9/11, the Election and All That

The Big Hominid has a very thoughtful post on 9/11 and the events that have unfolded in its wake over the last three years, managing to avoid the cliches of left and right (n.b.: some bad language).

I have very little to add to the cacophany of commentary on the anniversary of 9/11. Suffice it to say, like most Americans, I was outraged and grief-stricken on that awful day. And unlike some of my more left-wing friends, I was unwilling to embrace the Noam Chomsky-ite perspective that this was an understandable, if not justifiable, response to American policies abroad. Certainly the U.S.A. has done shameful things in the Middle East and elsewhere, but there’s no case to be made that al-Qaeda and their ilk are engaging in a proportionate response to those policies. Nor is there a shred of evidence that their intention is the establishment of a just peace. Furthermore, the duty of a government to defend its citizens cannot be thought contingent on past good behavior. If that were the case, no government on earth could ever take up arms to protect its citizenry, since all governments have blood on their hands to some degree.

For those reasons, I supported our military campaign in Afghanistan as a just and proportionate response to the attacks of 9/11; ferreting out the terrorists from their holes, and destroying the government that had given them succor seemed (and still seems) to me amply justified by the canons of the just war tradition.

However, I got off the train on Iraq. I was never convinced (and subsequent events seem to have confirmed this) that Iraq posed anything like the threat to the U.S. that war advocates were claiming. Sure, Saddam Hussein’s regime richly deserved to be sent to the ash heap of history, but was it prudent to turn our attention there when al-Qaeda was the much more pressing threat? Moreover, it seemed that war proponents were being overly optimistic about establishing a stable (not to say democratic) regime in the ensuing power vacuum. And the idea of creating a liberal-democratic revolution in the Middle East seemed little more than a utopian fantasy, unworthy of anyone calling himself a “conservative.” Add to this concern about casualties (military and civilian) and the balance seemed to me to tilt decisively against going to war. (I remain agnostic about whether President Bush et al. “lied” about the presence of WMD; it would be the height of irrationality to claim Saddam had WMD if they knew he didn’t since this fact would certainly be disclosed after the war. More plausible is that the Administration believed there were some WMD, but that they exaggerated their degree of certainity about this, as well as the extent of the threat.)

All this places me at odds with both the “Bush=Hitler” crowd and those who cry “Appeaser!” at anyone who questions the necessity or justice of any aspect of the War on Terror. I certainly think that measured, proportionate warfare against al-Qaeda and its confederates continues to be necessary. But in the wake of Iraq, I am far from convinced that George W. Bush is the man to carry out that campaign. Nor am I fan of John “Culture of Death” Kerry. It seems irresponsible to sit out an election at so momentous a juncture in our history, but at this point I don’t know if I can support either one of these men in good conscience.