Tuesday 13 September 2011

Ten years after…

Both the horror and the loss of that September day ten years ago were brought back to all of us by the recent commemoration. The simple nobility of the ceremony and memorial at Ground Zero made the tragedy much more real again.

And with that, much more bitter.

Because the tragic site at which speeches were made and wives and children mourned was the scene of mass murder. Of a declaration of war. Of an intentional, ideologically motivated mass killing. Yet a decade after the greatest peacetime attack since Pearl Harbor, western troops are still carrying out “peace keeping” missions in its name in places that don’t want peace, put in harm’s way by leaders with no idea what they are really there for. 

Why this agonising slow bleed? Because if American (and western) reaction to it over the last ten years could be summed up in one sweeping leitmotif, says historian John Lewis, it would be this: Apologetic self-abnegation.

Attacked on our own soil and across the globe, we have refused to accept that the cause of the slaughter is the openly stated commitment of clerics, pundits, and political leaders to a barbaric ideology of religious war…
    To explain [the] aggression we search doggedly for evidence of our own malfeasance. We atone for our alleged sins by showering foreign dictatorships with money and the sanction of diplomatic discussions. We apologize for every dead civilian, even as the enemy hides behind defenseless children and flees into safe havens across foreign borders. We offer constitutional protections to murderers pledged to destroy our Constitution.
    Why are we doing this? What has brought us to this state? …  [Because] self-abnegation is the new path to atonement.
    This is the intellectual climate we have steeped in for decades. Is it any wonder that we are acting as these ideas demand?
    This is why, ten years after 9/11, we have not defeated the enemy that used hijacked airliners to murder thousands of Americans before our eyes…
    The deepest cause of this malady oozes out of the ideas that permeate our culture. Intellectually, we have refused to face the fact that we are at war and should act to end it quickly. Morally, we have denied all principles except one: moral goodness means self-sacrifice. Psychologically, we lack confidence in our efficacy, and have murdered our self-esteem by leaping into the quicksand of sacrifice. Politically, we are at perpetual war, because to win decisively would be an act of self-interest—and that is the one action we dare not take.
    These are the fruits of the philosophy of self-abnegation.

Self-abnegation is the west’s default position today.

3 comments:

Elijah said...

Powerful words and watching the commemorations on the television was a rather sad occasion; (did anyone else feel George W. looked far more 'Presidential' than Obama standing at the podium?).

What does Mr Lewis and others suggest 'we' do about all this then? I would love to know what he would do at, say, 9 o'clock tomorrow morning to deal with Islam which has not already been tried during the last decade.

(Let me guess - it will involve killing people?)

Anonymous said...

Has the war on terror been worth it ?
Yes
Saddam, Bin laden
No longer walk on this earth.
This was only run once because Budweiser didn't want to use it for real advertising. One of the most moving pieces I saw relating to the tragedy of 9/11.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4yfivS8SWs

Bizarro #1 said...

We offer constitutional protections to murderers pledged to destroy our Constitution.

Yeah, the rule of law is for suckers. If the government decides someone is a really bad guy, they ought to be able to do anything they like to him. Anything less is just liberal wussiness (or "apologetic self-abnegation"). After all, what could possibly go wrong?