“Let us always remember: That those who thought the world could be ruled by hate and fear were wrong. Our country did not let that dark vision of humanity stand. That vigilance is still required to protect and secure us. That we are one people—drawn from different religious, ethnic and national origins—but that we have been forged into an extraordinary whole. We are American.”
***
The words above are from former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice’s concluding remarks to attendees at a 9/11 memorial observance at the Pentagon on Friday, where she shared the lectern and speechmaking with President Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, General Dan Caine and others. Her address was clearly meant to inspire Americans to embrace their better angels and reclaim, elsewhere in her speech, the “certainty that this country is exceptional…and…that we hold a bedrock faith that America has a role in God’s plan for a better future for mankind.”
Leaving aside the problematic theology that a supreme being would have a favorite among the many nations that have been formed since the creation and for which there is an existing “plan,” let’s hone in on Rice’s sincere hope for a “better future for mankind.”
Over the past 25 years, we have lived through an unprecedented global “war on terror” that has preoccupied successive presidential administrations—beginning with the two she served under President George W. Bush. That “war” has cost America and its many allies who joined the effort billions of dollars, thousands of lives and incalculable attention that could have been spent addressing other highly pressing human needs.
Is there at least some consolation to be gleaned from all that loss, suggesting we may have we inched at least a tiny bit closer to the realization of Rice’s hope?
***
***
A total of 2,977 people died as a direct result of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the downed domestic airliner in Pennsylvania. It was, without doubt, the most horrific day in modern American history. (2,403 died in the attack on Pearl Harbor, and in the longer historical chain, between 7,000-7,800 died on the battlefield at Gettysburg.)
The war on terror’s outgrowths have metastasized in a particularly virulent way, their members radicalized as captives of a cloistered, heavily propagandized and insular world, reeking of grievance and calls for retribution. (Sound familiar?)
The 9/11 attack was made all the worse by the estimated 4,000 additional deaths from toxic exposure in subsequent months and years, borne largely by rescue personnel that day and then by salvage workers clearing the site and tending to the grisly task of uncovering severed body parts of victims.
Nine days after the fall of the twin towers, President Bush officially announced the “global war on terror,” which launched with the invasion of Afghanistan on October 7, less than a month after the tragedy.
That “Afghan War” lasted just under 20 years, when President Biden oversaw what turned out to be a catastrophic withdrawal of the last American forces. Often unmentioned is that the retreat had been set in motion with President Trump’s February, 2020 signing of a peace agreement with the Taliban that included a complete U.S. withdrawal by May 1, 2021.
Biden overshot that date by four months, and the withdrawal’s chaotic, even deadly nature for many Afghans almost immediately sank his approval ratings, which, combined with the inflation brought on by the Covid shutdown and subsequent stimulus checks, never recovered.
***
If the subsequent retrenchment in virtually every aspect of life for Afghan citizens (especially women and children) under draconian Taliban rule were the only casualty of the war on terror, it would be enough to forever stain the effort. But as “The New Yorker” magazine’s Robin Wright points out in a recent article addressing the 25-year fallout of the war, the containment of terrorism and the struggle for human rights around the world is in a much worse position today than it was in 2001.
Here’s Wright, in an article headlined, “The U.S. Was Never Going to Win the War on Terror”:
“Since then, about seven thousand American service members—more than twice the number of people killed on 9/11—have died in U.S. campaigns against extremism, and almost a million people have been killed as a direct result of conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, and Yemen, roughly half of whom were civilians. Millions more have died from the by-products of those conflicts, according to Brown University’s Costs of War project, on top of untold injuries. Then there are the trillions of dollars spent on those conflicts.”
Why were we “never going to win” that war? Many reasons, one of them being that stateless terrorism is much more difficult to track, contain, punish and deter.
Also, the war on terror’s outgrowths have metastasized in a particularly virulent way, men of fighting age across the world radicalized as captives of a cloistered, heavily propagandized and insular world, reeking of grievance and calls for retribution. (Sound familiar?)
Today, “Al Qaeda has spawned more than two dozen offshoots threatening governments on three continents, from Europe deep into Africa, and across Asia. ISIS has nearly as many branches,” according to Wright.
And guess who’s sitting back, thankful for their good fortune that the latest iteration of the war on terror against its chief international sponsor, Iran, is being prosecuted in ramshackle, seat-of-his-pants fashion by an American president who made it a central plank of his 2024 campaign to refrain from what he derisively called, “forever wars?”
The answer to that question is Russia and China, two of the most authoritarian, rigidly controlled dictatorships in the world, where dissent is outlawed and leaders live in palaces while the masses compete limply for crumbs.
Putin’s Russia has been terrorizing Ukraine going on five years now while the U.S. president refuses to condemn him, instead continuing to praise his “brilliance” and “strong, smart leadership.”
China’s Xi Jinping eyes the democracy of Taiwan as a rebel state that belongs back in his clutches, even as Trump purports to “admire” him as a “strong guy” whom he is “honored” to count as a “very, very good friend.”
Meanwhile, both Putin and Xi are noting the U.S.military’s preoccupation with terrorism around the world, its depletion of munitions that it will take years to replenish, its stalemate in a war of choice with a clearly inferior power, and its disengagement from former allies whose leaders President Trump has berated, whose countries he has threatened to seize, and whose economies he has attacked in crippling trade wars.
***
So the United States did not let a “dark vision of humanity” that is “ruled by hate and fear” stand? Has Condoleezza Rice not seen even glimmers of the president’s nights-long cascades of hate and fear against his many perceived enemies both domestic and foreign, whom he relentlessly portrays as “evil,” “lunatics” and “scum” via social media?
Was she not listening when Trump’s most influential advisor Stephen Miller told a network interviewer:
“You can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else. But we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world.”
Is that how a country “forged into an extraordinary whole…from different religious, ethnic and national origins” talks and behaves? Is that the kind of “vigilance…required to protect and secure us” that Ms. Rice alludes to?
***
***
And on the immediate horizon, America gazes upon:
• $40 trillion in current debt, much of it fueled by the war on terror costs and multiple tax cuts lopsidedly benefiting the wealthy and thus depriving the U.S. Treasury of vastly more funds than any tax cut for lower income groups could possibly provide. The debt figure breaks down to $117,646 for every man, woman and child in our current population of 343 million. And it is going up by $5 billion every calendar day.
Comparative figures as of September 2001: Debt of $5.73 trillion, per person $20,105.
• Warming seas and ambient temperatures up sharply since 2001, as are catastrophic weather events, all of it the new “normal” but wildly abnormal when compared to historical records.
• A world comprised of alienated allies, menacing foes in Russia, China and North Korea (no matter how closely President Trump holds their leaders to his bosom), and at least 20 major countries around the globe where nationalist, xenophobic right-wing movements have entered the body politic and are threatening to (or already have) become the dominant power (England, France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Belgium, Argentina, India, Indonesia and even Australia among them).
It’s a daunting picture of a world currently as dangerous and inimical to the values of the free world as anytime since at least World War II. That’s the reality.
Is that reality without hope?
Of course not.
As long as there is air, there is hope.
Every crisis contains seeds of hope. And those seeds are the people in this country who see reality for what it is, who do not flinch and escape into a bottle, or a tin of gummies, or permanent residence on a south seas island, but instead speak out, do whatever bits of good they can do every day, and then show up to vote as if the life of their country depends on it, which it most assuredly does.
***
***
Looking to subscribe to this blog’s pretty much weekly posts? Top right of this page, just plug in your email address (never shared or published) with a name—full, first name only, or pseudonym—and you’ll get email notices with each post.
Deep appreciation to the photographers! Unless otherwise stated, some rights reserved under Creative Commons licensing.
Elizabeth Haslam, whose photos (except for library books) grace the rotating banner top of homepage. https://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhaslam/
Library books by Larry Rose, Redlands, California, all rights reserved, contact: larry@rosefoto.com
9/11 memorial reflecting pool in New York City by Thomas Hawk, San Francisco, California https://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/
9/11 memorial names by Willem-Jan Huisman, Hilversum, Netherlands https://unsplash.com/@willemjanhuisman
Light amidst the dark by Jeremy Bishop, California https://unsplash.com/@jeremybishop
Condoleezza Rice’s assessment of our nation, while valid, doesn’t say enough. It’s time for persons of her importance take their gloves off and really go after those who incite anger through personal prejudice and fear. When a President refers to half the country as “evil, lunatics, scum or low IQ” and the other half smirks or nods approvingly, the darkest aspects of human nature rise to its most dangerous level—blind acceptance. For some, Lincoln’s “better angels” don’t exist; they’re merely the dreams of do-gooders. Too many prefer nightmares. While your blog on the 25th anniversary of 9/11 is thoughtful, sobering, factual and immune to rebuttal, I can’t believe you omitted Trump’s crush on Kim Jung Un: “And then we fell in love, okay? No, really – he wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters,” It’s like turning Cyrano and Roxane into reality.
I agree. Too much sitting in the sidelines!
I’ve never seen Steve Martin’s “Cyrano”, only Jose Ferrer’s which was also well done.
9/11 was one of those seminal moments when our memories, though six decades old, seem like yesterday. We were at Eagle Rock Junior High when JFK was assassinated. I was just coming out of Mr. Scott’s World of Music class when I heard he had been shot. As I was shooting hoops in my PE class, his death was announced. I was in the Oxy library writing a paper on Steinbeck’s “Tortilla Flat” for Mr. Harada’s AP English class when I overheard a college student say MLK was assassinated. I had just gone to bed when my youngest brother woke me up to say RFK had been shot. I was just preparing an assignment for my first period class when the planes hit the Twin Towers. I spent the rest of the day watching the horror play over and over again.
I may have disagreed with the policies of previous Presidents, but Trump is the only one who I feel doesn’t give a damn about our country.
I would so much want to. Believe in hope. Every day something more egregious and hateful is spewed upon us from this fascist regime currently holding power in this country. I wonder why those well intentioned politicians on the other side are not speaking out every day against the lies and hateful policies being rained down on us every day. Each one should be shouting everyday, where ever they can about what is really happening. In the news, internet, street corners, television! The silence is deafening. As I get daily texts begging for more and more money! And the media that gives time and platform to the lies and misrepresentations and hateful rhetoric is also complacent. As well as sycophantic— is that a word?— courts and judges! There are small push backs that never seem to carry through. Sorry to rant. But I am afraid I’m having a hard time holding on to hope! Every time I think “that will never happen” it does. Nervous for the mid terms and the havoc that could be raised! I “hope” like anything that I am wrong!
Robert, that Trump-Kim Jong bromance is so over the top, so insane, that I just couldn’t bring myself to haul it in here. The crazy thing is Trump considers himself a shrewd, no-nonsense businessman, but his swooning over saccharine letters reminiscent of gushing teenagers shows just how deep Trump’s narcissism runs. It’s in the news all the time how he just loves pretty words accompanied by genuflections and a few wheelbarrows full of money, considering it all just reflective of his fabulousness and lovability rather than the utterly transparent, cynical ploy it is to win his favor. Yet somehow Trump convinces himself, “They like me, they really like me!” Willy Loman times about a hundred, just more brutish. I don’t know about the Cyrano reference, though—at least there was real , reciprocal love and appreciation going there, albeit under a cloud of fake identity. Here, Kim Jong is toying with Trump, and everyone in the world knows it except for Trump. BTW, did you ever see Steve Martin’s turn as Cyrano? A tour de force, methinks; one of the more memorable movies of my life.
Karen, my dear, I hope it’s some consolation to you just how widely your sense of exasperation is shared. This period is much harder than the ’60s when we came of age, because some measure of decency and “regular order” prevailed through that period, even with all the lying through Vietnam and Watergate. The fact of a large contingent of Republican senators marching into the White House and forcing Nixon to resign is striking for how impossible that scenario feels today, which is but one of the factors emboldening Trump to do whatever he pleases, at zero political cost. It’s a scandal, and I dearly hope it’s one that his party of sycophants—yes, that’s a word, and highly appropriate!—pays for not only in November, but carrying over to 2028. And I’m going to have to come to the defense of my media brothers & sisters here. Sure, the right-wing propagandists are hard at work over at Fox and Musk’s X, but many outlets are carrying on courageously and working very hard just to keep pace with the utter onslaught of lies, viciousness, and fraud pouring forth from the administration on almost an hourly basis. Plenty of great reporting and commentary going on in mainstream media—NY Times, PBS, the ex-Republicans at The Bulwark, multiple voices on Substack, even the Wall Street Journal. All of it despite Trump & Co. going to absurd lengths to deny something everyone knows and can prove to be true, while simply overwhelming the resources of attention, money, research and thinking time needed for media to keep abreast of the wrecking ball armies Trump has employed to keep them exhausted. Thanks for checking in and yes, please do keep hope alive—without it, this game is over…