One Year Later
With Victor Davis Hanson
Author, Historian and Journalist
Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2002; 11 a.m. ET
One year after the Sept. 11 attacks, how has the United States and the world changed? Is the war on terrorism still justified? How should America respond to international criticism from our allies in Europe and the Middle East?
Columnist, historian and author Victor Davis Hanson was online to discuss the anniversary of the attack and his new book "An Autumn of War: What America Learned from Sept. 11 and the War on Terrorism."
Hanson is a professor of classics at California State University, author, journalist, military historian and sixth-generation grape farmer from Selma, California. In June, Hanson received the Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Journalism, in part, for his biweekly column about contemporary culture and military history for National Review Online. He is the author of numerous books including "The Western Way of War," "The Soul of Battle" and "Carnage and Culture."
The transcript follows.
Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.
Collegeville, Pa.: Mr. Hanson
I have read and enjoyed your book Culture and Carnage as well as your online and inprint columns with National Review.
In Culture and Carnage that the basic underlying success of the West has been the essential notion of freedom of the individual from the Greeks up through modern times. This has given Western forces, for the most part, an advantage on the battlefield as it transform itself into innovation (in tactics, chain of command, weapon design) and a sense of purpose (free men fight by choice, not by the decree of a king or dictator). This, combined with the Western military's reliance on discipline (remaining in ranks, sustained rates of fire, etc. etc.) and the West's almost no quarter approach to combat has allowed the West, in general, to handily defeat most non-Western forces when faced in conventional battle.
The Gulf War is a good example of your theory as the untrained, poorly disciplined and unmotivated Iraqi forces capitulated quite quickly when faced with the dominating Allied air and land power.
In our current war on terrorism, in conflict that is as non-conventional as one can get, will the reasons you have given for past successes of the Western military play out as well?
Victor Davis Hanson: We have always seen that they do, whether we have Special Forces on horses or GPS bombs who can blow one house apart while missing another beside it or pilots who can take off at night and travel thousands of miles. All that flexibility and more reflect a secular and free and prosperous people at every level of command.
Arlington, Va.: Mr. Hanson,
In a post-9/11 world of apologists and hand-wringers, you have provided us a clear voice of reason. Thank you.
Every time I fill up my gas tank, I feel like I am supporting the infrastructure of terrorism. Why hasn't automobile fuel efficiency become another front in the war on terror? Are we so beholden to the Saudis and the oil companies that our leaders are afraid to take steps in this direction?
Victor Davis Hanson: I share your feeling almost exactly and I think it is time for those on the left to encourage drilling in the United States which has proven itself more ecologically responsible than the Russians who are drilling like madmen. Free market conservatives by the same token have to accept that a seven thousand pound SUV to transport someone a mile or two is not only absurd but it is against the national security issue of the United States. There is going to be a great reckoning with the Saudis as we have learned that our friends are our enemies as much as lunatic regimes in Iran and Libya that at least we can fight openly. The irony of all this is that oppressed people in Iran offer the United States more hope than an oppressive regime in Saudi Arabia simply because the former is a self created mess and the latter blames us and Israel for their misery.
Orono, Maine: In the days after last year's attacks, President Bush was adamant that the people who planned them -- the leaders of Al Qaeda -- would be brought to justice. That hasn't happened yet.
If Osama Bin Laden isn't eventually captured or killed, will the war on terror ultimately prove a failure, from a political standpoint?
Victor Davis Hanson: Well, we don't know what his fate his. He may be sick, dead or missing but by any historical standard we have to keep things in perspective. In less than two months we destroyed a medieval regime 7000 miles away in a landscape of mountains and ice that supposedly had baffled the English and Russians and almost anyone else. Now we are poised to go into Iraq where the challenge is to conquer, occupy and reform an entire society while all that murderous regime has to do is simply not loose. I think we are doing very well and we have to remember that our very startling successes have created ever rising expectations of almost instant and complete victory. I think we will find bin Laden and we will bring him to justice but if he is still alive a year later that isn't necessarily a sign of stalemate much less defeat.
Mt. Rainier, Md.: I'm glad to hear that we are supposed to have learned something from last year's attack. My own impression is that America's sense of "exceptionalism" has only been exacerbated by the terrorist attack. Instead of metaphorically joining hands with the rest of the nations who have suffered from random violence, we have behaved as though we were a special instance of unprovoked terror. Ex-mayor Giuliani is the only public figure to buck that trend, one of his very fine (if very few!) moments.
Victor Davis Hanson: Charges are American unilateralist are in vogue but it is incumbent to show precisely where American actions have been counterproductive. If we had not moved in Afghanistan Europe and the United States would be threatened today to a far greater degree. We should remember that it was the US who stopped genocide in Serbia not the Europeans. And we should remember that Libya is poised to become Chairman of the UN commission on human rights and we should ask ourselves is Panama, Grenada, Afghanistan, Serbia better or worse places after US intervention. I suppose in the final analysis I have more faith in an elected congress and president and a government subject to judicial audit than I do the utopian pretensions of an undemocratic and bureaucratic UN and EU.
Washington, D.C.: Never mind what the public learned. What has the Bush administration learned in the last year and how are they applying that to the current situation with Iraq?
Victor Davis Hanson: I think they have learned more the art of public relations and how to sell their very understandable policies to a frightened and often amoral world community. But because their instructions have largely been in the superficial arts of public relations even as their political sense has always been solid we don't have to worry too much. I would rather have an unpolished but wise government than the slick but inept administration of the past.
Catalina Island, Calif.: One generation learned of Pearl Harbor on the radio. Another generation learned of the assassination of President Kennedy on television. This generation watched the collapse of the World Trade Towers on live television. How do you think this will affect us, especially since this is the first major national diaster, indeed our greatest national disaster, that was brought right before us? Is this affecting many people far more differently than past national emergencies?
Victor Davis Hanson: I think that is an excellent point and a suggestion that it has affected us because of its intimacy right in our living rooms is correct. There is much talk that in a global age of communications we Americans have grown soft and cynical yet both our sorrow over 9/11 and our anger at the perpetrators seems to me, even after a year, to have increased rather than waned. So for all our affluence and undeniable license I think we still remain the grandchildren of Pearl Harbor and that bodes ill for our enemies.
Columbia, Md.: Do you believe that all means possible including torture should be used to extract information from high level al Qaeda members?
Victor Davis Hanson: I don't believe that we need to employ torture both on moral grounds but also on pragmatic questions of national reputation. If we begin torturing al Qaeda member s the world community will focus more on one or two American whippings than they will 3,000 that are vaporized and that is not good for us. I think torture is a bad idea always.
Washington, D.C.: Is your book non-fiction or political? Which is harder, writing the book or getting it published?
Victor Davis Hanson: The book is non-fiction and I have not written political commentary until after 9/11 so An Autumn of War is a new experience for me. I have written 12 other books but they were all concerned with ancient history, military affairs or contemporary farming.
I think the problem for authors is not so much getting published, but having books noticed by magazines, newspapers and bookstores when there are so many competing voices on television, the internet and popular culture at large. Authors face a terrible dilemma these days when for many Americans the written word is the last not the first place they go for information.
San Francisco, Calif.: What do you think Americans have learned in the past year about dangers coming from Saudi Arabia and what do you think should be done about those dangers (the financing and spreading of anti-American hatred by Saudis)?
Victor Davis Hanson: Americans are learning more about Saudi Arabia than the Saudis can imagine and all of it spells bad news about Saudi Arabia. It is undemocratic, practices a gender apartheid, intolerant of all other religions, has a medieval legal code, totally corrupt and has wasted 20 years of its oil bonanza. The only way it survives is the presence of America troops, the propaganda of its state run media that transfers hatred toward itself from its own people to Israel and the US and the power of American lobbyists, oil men and ex-diplomats. It is in short, a recipe for disaster and the quicker we distance ourselves from the regime or at least look for enlightened reformers within the royal family the better and safer w will be. It is no accident that they are more worried about a post-bellum democratic Iraq than Saddam Hussein. In the last analysis, Americans have caught on to the duplicity of subsidizing anti-Americanism on the sly while smiling to our leaders and usually when Americans finally wake up it spells bad news to our enemies and the Saudis should take that to hart because the future of American goodwill toward them is very bleak.
Victor Davis Hanson: I think one of the ironies of the past year given out freedom and affluence is the problem of our insularity and refinement. We must remember that democracy is rare in history and a powerful humane society like the United States is rarer still. WE should expect envy, jealously and hatred from those less successful and rather than asking why they hate us for what we have done we should assume they hate us for who we are. That does not mean that we have to be arrogant or chauvinistic but it doesn't mean that we have to be apologetic either. For all the criticisms of the United States the last year it is hard to find a single instance where the United States showed itself either weak or amoral -- something that was not true of either our enemies or our allies.
washingtonpost.com:
That wraps up today's show. Thanks to everyone who joined the discussion.
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