Joseph J. Ellis is one of my favorite historians. The Mount Holyoke professor won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 2001 with his fascinating story of the men who created America called Founding Brothers. And his book American Sphinx that looked at the towering figure of Thomas Jefferson with a freshness and vigor that earned him a 1997 National Book Award is also well worth a read.
But in an Op-Ed in today’s New York Times, Ellis makes a mistake made by many historians when he tries to put the events of 9/11 in perspective while the smell of burning jet fuel and charred bodies is still fresh in the nostrils of many Americans. In other words, Ellis is attempting to contextualize an event that for all intents and purposes is still “news” and therefore immune to the kind of analysis that even an excellent historian like Ellis can generate.
I believe it was the Civil War historian Bruce Catton who half-joked that mid 20th century historians of the French L’Académie française declined to study any event later than the Napoleonic Wars. They believed that it took 100 years for all the personal reflections, reminisces, and correspondence to see the light of day hence, it was useless to try and piece together what actually happened during any given time in history without the passage of time.
There is something to be said for that kind of attitude toward history. And when looking at the events of 9/11, it is tempting to draw lessons and make historical analogies that a good historian like Ellis would normally eschew. Allowing a single event to ripen and age in the minds of the people ordinarily brings a kind of consensus as to where it fits into the national narrative. This is when “perspective” can be imprinted on the national psyche and give depth and meaning to a single event. History is all about having 20-20 hindsight. And the time and distance we move from any single point allows for emotions to settle and memory to fade so that the historian can then place into a context relevant to our personal experience events that when they occurred generated passions that could cloud the judgment and roil the emotions of both the historian and reader.
It’s bad enough that Ellis is attempting such a feat of legerdemain regarding 9/11 itself. But he also attempts to place the Administration’s efforts at homeland security in context with other measures taken by Presidents during national crisis and finds the comparison with Bush wanting. It may be that someday (and let’s hope that for America there will in fact be a “someday”) future historians will find much to criticize regarding the President’s aggressive domestic security policies. But with so much hidden from the average citizen by necessity, it seems to me to be a futile exercise to attempt such analogies now. We know quite a bit about what went into Adam’s decision to introduce the hated Alien and Sedition Acts. I daresay we don’t know squat about the NSA intercept program compared to what we will know in 100 years.
Simply put, Ellis is dead wrong in trying to train his historian’s eye on 9/11:
Whether or not we can regard Sept. 11 as history, I would like to raise two historical questions about the terrorist attacks of that horrific day. My goal is not to offer definitive answers but rather to invite a serious debate about whether Sept. 11 deserves the historical significance it has achieved.My first question: where does Sept. 11 rank in the grand sweep of American history as a threat to national security? By my calculations it does not make the top tier of the list, which requires the threat to pose a serious challenge to the survival of the American republic.
I appreciate Professor Ellis’s disclaimer regarding “definitive answers” about ranking 9/11 as a threat to our survival. And if it is debate he wants, he’s got it.
Ellis takes several historical events – the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War, and the Cold War – as events that were more of a threat to our survival than 9/11. I find the choices made by the professor interesting but would argue that only the Cold War was a true threat to American survival. There is a school of thought that argues there was no way American independence could have been denied, that even if Washington’s Continental army had been destroyed, resistance would have continued until the British gave up and went home.
A similar argument can be made about the War of 1812. The British may have temporarily been able to hang on to the Northwest territories and perhaps even have occupied the mid-Atlantic states for a while. But as the Treaty of Ghent proved, the British were not interested in reestablishing colonies or maintaining much of a presence in North America. The question of New England secession is an interesting one, best dealt with by author Orson Scott Card in his Tales of Alvin Maker series. But for the same reason that even if the northern states had given up at some point during the Civil War the United States would have come back together at some point. The ties of history, commerce, and culture were too natural and too strong to break, even by war.
That leaves the Cold War where the United States could have been destroyed in less than a day. Ellis specifically calls to mind the Cuban Missile Crisis which in many ways marked the apogee of Cold War tensions. I can’t argue that 9/11 was a greater threat to national security than the Cuban missile crisis. But I can certainly point out that the professor is comparing apples and oranges by failing to differentiate between an event like the Cuban missile crisis and the ongoing threat posed by those who perpetrated the attack on the Trade Centers. Taking the Cold War in its totality and putting it into the context of an existential threat to the survival of the United States is all well and good. But even here, given the implacable nature of our enemies compared to the Russians who after all were not willing to destroy themselves in order to defeat us, one has to take into account the fanaticism of the jihadists in order to appreciate the current threat – something I don’t believe the professor does.
Not content however to rank the threats to our national life, Professor Ellis then really gets my goat by pointing out other security responses of the government to different crisis in our history:
My list of precedents for the Patriot Act and government wiretapping of American citizens would include the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798, which allowed the federal government to close newspapers and deport foreigners during the “quasi-war” with France; the denial of habeas corpus during the Civil War, which permitted the pre-emptive arrest of suspected Southern sympathizers; the Red Scare of 1919, which emboldened the attorney general to round up leftist critics in the wake of the Russian Revolution; the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, which was justified on the grounds that their ancestry made them potential threats to national security; the McCarthy scare of the early 1950’s, which used cold war anxieties to pursue a witch hunt against putative Communists in government, universities and the film industry.In retrospect, none of these domestic responses to perceived national security threats looks justifiable. Every history textbook I know describes them as lamentable, excessive, even embarrassing. Some very distinguished American presidents, including John Adams, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, succumbed to quite genuine and widespread popular fears. No historian or biographer has argued that these were their finest hours.
I will defer to the professor’s superior knowledge and judgment about how “lamentable” each of these reactions to crisis was in “retrospect.” He’s a better man than I if he can judge Abraham Lincoln’s suspension of habeus corpus (which I’m sure the professor is aware was only one in a series of actions President Lincoln took that violated the Bill of Rights). I prefer to look at Lincoln and FDR doing what they honestly believed must be done to safeguard the Republic. Does that make them immune from criticism? Not from a distance with that 20-20 hindsight I referred to earlier.
But the same historians and biographers who take those illustrious Americans to task for their actions initiated in the name of “national security,” rarely fail to point out the context in which those decisions were made. Can a decision like Lincoln’s to abandon 4th Amendment protections in areas of the country in rebellion be seen as both wrong and necessary? I would think that Father Abraham thought so. He knew full well he was violating the Constitution: “”To state the question more directly, are all the laws, but one, to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated? Lincoln went on to ponder whether obeying the Supreme Court would not violate his oath of office to “preserve and protect” the country since he felt the suspension of habeas corpus to be absolutely essential to the survival of the country.
This, I believe, places President Bush’s actions in a similar light. While it is evident that Professor Ellis does not view 9/11 as the earth shattering event that many of the rest of us do (reason enough for any of us not to try and place it in historical perspective) it is also clear that he feels it is wrong to have it dominate our national security and domestic policy to the exclusion of most other issues:
What Patrick Henry once called “the lamp of experience” needs to be brought into the shadowy space in which we have all been living since Sept. 11. My tentative conclusion is that the light it sheds exposes the ghosts and goblins of our traumatized imaginations. It is completely understandable that those who lost loved ones on that date will carry emotional scars for the remainder of their lives. But it defies reason and experience to make Sept. 11 the defining influence on our foreign and domestic policy. History suggests that we have faced greater challenges and triumphed, and that overreaction is a greater danger than complacency.
Do I detect a whiff of partisanship in the professor’s notation that there has been an “overreaction” to 9/11? And how is it possible in this context that “complacency” toward an enemy that as I write this is desperately trying to get its hands on weapons that would kill 10 times and 10 times again the 3,000 that perished that horrible day?
The reason September 11 is the “defining influence” that it has become is the recognition of the kind of enemy we face and their fanatical desire to kill as many Americans as they can regardless of the consequences to themselves. It may be that someday soon we will start calling this war something besides the War on Terror. Goodness knows that appellation is a misnomer if there ever was one. It should be known as the War Against the Darkness or the War Against Modernity. It may even become War Against Islam which is what our enemies are calling it anyway. But to say that our actions have been an “overreaction” presupposes that there is a limit to what our enemies wish to visit upon us. A look at what they say and their actions in support of those words should disabuse all but the most inward looking among us that they mean what they say and worse, are capable of making good on their bloodcurdling boasts.
Sorry professor. I admire your attempt to get a debate going on this issue. But it may be a non-starter. In order to debate the issues you outline in your article, there has to be an agreement on basic facts like whether or not we are at war and whether or not you think George Bush has horns, a tail, and is the incarnation of the devil himself. What would be the point in debating 9/11 in an historical context if the person on the other side sometimes appears to believe that those dastardly attacks never happened?
UPDATE
A couple of other views on this worth looking at.
In other words, because when we have responded to trauma in the past, the threat has turned out to be exaggerated, and September 11 was a trauma, this threat too will turn out to be exaggerated, QED.
This is an absolutely amazing way to reason yourself to security policy. There is not one hint or breath of al Queda specific analysis or evidence here. (And remember, we’re talking about al Queda prime, not anything so peripheral as the decision to go into Iraq.) Putting aside the hstorical question of whether he’s right that all these past instances were actually false fears, would you actually decide that since past fears were false, it was therefore safe to simply blow off fears about al Queda?
Wouldn’t you at the very least want to ask for some evidence?
And, by the by, however big a pig Joe McCarthy was, I think most people have come to the conclusion by now that there really were some Communists running around. And he himself argues that they were a threat when he lists the Cuban Missile Crisis in the first tier of historical threats—those weren’t Swedes pointing missiles at us, you know.
Well said. And I was going to include her point about Jumpin’ Joe being vindicated by the Venona intercepts – cables that showed that there were literally dozens of communists at State and DoD including Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs – but I also felt the professor had a point about McCarthy’s overreaching.
Robert Schlesinger at the Huffpo has a thoughtful piece:
There is of course a strong counter-argument. The September 11 attacks brought into sharp relief the fact that we have entered a world where individuals can wield destructive power that was once reserved for nation-states.
Or to put it another way: While the worst-case scenario does not contemplate the end of the United States, it does contemplate millions killed.
While I obviously have my inclinations, I am not entirely comfortable with either side. But it’s still a debate worth having.
I would argue that a couple of nukes would destroy the America we live in now and replace it with something unrecognizable.
See also Ed’s rebuttal to my post in the comments.
UPDATE II
Pat Curley has a great point that I sort of surrounded but didn’t make as clearly as this:
First, let’s stop calling it “Sept. 11”. That’s one incident. Where does Pearl Harbor rate on his scale? Answer: It doesn’t; it’s a part of a larger conflict called World War II. Obviously 9-11 wasn’t as big a threat to the United States as World War II. But is Islamic terrorism as big a threat as Hitler and the Japanese? Maybe not, but the scale is not as dramatically off kilter. How many American civilians were killed by our enemies in World War II? I don’t know the answer, but I suspect it was not as many as died on 9-11.
Outside of Pearl Harbor and the odd sinking of a freighter that was carrying passengers, the number of dead American civilians doesn’t come close to the number we lost on 9/11.
9:48 am
Both you and the professor make good points. The one fact I believe would strengthen your argument is that AQ and the other jihadists do not conduct their warfare in accordance with classical rules of warfare (see the Geneva Convention, etc). I can’t imagine members of AQ participating in the equivalent of the Christmas truce in WW I or similar situations in our civil war.
12:44 pm
This is, I think, the NY Times trying to justify its “balls to the wall” opposition to any and every security measure a Bush administration proposes. Why do I get the feeling that Mr. Ellis ‘historical perspective’ might be a tad different were a Democratic president proposing the measures?
Nice job, Rick.
12:45 pm
This is perhaps one of the most disingenuous pieces of writing ever posted here. The opening premise of the post is that historian Ellis cannot write history about 9/11 because it is too soon after the event. The actual premise of the article appears later. It is a strong defense of Bush’s policies in conducting the War on Terror.
“Simply put, Ellis is dead wrong in trying to train his historian’s eye on 9/11:”
The author of this post relates Ellis’s attempt to place 9/11 in context of other threats to American national security, specifically the Revolution, War of 1812, the Civil War and the Cold War as greater threats than 9/11. These threats are dismissed in quite curious manners. The Revolution was no threat, according to Moran, because even if Britain had prevailed militarily, the colonists would have defeated them later, according to some unidentified “school of thought”. There is just nothing in history that would indicate extremely repressive measures to control the colonists might have been implemented if Britain would have achieved military victory (wink, wink). Even more curious is the notion that the Civil War, or perhaps for Mr. Moran, the Great Rebellion, was not a threat equal to 9/11.
“But for the same reason that even if the northern states had given up at some point during the Civil War the United States would have come back together at some point. The ties of history, commerce, and culture were too natural and too strong to break, even by war.”
Well, what’s a little secession among friends? Moran argues that secession is not really a long-term threat. If secession of states is not really a threat to the structural integrity on American governance structure (hey, they get back together anyway!), the logical extension would be that Lincoln was wrong in waging the Civil War, and certainly wrong in the suspension of habeas corpus.
The Cold War threat is minimized as well.
“I can’t argue that 9/11 was a greater threat to national security than the Cuban missile crisis. But I can certainly point out that the professor is comparing apples and oranges by failing to differentiate between an event like the Cuban missile crisis and the ongoing threat posed by those who perpetrated the attack on the Trade Centers. Taking the Cold War in its totality and putting it into the context of an existential threat to the survival of the United States is all well and good. But even here, given the implacable nature of our enemies compared to the Russians who after all were not willing to destroy themselves in order to defeat us, one has to take into account the fanaticism of the jihadists in order to appreciate the current threat – something I don’t believe the professor does.â€
Apples and oranges comparison? The tragic and horrible deaths of 9/11 are equal to or more important, as a threat to our national survival, than the potential detonation of tens of thousands of nuclear bombs in a Soviet Union/United States exchange? Someone so informed of history surely realizes that the exchange of warheads was only narrowly averted. Fanaticism of the terrorists and their potential for getting a nuclear bomb? First, carefully review what it takes to deliver and detonate such a weapon. Not as easy as learning to steer a plane. Second, as the Soviets did not wish to be destroyed, do the terrorist sponsoring states such as Saudi Arabia and Iran wish destruction? They certainly do a lot of self-protective behaviors that make that conclusion difficult to accept, and their cooperation and funding would be needed for terrorists to detonate a nuclear weapon in the United States. Terrorists are certainly fanatics. Let us remember only one entity has ever actually unleashed nuclear weapons to kill people. Over 120,000 people died in two bombings, 40 times the death toll of 9/11. Certainly the act of fanatics, no? Civilized people could never do such a thing.
“Do I detect a whiff of partisanship in the professor’s notation that there has been an “overreaction†to 9/11?â€
Now we get to real beef Mr. Moran has with Ellis. Ellis makes the argument that the reaction of the Bush administration to 9/11 is overreaction, in a historical context. Moran sees this as a political attack on Bush, the war and supposed violation of law in the NSA wiretapping issue. The deeply partisan Mr. Moran, in keeping his street cred with the conservative hard core, presents all of the above attacks on Ellis as a historian and his historical conclusions regarding 9/11 as lacking historical merit, when his real agenda is the political defense of the President. He even uses, as Moran frequently does, the patented conservative dismissive condescension toward the renowned historian.
“I will defer to the professor’s superior knowledge and judgment about how “lamentable†each of these reactions to crisis was in “retrospect.â€
Disingenuous. Using historical context and a historian you pretend to admire as a strawman for the defense of President Bush is beneath even a Republican.
Please feel free to call me stupid and ban me from commenting. I expect no less.
4:02 pm
I agree that it is to early for historians to comment on 9/11 and its aftermath. There is no way to know at this early stage what is behind the actions of government.
4:45 pm
What I find curious the logic that Ellis uses. Boiled down, his argument appears to be that we have faced greater threats to the country before, that in those times our leaders saw fit to (temporarily) take significant rights away from us; that in retrospect those decisions were wrong, and that therefore we should not acquiesce to the relatively insignificant rights lost to the Patriot Act and the wiretapping cases.
He argues that the threat posed by 9-11 is not on the scale of Hitler or the Communists, and that may be true. But what about comparing the scale of the Patriot Act to the Sedition Act, or the suspension of habeas corpus, or the Internment Camps? It’s not hard to see that Adams, Lincoln and Roosevelt posed far greater threats to civil liberty than Bush.
And he’s being unfair by comparing the “threat posed by 9-11” to World War II or the Cold War. The threat is not posed by 9-11, it’s posed by radical Islamists, just as the threat wasn’t World War II, it was Hitler and the Japanese.
5:03 pm
[...] rrors.” Much praise for Professor Ellis aside, Right Wingn Nut House will not stand for this historical contextualization [...]
5:32 pm
The “context” of history is relative. It has been over 2300 years since Alexander the Great conquered the known world of his day but there have been no less than 5 biographies published about his life in the past 5 years. What more is there to learn of the man? Seems to be enough to generate some considerable study. 9/11, the books written about it, and the criticisms of those books look to be in the forefront of nonfiction literature for some time to come.
And why not? Has there been anything since Pearl Harbor that has grabbed America at its very core like 9/11? It is possible the Challenger disaster or the Kennedy assassination has had such an emotional grips on this country. But in those cases it was an internal gut wrenching. A self-inflicted wound.
9/11 had implications for the entire world. And the collateral damage caused by that event has yet to settle. Patience all – it is possible that there may be enough “context” on this issue in something less than 2300 years?
6:12 pm
The problem I have with the Professor’s column and some of the comments here are twofold.
1. Bush did not react to 9/11 alone, he and his advisors saw 9/11 as an attack in a far larger conflict that had been going on for more than a decade and had been ignored or downplayed by previous administrations.
2. The statement that the threat is not on par with say WWII or the cold war is false and dangerous. In today’s world thanks to technology(genetic engineering and physics) and transportation it is far easier for a small group of well financed and educated nutjob terrorists to cause casualties on a massive scale. That combined with state sponsorship(Iran) and I believe the threat and potential for destruction is far greater than we ever have faced in any conflict before. Think about it for a minute, during WWII we could count on INTEL because the massive movement of large armies was easy to track, in the cold war we had the same thing. The focus of our INTEL in WWII was not how to find the enemy but how get enough ordinance on them to destroy the threat, now the focus is how do you find the small 20 person cell carrying biological or nuclear agents? This is far harder to do and 9/11 showed just how easy it is for terrorists to strike us with very little or no warning using minimal resources remember 9/11 cost AQ 19 men and a couple thousand dollars. You can not look at the GWOT in the context of any previous conflict it a wholly new type of conflict and is far harder to fight and far more dangerous.
6:43 pm
I note something interesting in this post. Once more, Lincoln and the suspension of habeas corpus is mentioned, and once again the reflexive condemnation of the action. No one seems to question this reaction anymore.
I find that unfortunate, since I am not convinced Lincoln’s action was quite so unarguably unconstitutional as is assumed.
Article I, sec. 9 reads: “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.”
Article I deals with the Congress, but section 9 lists not Congressional powers, but limits on that power. So this tells us that Congress cannot pass a law restricting habeas corpus except in certain conditions. Two important points here – the Constitution itself says habeas corpus is a privilege not a right, and it foresees a legitimate need to suspend it. The conditions, war and insurrection, certainly seem to apply to Lincoln.
The question then is whether the President can suspend habeas corpus.
It seems the generally accpted answer is “no.” I’m not sure it is so clear.
Article I, Section. 1. “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”
and
Article II, Section. 2. “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States . . .”
These provisions put few limits on the President in his handeling of war and rebellion, exactly the conditions given for suspension of HC. Lincoln’s order was challenged by the SCOTUS, but this opinion cane from CJ Roger Taney, the same towering legal mind that had delivered up the Dred Scott decision.
Lincoln had a better case than he is usually granted.
6:44 pm
Ellis is right. The fatal problem with the counter-argument is the Cold War. There was, is not now, and hopefully never will be again a threat on the level of that posed during the Cold War. It is the measure by which all other threats should be measured. And against that measure, it is facially ridiculous to argue that the current threat comes anywhere close. It really is. And Bush supporters know this – deep down in their hearts they do.
And Bush supporters would be willing to admit this out loud – after all, they are not irrational – if it were not for the domestic political implications of doing so. The GOP has been quite open about its strategy to use the GWOT as a tactic to win elections. To openly admit the obvious – that the Communist Bloc’s millions of troops and thousands of nuclear weapons represented a qualitively more serious threat than the current terrorists – would undermine the effectiveness of their most effective tactic. So of course they won’t afmit the obvious.
Hell, who can blame them? Why give up your best weapon?
6:50 pm
Hawk:
You are correct. Lincoln’s problem was Chief Justice Taney who ruled the suspension of the writ unconstitutional. Lincoln ignored him.
m:
As I point out, the threat comparison is a trick question. The Russians would never have destroyed themselves just so they could destroy us.
You willing to say the same thing about the jihadists?
Domestic politics has nothing to do with realizing that a terrorist attack using a handful of nukes would destroy the US as we know it. I’m not sure I’d want to live in what emerged from the ashes.
6:51 pm
Moran’s reply to the Cold War was worse argument is that the Russians weren’t fanatics, willing to sacrifice themselves, unlike the terrorists.
Of course in retrospect, that’s an easy thing to say. But at the time, the only perspective that matters in the debate – a point Moran fails to acknowledge – the Russians seemed equally fanatical. If you asked the average man on the street in 1961 whether the Russians were willing to risk self-anihilation in order to start a nuclear war, you would almost always get a “yes” answer. To suggest that we didn’t think then that the Communists were as fanatical as today’s terrorists is simply nonsensical. It’s just wrong.
6:55 pm
So I guess MAD was “nonsensical.” What does the “average man in the street” have to do with formulating security policy?
The Russians spoke the language of deterrence. Al Qaeda does not.
7:17 pm
mklutra,
Really the USSR was as fanatical as AQ? I guess that is why we had all out nuclear war. I must have slept through it right? Your argument is why the left is not considered serious about national security the proof is in your and your leaders words, you accuse the Republicans of using the war on terror as a political ploy yet your side is the one doing it over and over again. You can bury your head in the sand or keep it firmly shoved up your butt all you want, the adults in the world will go on seeing the threat from islamic fundamentalists as the greatest threat we have ever faced and deal with it accordingly. Do you seriously think AQ or the their affiliates will not use WMD if they get their hands on them?
8:15 pm
The current threat from jihad is far more dangerous than the USSR, not less.
The USSR presented us with an obvious, easily identifiable enemy, who, though they used unconventional means at times, was a conventionally based nation-state which had limits on its behavior. Not from moral considerations, but from self-interest; the USSR wanted to continue its existence.
Our current theat comes from a resugent fascism that has thrown off some of the key weaknesses that were important in the defeat of fascism 60 years ago. It is no longer rigidly tied to nation-states in the same way. Now, the ideology is only loosely tied to some states. This makes it more flexible, and harder to engage by the conventional means which have been our cultural preference and strong suit. Worse yet, is the effect in non-material terms – it makes it much harder to convince people that we are indeed in a war at all, let alone one for our survival (though the other side has repeatedly told us so for at least 25 years), and therefore more difficult to focus and maintain the determination of the people without which democratic societies cannot fight.
The current crop of jihadis dispalys all the key traits that have been common to fascism wherever it has appeared under any name, and a degree of fanaticism that is uncommon. The limits of self-interest that limited the actions of the USSR are simply not relevent when dealing with people who actively seek their own destuction as the shortest path tto their ultimate goal.
10:56 pm
The average man in the street mattered then as he does now because the average man in the street voted then, as he does now, for those who formulate national security policy. If Americans believed that AQ was a non-threat, Bush couldn’t do jack. No American is going to agree to sacrifice liberties for a non-threat. And Bush wouldn’t be trying to do it if he didn’t believe he could get political support.
Quit analyzing a political issue in a political vacuum.
The other point is this: You didn’t live thru the same Cold War I did. I remember nuclear holocaust as a real possibility. I don’t remember Reagan, for instance, ever telling me that the Russians will never send the nukes and that I had nothing to worry about. Do you? Do you remember “The Day After”? I remember watching it thinking not only that it could happen, but it would be worse if it did. And why have those “duck and cover” exercises, and do all the other things people did then to prepare for a nuclear war if MAD made it impossible.
Stop re-writing history to satisfy your current polticial needs. Thank you.
11:45 pm
The average man in the street mattered then as he does now because the average man in the street voted then, as he does now, for those who formulate national security policy.
What are you stupid or something? Since when did the man on the street in the USSR get a vote? You may think it is a political issue put then you are wrong it is a survival issue idiot. You really do believe AQ and islamic fundimentalism is not a threat. Well thanks for playing further posts from you can be ignored since you are obviously insane certifiably so. BEGONE NUTJOB TROLL
12:17 am
Interesting analysis
Are you a news Junkie ?
2:08 am
Joseph J. Ellis
exaggerated his involvement in the Vietnam War…
That is the official MSM version of Joey’s Military Service.
The truth is: Joey Lied about his Military Service. In how many other ways has Joey slanted, embellished the truth? Does Joey know what the truth is?
Massachusetts has lots of famous people who lie about their Military service(“Can we say traitorous Liar John Kerry”).
Joey teaches at an all girls school in the peoples republic of Massachusetts.
GI-JOE teaches little girls, GI-JOE Lies to Little Girls …So they will think think he is a big wise Macho Man. GI-JOE lies to the American public so they will think he is a big wise MACHO caring MAN. He is just a lying MAN.
10:42 am
Joe Ellis is an engaging writer, a partisan political hack and an historian of marginal abilities.
Nonetheless, he will be quoted repeatedly from this New York Times essay and his detractors will trot out the series of lies of Ellis that stirred up about 4-5 years ago. In a few words, Joe Ellis destroyed his own credibility years ago.
The notion that a large number of jihadis are planning to destroy the country and their use of terrorist tactics make us vulnerable places 9/11 as high or higher on the list than the Cold War. And to answer mklutra both here and in his other posts on this, NO, we in the USA did not consider the Russians (or Soviets, if you prefer) as the same kind of mad men that the jihadis claim to be. So the Cold War was no more frightening than this new threat.
4:19 pm
The notion that it’s too early to treat 9/11 as “history” is, perhaps, true, but that does not mean we just wait for its historical signficance to be determined by some analyst in the future. The record we create now will add to and help determine the accuracy of that future analysis. God help us all if we had to rely on just the NY Times for that record.
I think, though, that the significance of 9/11 will not be by way of any comparison to Pearl Harbor or of the war on terror to World War II. Instead, I think the significance will be that the erosion of the power of the executive branch of government, begun by Watergate, will have finally reversed. We finally have a president who, after being confronted by a congressional desire to control the president through an act of congress (FISA) simply said, “No.” I don’t think this would have been possible in a pre-9/11 world.
8:02 pm
What Ellis seems to have missed in his ranking is blackmail potential of unassimilated Muslim populations in allied countries and of radical groups in moderate Muslim countries. One only needs to look at the Danish cartoon reaction. My reaction to 9/11 was “I hope we get this right, because if we don’t, no one else will be able to resist.” I’ve lived in Europe for a long time, and I know how utopian and naive the people can be.
Ellis seems to be analysing from an island. He doesn’t seem aware that European Muslims now get their news via satellite dish and are being subjected to truly obnoxious propaganda that can set off protests in a moment. He also seems oblivious to the effects of terrorist attacks on the global economy.
3:39 am
Submitted for Your Approval
First off… any spambots reading this should immediately go here, here, here, and here. Die spambots, die! And now… here are all the links submitted by members of the Watcher’s Council for this week’s vote. Council li…
6:58 pm
Ellis’s problem isn’t lack of enough time to allow a historian to gain perspective. It’s innumeracy. The attack on September 11, 2001 has cost the United States economy two TRILLION dollars over a five year period. Our economy is growing but it’s not growing fast enough to absorb repeated attacks of that scale. How would we deal with the impact of an attack an order of magnitude larger? And what, short of a mobilization that approximates war, can prevent the re-occurrence of such an attack in the near term?
And, then, there’s also a lack of perception of the total scope of the attack from a world perspective. The attack destroyed (or revealed to have been destroyed) a post-Westphalian world order that had been in place for nearly 400 years. We’re still struggling to get our minds around that idea.
4:23 am
The Council Has Spoken!
First off… any spambots reading this should immediately go here, here, here, and here. Die spambots, die! And now… the winning entries in the Watcher’s Council vote for this week are Our Liberties Are Our Liberties, E…