Disoriented

by Cliff May
National Review Online
September 8, 2011

https://www.legal-project.org/1647/disoriented

Excerpt:

What went wrong?" That was the title of Bernard Lewis's landmark book on Islam's thousand years of global dominance followed by the decline of the caliphate between the 17th century, when Muslim armies were halted at the Gates of Vienna, and the early 20th century, when the Ottoman Empire collapsed. This fall from grace left deep scars — grievances expressed most lethally on Sept. 11, 2001, soon after Professor Lewis's book was completed.

Ten years later, the question we might be asking is "What has gone wrong with us?" The atrocities of 9/11 were said to be a new Pearl Harbor that would once again "awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."

Instead, many, if not most, of our political leaders fight fitfully and without conviction, uncertain about both the nature and the gravity of the threat. One example: Lady Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former head of MI5, Britain's storied intelligence service, last week called the 9/11 attacks "a crime, not an act of war." She did not explain why she thought using hijacked planes as missiles to destroy the political, military, and financial centers of the free world was akin to a bank robbery. She did not cite other instances in which common criminals seek no monetary benefit, kill themselves during the commission of their crimes, and call that "martyrdom." She did not say whether she thought Osama bin Laden, as a criminal suspect, should have been entitled to a presumption of innocence rather than bullets through the chest and head.

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