OPINION:
Twenty-three years ago, on the sunny morning of Sept. 11, 2001, nearly 3,000 people were murdered on American soil by 19 terrorists.
I knew two of the people killed. One was working in the World Trade Center. The other was a passenger on the hijacked jet that struck the Pentagon.
That was one reason why my life, like the lives of many other Americans, was transformed on that terrible day.
Another reason: In early 1979, I spent several months reporting on the revolution in Iran. I arrived just after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had returned from exile in France. Within weeks, a revolutionary council guided by his theology took power.
Books and music regarded as “anti-Islamic” were banned. Women were forced to conceal their bodies under chadors. Lashing, stoning and summary execution were among the punishments meted out to those whose beliefs, sexual orientation or conduct were disapproved of by the ayatollah.
In Iranian mosques, chants of “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!” echoed.
What I was witnessing — though I didn’t fully understand it at the time — was the birth of the first modern nation-state committed to Islamic imperialism and jihad: religious war against the Judeo-Christian West.
The founding of Iran by Persian Shiites both humiliated and galvanized a cohort in the Sunni Arab world. They asked themselves: Who within our tribe is committed to the reestablishment of the caliphate and to defeating the Americans?
From that seed did al Qaeda sprout?
In the weeks after 9/11, I sat down with Jack Kemp, a Republican politician who had been close to President Ronald Reagan, and Jeane Kirkpatrick, a political scientist and self-described “AFL-CIO Democrat” whom Reagan appointed as his U.N. ambassador. Also in these discussions: a visionary philanthropist to whom they introduced me.
We began organizing a think tank that we named the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. It was our conviction that, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. had taken a “premature peace dividend” and “a holiday from history.”
We correctly foresaw that this would be a long war. We incorrectly believed that, after 9/11, no one in a position of authority would defend terrorists.
Before long, prominent journalists and academics were asserting that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”
That led, ineluctably, to what we now see: Herds of ignorant students, tenured activists and professional agitators are trampling over American campuses in solidarity with murderers and rapists who are torturing hostages at this very moment.
On Sept. 20, 2001, President George W. Bush announced the Global War on Terrorism, which he said would not end “until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.”
Before the year’s end, the Taliban, which ruled Afghanistan and had hosted al Qaeda, would be ousted from power. Two years later, Saddam Hussein would be toppled in Iraq.
In 2011, President Barack Obama withdrew all U.S. military forces from Iraq, leading to the rise of the Islamic State group, aka ISIS, and further opening Iraq to Iran’s influence.
In 2021, President Biden withdrew all U.S. military forces from Afghanistan. That proved that Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, planner of the 9/11 attacks, was correct when he told his CIA interrogators that jihadis can be confident of victory because “we only need to fight long enough for you to defeat yourself by quitting.”
For many years, Americans hoped that Russia and China would side with us in the Global War on Terrorism.
Surely, the arc of post-Soviet Russian history was bending toward liberal democracy. In June 2001, Mr. Bush said he found President Vladimir Putin “very straightforward and trustworthy.”
Near the end of 2001, China was welcomed into the World Trade Organization in the hope that as China grew wealthier, its rulers would moderate.
It soon became apparent that this experiment failed — though many influential Americans and Europeans still refuse to see that.
In March 2023, Waller R. Newell, perhaps the world’s leading expert on the history of tyranny from ancient times to the present, joined me in writing a column on what we called the “Axis of Tyrannies.”
Xi Jinping, China’s Communist ruler, and Mr. Putin, Russia’s neo-imperialist dictator, had agreed to a “no-limits” partnership in February 2022, just days before Russian troops invaded Ukraine. Both went on to establish close relations with Ali Khamenei, the Islamist “supreme leader” of Iran.
Mr. Khamenei has begun sending ballistic missiles to Russia. There are numerous other examples of military cooperation among the members of what is often called the Axis of Aggressors. North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela are also members.
Beijing, Moscow and Tehran are building their military capabilities as fast as they can. Bipartisan commissions have found the U.S. defense budget and military size inadequate given this expanding threat matrix.
The U.S. is failing to deter the Iran-backed terrorist militias who have attacked American forces more than 170 times in Syria and Iraq. The U.S. has been unable or unwilling to defeat the Houthi terrorists — also armed, trained and instructed by Iran.
And while President Biden has been supporting Ukrainians fighting to retain their independence and Israelis fighting genocidal enemies, his preference is for “cease-fires” and “negotiated settlements.” That’s not how tyrants and terrorists are deterred, much less defeated.
Are Americans capable of understanding that, 23 years after the 9/11 attacks, we’re in an even more dangerous era — no time for peace dividends and holidays from history?
Maybe. If they elect American leaders who understand the stakes and are willing to make the case for the urgency of defending America and helping America’s allies defend themselves.
• Clifford D. May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a columnist for The Washington Times.
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