and religious belief, and to question political and religious creeds that suppress the individual or exhort him to suppress his own rights and interests in favor of some collectivist doctrine. In particular, Islam has come under serious scrutiny, as have the cultures where it predominates. There is an increasing, and increasingly disapproving, understanding of the tenets of this "religion," which preaches conversion by the sword, prescribes appalling secular penalties for minor misdemeanors and entirely private deeds, licenses its adherents to commit violence and deceit against the "infidel" whenever convenient, and aims for total political control of the world.
Americans are aware, as never before, that hatred of our ideals is nothing to be ignored, that a charismatic malefactor with followers, funds, and fortitude can transmute them into destruction. Perhaps we knew it intellectually, but the collapse of the Twin Towers drove it home emotionally to a depth from which it will never be expelled.
Americans are freshly aware of the heroism that slumbers in our professional protector cadres: our police, our emergency workers, and our brilliant all-volunteer military. Like the rest of us, under normal circumstances they look after their own interests first. But when catastrophe came to call, they ran toward it and never looked back. A tragic number of them will never get a chance to look at anything else, ever again.
Americans are aware that even the most ordinary man can rise to greatness, as the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93, the sole hijacked plane that failed to reach its target, proved a year ago.
Perhaps these are large changes, after all. But they are cognitive and attitudinal: recognitions and acknowledgements of what is and has been for two centuries, unaffected by any partisan polemic or refusal to see: the rightness of individual liberty, impartial justice, and the spirit of private initiative and voluntary cooperation, whether to build, heal, protect or punish.

This guy is a genius, I have been trying to find the words to say alot of this but he has absolutely blown me away!! The rightness of America.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.