America changed in a day

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Washington Examiner:

Dec. 7, 1941. Nov. 22, 1963. Sept. 11, 2001. All of us old enough to remember know exactly where we were and what we were doing when we first heard the awful news. We remember the stunning feeling that suddenly everything had changed, that nothing would be the same. We remember feeling that unknown horrors lay ahead.

Ten years after Pearl Harbor, the United States was mired in a stalemated war in Korea. But the nation had won a great victory in World War II, embarked on a generation of postwar prosperity, and confronted the Soviet Union in a Cold War that would take four decades to win.

Ten years after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the United States went through a wrenching debate on the war in Vietnam and had a president mired in the scandal known as Watergate. But the nation had also passed landmark civil rights legislation, embarked on a war against poverty and landed the first men on the moon.

Ten years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the changes are less dramatic and less resolved, but they touch Americans every day. Airport pat-downs, barricades outside government offices, identification checks at private buildings, searches at sports stadiums, armed security officers at public events, long motorcades with Secret Service SUVs and police outriders -- all these are the legacy of 9/11.

On Sept. 10, 2001, America was on a decadelong holiday from history. We were, as Bill Clinton's Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said, "the indispensable nation," seemingly without any serious enemies. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the demise of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991 signaled with more clarity than is usual in history the end of the Cold War. We had mostly harmonious relations with Russia and our economy was increasingly intertwined with China's.

It was a decade with fewer military conflicts and deaths than any for more than a century. And where America did intervene militarily, in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, it did so without committing appreciable numbers of ground troops or incurring significant numbers of casualties.

Even more important, as Francis Fukuyama argued in his 1992 book "The End of History," there seemed to be no system of governance competitive with liberal democracies and market capitalism. Nazism was long gone, Marxism was dead, and democracy was making vast gains in large parts of the world.

Sept. 11 ended this holiday from history. It became clear even before the Twin Towers fell that we had enemies determined to inflict enormous damage on our society. Al Qaeda and other Islamist extremists had the means to do so because of the proliferation of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons -- weapons of mass destruction -- which were being developed by regimes like Iran and North Korea.

The course of national policy and the sense Americans have of their place in the world, both transformed in response to Sept. 11, have remained largely in place, despite bitter partisan debate and sharp electoral swerves -- toward Democrats in 2006 and 2008, toward Republicans in 2010. Amid all the alarms and diversions, there has been a surprising degree of continuity in public opinion and public policy.

In the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, polls showed that most Americans believed that another terrorist attack was very or somewhat likely. They have continued to believe that over most of the past decade, and that fear has if anything strengthened during the past two years.

At the same time, the fears that Americans would retaliate violently against Muslims (or those perceived to be Muslims) at home have turned out to be unfounded. Americans have been able to appreciate that, even though most recent terrorists have been Muslim extremists, the large majority of Muslims are not terrorists and the large majority of Muslims in this country are not sympathetic with terrorists' methods and aims. Violence against Muslims or those perceived to be Muslims has been exceedingly rare.

Aside from a few disputes about the location of mosques, there has been no move to suppress Muslim culture as there was to eradicate German culture during World War I. Nor has the government imposed anything like the internment of Japanese-Americans ordered by Franklin Roosevelt during World War II. There has been no evidence that either the Bush or Obama administrations have used tools of surveillance to spy on political opponents or for political advantage.

Indeed government has leaned in the other direction. Airport security treats grandmothers from North Dakota the same as Muslims toting Korans. Passengers of all faiths and ethnicities are required to take off their shoes and place their liquids in clear plastic bags. Americans have been willing to endure seemingly pointless security measures with nothing more than a few murmurs of complaints.

Despite such irritations Americans, as during the four decades of the Cold War, have proved able to persevere in their daily lives and work, without undue psychological distress from a threat that seems likely to continue indefinitely. This is not unprecedented: When John Kennedy said we were facing "a long twilight struggle," he was speaking nearer the beginning than the end of the Cold War. While recognizing that luck has been a factor, Americans give government and its leaders credit for protecting the nation. George W. Bush, even when his overall job approval slumped, was seen as doing a good job of reducing the threat from terrorism. Barack Obama, even as his job approval has sunk, continues to receive high marks for this as well.

Which is not to say that the approaches of the two administrations have been identical, or that there have not been sharp disagreements between the two political parties and harsh attacks on each president. On Sept. 10 the nation was closely divided between Republicans and Democrats, as evidenced by the excruciatingly close presidential election of 2000. Democrats, after a party switch, held a 51-49 majority in the Senate; in the House Republicans had the smallest majority of any party in nearly 50 years.

A spirit of national unity, symbolized by lawmakers singing God Bless America on the steps of the Capitol on September 11 and George W. Bush's rousing speech to Congress, lifted the country's spirits in the immediate wake of the attacks. By a near-unanimous vote, Congress authorized military action in Afghanistan.