THE US REPORT

By Kay B. Day

View of New York City from the Empire State Building. A George Washington University report said Manhattan experienced $50-70 billion in insured losses after the September 11, 2001 attack on America. There is no way to gauge the exact cost for all sectors and interests. [Photo by Kay B. Day, 2005]

This morning networks showed footage of planes crashing into buildings, a moment etched into personal history 8 years ago for every one of us. It’s similar to the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated—we remember where we were and what we were doing. I had just returned from taking my youngest daughter to school.

Over the next couple years I read the books that emerged. Lawrence Wright’s ‘The Looming Tower’ is one of the best. For newly established president George W. Bush, the day was the defining moment of his presidency. Bush’s administration was delayed by Al Gore’s court challenges and a lack of cooperation from President Bill Clinton’s minions in the transition. Meanwhile the welfare of the Republic hung in the balance. Terrorists had planned their attacks for years.

Leftwingers blame Bush for America’s global image. Nothing could be less truthful. Wade through foreign and domestic newspaper archives, read analytical books and talk to experts in national security. Our image began to erode long before Bush, even before Clinton. If I had to point at a single factor in the tarnished image leftists often cite it would be globalization. A secondary factor would be the anti-Semitism entrenched in many parts of the world. Yet another would be global warming alarmists, especially in countries strapped for fuel. Someone starving in Somalia isn’t worried about the environment—he’s just hoping to sell enough charcoal to put food in his family’s hands. Inept and/or corrupt leadership, by the way, is a global problem.

In Wright’s book there’s an intriguing passage about an Egyptian group formed in the early 1970s. Takfir wa Hijira, says Wright, was a “forerunner of al-Qaeda.” The group’s leader, Shukri Mustafa, managed to attract “a couple of thousand followers.” They read Islamic extremist writings and slept in “mountain grottoes.”

Wright continues,

“The Cairo press called Mustafa’s followers ahl-al kahf, ’people of the cave,’ a reference to the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. This Christian folktale recounts the story of seven shepherds who refused to renounce their faith. In punishment, the Roman emperor Decius had them walled up inside a cave in present-day Turkey. Three centuries later, according to the legend, the cave was discovered and the sleepers awakened, thinking they had slept only one night. There is an entire sura, or chapter, in the Quran, ‘The Cave,’ that refers to this story. Like Shukri Mustafa, bin Laden would fasten onto the imagery that the cave evokes for Muslims. Moreover, the modus operandi of withdrawal, preparation, and dissimulation that would frame the culture of al-Qaeda’s sleeper cells was established by Takfir wa Hijira as early as 1975.” [pg. 123]

This morning I heard a pundit say, ‘Time heals all.’ It’s an oft-repeated comfort phrase, one I’ve never understood. Time may bind up the wounds and make them less troublesome, but I’ve never thought ‘heals’ was the right verb.

Eight years after America was attacked by thugs who were no more than common murderers, representing no country and observing no standards, we must ask ourselves what we have learned. A cursory glance at the morning headlines shows Venezuela’s leader in a Kodak moment with Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin and musings on the master terrorist Osama bin Laden. Al Jazeera has a silly article calling President Barack Obama’s administration a “third Bush term.” And the American Civil Liberties Union—why this org calls itself American is beyond me—stands accused of showing detainees at Guantanamo Bay photos of CIA employees. No media outrage for that infraction. The Associated Press recently ran a photo of a Marine as he lay dying. That, by the way, is one of the most despicable acts I have witnessed in contemporary media.

America paid a heavy price in personal loss from the 2001 attacks, but we also paid a heavy financial price, one that no one can completely measure. A report from George Washington University said Manhattan sustained $50-70 billion in insured property losses. New York sustained losses from the interruptions the financial sector experienced and health insurers paid dearly for the mental and physical impact on survivors and their families. The airline and travel sector, retail and wholesale concerns experienced significant losses and every state in the union was dealt a financial blow.

Currently the term ‘War on Terror’ is considered archaic. We appear to be aiming at an America embracing appeasement. We’ve done that before; Clinton was the master of that approach.

I have a world map I believe came from the magazine Commentary. The map shows a list of countries and annotates those where there is terrorism. Very few countries lack the terrorism symbol—the handful who do are small countries like Gabon and Liechtenstein. The map is based on a Congressional Research Report for Congress in 2007.

Obviously we are fighting nothing less than a ‘War on Terror.’ The rest of the world and our political leaders should remember the many years leading up to September 11. To do less is to ignore reality and history.

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