What if 9/11 Never Happened?

A basically pointless, albeit irresistible question especially considering that it is posed to an eclectic mix of thinkers. New York Magazine takes on this rhetorical challenge by coaxing a variety of viewpoints running the gamut from Tom Wolfe to Fareed Zakaria to Al Sharpton.

There are some real stinkers:

Andrew Sullivan

And your point, caller? Gore would've prosecuted the GWOT better, the same as, worse than W.? And Andrew, puhleeze. You were banging the drum on Bin Laden, al Qaeda and "Islamofascists" prior to September 11, 2001? You were begging Bush and Gore to mix it up on this subject in their presidential debates? Are you freaking kidding me? I don't have the links, but I feel rather certain that you were mining a different vein.

"The neocons"....um would you have ever even advanced that terminology without 9/11? Britain, Russia, Germany and China all on the same side in the UNSC, with France blocking? Um, newsflash: Germany isn't on the UNSC in 2006. And when has THAT constellation ever existed? Johnny-Come-Latelys on this sort of thing embarrass themselves at every turn.

Would "Digital Brownshirts Up is Dowynnn and Dowynnnn is Uuuup" Gore EVER quote Ronald Reagan? And what's with the continual Tom DeLay references? You mean if 9/11 hadn't happened DeLay would still be central to the political discourse in this country? 300,000 troops in Afghanistan? I mean, if you don't like Iraq you sure aren't going to like an occupation of Afghanistan set upon by ISI-sponsored and nuclear-armed pincers coming in from Baluchistan and Waziristan, much less on the border of a nuclearizing Iran. Gee, containment in Iraq is slowly getting it done? An organic democracy about to blossom? If only.

I used to really see a lot of smart stuff coming out of Andrew Sullivan. Now it's just weak piffle. I'm embarrassed that I linked him so frequently in the past. I still give him credit for sussing out good sites and articles, but anymore his opinions don't seem to mesh much with reality. (Exception: the torture issue and I give him mad props for sticking it out on that front)

Tom Friedman

China. The World is Flat...now available in paperback. Here's another guy who's basically eroded in my opinion with more exposure. Unlike Sullivan he still has the occassional flicker (Syria is the game-changer in the Middle East), but I'm pretty tired of his branding campaigns disguised as thoughtful analysis. Anymore it seems to me like Friedman's learned that the path to the $bling$ is paved with clever catch-phrases and appearances on Charlie Rose and Russert.

Bernard-Henri Lévy

I'm sure it's just language issues. I know you're on the right side of this debate. But what in the hell are you talking about?

Dahlia Lithwick

Slate's Supreme Court correspondent does the Wacko Rag. Without 9/11 the cloud-talkers would reign supreme and Ashcroft would still be shredding the Constitution. It was the plan all along.

Frank Rich

Since his column is a perpetual SeethingStrawmanFest, is it surprising that Frank runs with nuggets like these?

Without 9/11 to fill the vacuum of his slacker’s presidency, we’d likely have seen a fast-tracking of the scandal foretold by the Tom DeLay K Street project and an earlier and bloodier culture war: Karl Rove could focus his undivided attention on satisfying his base’s hunger for decisive action against abortion, stem-cell research, contraception, and gay people.

Without 9/11, there would have been no rationale for ginning up hysteria about imminent mushroom clouds emanating from Baghdad and hence no way to pivot to a gratuitous war in Iraq. Besides, Bush had come to office pledged to a “humble” (i.e., minimalist Bush 41) foreign policy and opposed to nation building. Grand neocon delusions would have remained dormant as Rumsfeld instead busied himself on his grandiose schemes for remaking the Pentagon, not the Middle East.

Since the Republicans would have had no fear card to play in the 2004 election, the Democrats, having won the popular vote in 2000, would have won it again, this time benefiting from a backlash against the religious right’s overreach, even if they had neither better ideas nor candidates than the opposition. Once in office, might they too have ignored an intelligence briefing titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.”? Maybe, but once the inevitable attack came, they too would have won the war in Afghanistan—and, not being tied down in Iraq, maybe they would have made sure it stayed won rather than let the Taliban regroup in the ensuing years.

Shopworn strawmen so colorful, they almost call out to Mr. Rich to return to his previous life as a movie reviewer. I feel certain that is his real calling.

Tom Wolfe

Stunningly argues nothing would be that different without 9/11.

W-o-W.

Maybe it's time for another Acid Test.

Al Sharpton

Sharpton's predictably hypocritical dropping caused me to double over in laughter-pain when I read this:

The attack and the fear it generated led to people returning in mass to faith, depending more on religion for guidance and protection, which gave a tremendous revival to those who in my judgment misuse their religious fervor. People were searching for answers and absolutes, which gives zealots an opportunity to promise something that wasn’t there. Sometimes people can only find comfort by grabbing at something that promises stability.

A long time ago someone very wise told me that "If you spot it, you got it." Al clearly has spotted it. Now, you do the math.

Doris Kearns Goodwin

I sure like Doris and I've certainly enjoyed much of her work. But the notion that Weathervein Gore was prepared to set us free with a "Manhattan Project for alternative energy" is completely fanciful in a non-9/11 world. Earth in the Balance spoke of the end of the internal combustion engine. But Gore never mentioned that on the campaign trail and its unlikely he would fritter away political capital on it unless he needed to.

But I'll cut her some slack. She's a historian, not a futurist.

Douglas Brinkley

Makes the list just on the general principle of throwing out "Marshall Plan" language. What problem can't be solved with a Marshall Plan?


But amidst the many stinkers, one can certainly enjoy the bloom of a few roses. And this issue of New York Magazine does come through with a couple of American Beauties:

Fareed Zakaria

While he musingly suggests we'd be more focused on Chandra Levy and Bush's faith-based domesic agenda, he closes with a truism that the conspiracy theorists and many of the Democrats ought to face up to:

History would have been delayed, not denied.

Ron Suskind

Suskind brings the pervasive and empowering nature of globalization (which itself is a metaphor for hypetext terrorism) home with some insightful metaphors:

In the eyes of the violent jihadist community, maybe 9/11 is akin to the U.S. hockey team winning the ’80 Olympics: “Oh, my goodness! I can’t believe how many breaks we got to have a moment like this!” Or, maybe, it’s like the early days of Microsoft—a few people with a powerful, disruptive idea. Bin Laden is as much an ideology as an individual at this point.

Dalton Conley

NYU's Sociology Chair inadvertently raises the point that America is a photo-negative in the wake of 9/11. New York was hit that crisp fall day, but the rest of the country has borne a larger proportion of the psychic cost in the aftermath of the attacks.

Five years later, I think New York is perhaps the least-affected place in the country. And that’s simply because the wheel that 9/11 set in motion has led to two wars and the largest deployment of military reserve forces in recent history. This means that places like Scranton, Pennsylvania, or Mobile, Alabama, have had their daily rhythms and lives continuously uprooted, and New York, and Manhattan in particular, with perhaps the lowest percentage of reservists of any area in the country, has not really felt the impact of Afghanistan and Iraq as much as Peoria, Illinois.

Thus, one must question the "conventional wisdom" regularly spun out of blue state, anti-war, "we support the troops," anti-Bush New York in comparison with those who seem to be shouldering much more of the burden. In what way...at all...is New York representative of this nation's thinking and values? As a former New Yorker, I can attest to a deep schism between coastal and flyover mentalities. Which is more right? I don't know. But among those bearing the most burden, there is considerably more commitment. But then again, is that really surprising? If they're shouldering the burden, wouldn't they be the ones with the most skin in the game, so to speak?

Hank Sheinkopf

The political consultant makes a grandiose statement that cannot be documented on the scale that he suggests. But on a personal level, I feel it to be true:

We didn’t really grasp the significance of this place, that it was more than just a financial combine. New York became a human place for people. We didn’t realize who we were before: We are the center of the world. And I don’t think we ever really understood what that meant before that day.

After having lived in New York for three years, 9/11 made me feel like a New Yorker for the first time. Since that day, I have always felt like a New Yorker and I will retain that ownership for the rest of my life. In part, due to 9/11 and in part due to it having just been New York, I will always feel a kinship and connectedness with the rest of the world. That may be hard for someone who has never lived there to understand, but it is a vibrant and visceral notion to me.

Dan Doctoroff

New York's deputy mayor of economic development and rebuilding correctly points out that 9/11 has fundamentally changed the rules of the game in the city. Long-term, New York will be better and more beautiful:

Many of the big projects that are under way today would not be where they are had it not been for 9/11. The transformation of lower Manhattan, the expansion the West Side, the extension of the 7 line, the Atlantic Yards, the list goes on and on.

But I save the best for last.

When I read this piece from Leon Wieseltier yesterday afternoon I was struck by its completeness and resonance. It seemed to fully capture the dynamics and realities of 9/11 in a way that the other submissions failed to.

It addressed America's delusional preoccupations and the inevitability of our fate.

America would have enjoyed the luxury of some more time in the post–Cold War, inward-looking, money-mad bliss. History had ended, remember? But the bliss would have, in any event, been short-lived. Because if 9/11 had not happened, then 9/12 would have happened, or 9/13 or 9/14.

It addressed America's own shock and awe. (Is 9/11 from whence Rumsfeld derived the term? After all, that bastard was pulling bodies out of the flames that day. He had firsthand knowledge that few of us will thankfully ever have.)

The turbulence in the Islamic world; the fear of modernity and its great representative, the United States; the hatred of Israel—these were all waiting to explode. (So was the North Korean nuclear gambit and the Iranian nuclear gambit: The world was, even then, a much more perilous place than many Americans, and many American policymakers, had wanted to know.)

Wiestelier nudges at a hint of an acorn of a thought I have long possessed: No matter WHO was President on 9/11 or since, we'd likely still be enduring many of the same foreign policy and security / civil rights debates.

I imagine that it must have been excruciating to be the president of the United States on 9/11, and I understand his subsequent virulence toward the enemies of the United States, but Bush became another victim, the most distinguished and powerful victim, of the instability of thought that 9/11 unleashed in this country.

Does he say that in so many words? No, not really. But think it through. If Al Gore had been President, can one say that his sense of patriotism and obligation to American ideals and the American people wouldn't have risen to the occasion in some sense? If there is a failure or neurosis in the post-9/11 world it is of the mass variety. This society has gone through its grieving. It's gone through its anger. And now what? What is the right course of action? Reasonable arguments on both sides. But what do we find? Wiestelier describes in the most cogent language I've read to date on the subject what is the essential reality of today's American political discourse:

Since 9/11, the discussion of urgent national questions has been dangerously volatile: In Washington, there is almost no point in beginning a political conversation anymore, since you immediately discover that you are speaking either to a Shark or a Jet.

Indeed. It would be Sharks and Jets or Jets and Sharks. NSA "wiretapping" would have been a Gore-ian brainchild had it not been the providence of the Bush Administration's reign. At the margins, surely there would have been differences. But I am hard-pressed to imagine a radically different situation. Even with regard to Iraq. So in my opinion, under Gore, Bush or Kerry, it wouldn't matter.

We can't debate the really meaningful issues of the day because it might lead to conflict or bad feelings. And as a consequence we're still ignoring the essential and pertinent questions such as "What ought to be America's Role in the World?" to debate Swiftboats and Vietnam, enjoy American Idol and Jessica Simpson, lambast Mel Gibson and Israel in the same breath, and commiserate over gas prices and rising interest rates. We're so addicted to the personalities (and the Jets / Sharks shiny satin jackets) that we can't focus on the debates that matter. I noticed in 2003 that it became impossible to really discuss political issues unless with someone of your own orientation. What the hell is that about? Is it just too painful for us?

I'd argue that in a polarized democracy, nothing is more important than grating on your neighbor. But where is it? We're so plugged into our Blackberries and Ricky Lake that we can't possible aspire to be the Second Greatest Generation at a time when that's the least we should be aspiring to.

For as Wiestelier concludes:

And the sadder truth is that most Americans live as if 9/11 did not happen—basically, we’re all still shopping as before. And even the president wants us to stay the same. Once again, this blessed country is weirdly detached from its own historical situation.

Damn he's right.