A war of choice

The date the United States began its counteroffensive against terror was Sept. 11, 2001. That was the day an ad hoc squad of citizen soldiers aboard Flight 93 rose to thwart terrorists. It seems fitting, even necessary, for me to make a few swift points about those who have drawn the wrong lessons from that day, if I may.\nFor instance, in the days that followed, Noam Chomsky graciously admitted that "nothing can justify crimes such as those of Sept. 11. But," Chomsky continued, "we can think of the U.S. as an 'innocent victim' only if we adopt the convenient path of ignoring the record of its actions ... " \nRead: Nothing can justify the explosion of commercial airliners into civilian targets except U.S. foreign policy. Chomsky is accompanied by many others in regarding this as a display of righteous outrage. The most prominent of whom, I suppose, is Osama bin Laden. \nThe notion that the global system itself provoked illiberal brigands to bring it down used to be commonplace (and commonsense) among Americans. But if it remains commonsensical, it is no longer commonplace. Instead of regarding Islamic fanatics as killers who blend fascist, Bolshevist and Wahhabi ideology in their quest to reorder the world along anti-capitalist and anti-pluralist lines, many prefer to think they have justifiable "grievances." What folly.\nThey are aggrieved by democracy, pluralism and unveiled women. Who will say these "root causes" are worth our consideration, much less our acquiescence? Even if some would, they shouldn't believe -- or pretend -- that it is a solid strategic argument. The bin Ladenists have been quite clear they will not cease wreaking havoc. This simple point was made, you may remember, four years ago this Sunday. \nIraq was always central to this larger war because, by sticking it out there, America might bring something of an "autumn of the autocrats," to borrow Fouad Ajami's expression. This was critical because it was political tyranny, more than anything else, which gave force to jihad-oriented terrorists. \nI readily concede the Iraq war was elective. The Bush administration appreciated that momentum could be rapidly lost through an accumulation of challenges presented and left unmet. Iraq presented a paramount, and unpostponable, challenge. Many might quarrel with this assessment now, but the time to protest would have been in 1998, when the Iraqi Liberation Act was signed by Bill Clinton and passed by the U.S. Senate without a single dissenting vote, making regime change in Baghdad the law of the land -- not when President Bush sought to implement this, and refreshingly, at a time of our choosing. \nThis is the lasting lesson of Sept. 11. It had long been the case that America needed to mount a serious counterassault against theocratic barbarism, but that only became apparent on the day smoke rose in Manhattan. Since then, many have inquired why Bush initiated a "war of choice" against Arab radicalism in its homeland. Perhaps the answer to that is because they initiated a "war of choice" in ours.