If you attack us, we will destroy you. That’s the message the United States sent to the world after the 9/11 attacks. The response to 9/11 wasn’t perfect—but it was necessary, and it was good.
Our society isn’t militaristic; we value peace. Unfortunately, we often choose to forget history and hope that through appeasement and noninvolvement, conflicts will disappear magically. They won’t. Despite the War on Terror’s unpopularity, it’s an indisputable fact that there hasn’t been one successful terrorist attack on U.S. soil in eleven years. And that’s because of what our military sacrificed.
Our armed forces are the best in the world. But the military was never intended to transform the culture of a radical society seeking to destroy other civilizations. The military exists to destroy with brutal efficacy those who would do us harm. As Navy SEAL and author Marcus Luttrell said, “You guys in the political round, you talk about it. Figure it out. Make sure you do everything you can do before you send me over there. Because once you do send me over there and you take the leash off me, I am going to create so much hell and do everything to annihilate whatever is in front of me that they will never attack this place again. That’s how we do business.”
The political realm figured it out. And now’s not the time to criticize the way the military does business. We are dealing with individuals so diametrically opposed to our existence they would rather die than see our culture survive. This leaves no room for diplomacy. An attack on 3,000 civilians nullifies the traditional rules of engagement. So were we right to “light up their world like the Fourth of July?” (Thanks Toby Keith). Yes, even if it didn’t meet our every expectation.
We hoped for too much in Iraq. Since the Marshall Plan following World War II, our foreign policy makers have adopted the idea that by exporting our freedom to the world we may become friends with our former enemies. This “nation-building” hasn’t worked. These regimes have never supported our efforts to defend ourselves from the radical individuals among them; why should they accept the hand of friendship we have offered? They don’t care. We are culturally incompatible.
Of course a precise engagement against specific individuals would have been preferable to a 10-year occupation. But limited responses are only an option when the societies support our efforts. We are locked in a cultural war with immeasurable costs and consequences. Our response was a commendable effort to create peace in a society without a foundation for it. It dissuaded other regimes from supporting terrorist groups. The military protected the United States of America from another attack on innocent civilians. That alone renders the response an overwhelming success.
