"For more than 20 years prior to Sept. 11, Islamic terrorists imprisoned and murdered our diplomats and military personnel, destroyed our civil aviation, machine-gunned our civilians, razed our embassies, attacked an American warship and, in 1993, the U.S. itself. For varying reasons, none legitimate, we hesitated to mount an offensive against the terrorists' infrastructure, hunt them down, eliminate a single rogue regime that supported them, or properly disconcert our fatted allies whose robes they infested."
– Mark Helprin
I've often marveled at how little the news changes from year to year. If you've ever encountered boxes still unpacked from a previous move and paused to glance through old newspapers used to cushion the contents, you will know what I mean. Many of the articles could be re-titled, the names of the storms, nations or politicians updated, and the article reprinted with no one the wiser. (On the other hand, perhaps newspapers have been doing this for decades and we just haven't noticed?)
What the crumbled, yellowed leftovers of earlier news does demonstrate, however, is that both people and the nations they inhabit are rarely the captains of their own destiny. For the most part we simply bumble along, responding as best we can to crisis, intermittent calm, and then another storm.
In the personal realm, those of us who have learned this lifestyle often end up working for someone else who (presumably) has a plan. Worse yet, we may learn little or nothing from our fantastically expensive "free" public education and end up depending on the "someone" of last resort for everything, everybody and every problem: the government.
Thus for large and growing portions of the population (and certainly almost all of the members of the media) it is government's fault some people are not evacuated before a hurricane hits a city. It is government's fault some people don't have flood insurance. It is government's fault we have poor people. It is government's fault we have rich people. It is government's fault our retirement fund didn't do well last year. It is government's fault 9-11 happened. It is government's fault oil is too expensive. It is government's fault I stayed up too late last night, didn't get enough sleep, and today my socks don't match.
Like individuals, nations also find it difficult to deal with the consequences of their behavior. I borrowed my title from a piece written by Mark Helprin, which appeared in the Wall Street Journal (Sept. 9, 2005, Page A16). He writes that, "this and previous administrations have courted strategic error ceaselessly." After reading his essay, I am inclined to agree.
We have squandered the Soviet Union's surrender in the Cold War, mistaken a declaration of war by Islamic terrorists as an aviation inconvenience, and parceled out our domestic markets to China's growing industrial base. The result is loose nukes, terrorist vermin allowed to breed worldwide (often on state subsidy) and a rapidly growing Chinese military that will soon be projecting its power outward in the world, probably beginning with Taiwan. We will be out of the picture because we will tied down by innumerable small conflicts and "peacekeeping" actions on behalf of a corrupt "United Nations" that incessantly demands we do more and pay more, just like the underclass we've cultivated at home.
Let's face it: The only thing that unites other nations is America. By and large, they would love to see us take a fall – the bigger the better. As Helprin so eloquently explains, the recent crop of politicians on both the left and right sides of the field seem intent on helping us do just that.
I don't assume for a moment that we in the West will win the War on Terror. Our media is filled with idiots who voluntarily act as propagandists for the enemy. Academia is overflowing with the traitorously-inclined living on government handouts (also known as grants). Our borders are overrun by anyone who feels like it and lawful residents robbed, raped and murdered by thugs from a multicultural pool of illegal immigrants drawn from around the world. Worse yet, I see very few politicians in either party who wouldn't say or promise anyone anything if it meant they could operate the levers of power another five minutes.
So we've exercised restraint, and Mecca still exists? I'm sure the first terrorists who win the race to set up their nuke in an American city will be most grateful.