I still remember myself. Never seen my mother so scared before nor since, and we weren't even New Yorkers, nor did we have family there. It had been such a beautiful late-summer Tuesday, too.
We've already paid too steep a price via our deliberate campaign of forgetting. If we had been more courageous in our convictions, we would never have handed the keys to the kingdom to the likes of Khan and Mamdani. All our magnamity against racism towards non-European Caucasians, in worry over an anti-Muslim backlash, wasn't returned in the slightest. Their hatred and chauvinism against the Free World is far worse today than it was twenty-five years ago. The hatred of the children of immigrants of the former colonial subjects is too worse than the hatred of their parents.
Unless their hopes of returning the favor of conquest for Euro-American colonialism are crushed utterly, and the perpetrators of crimes against us are reliably destroyed, we will never see the end of this menace. We have to believe in ourselves enough to keep fighting for as long as they continue to behave as momentarily-embarrassed conquerors, and as well stomp out the traitors in our own lands too. The battle is still on, and we should not think ourselves lucky enough that we'll live to see the end of it.
I often find myself thinking that the U.S.A. failed to finish the job of clearing up the mess left by the Cold War. How would life have changed if the tanks had continued rolling to Baghdad in 1991? Would there have been as much of an issue with Islamic terrorism had the US tried to destroy the Iranian regime in the 90's at a point when Russia was relatively weak and China was relatively economically backwards? If either of these things had been done, would the attacks have taken place? If either of these things been done, how would the Middle East look today?
All in the realm of counterfactual, officially the ground a historian dare not tread ... but I can't help thinking everything would have been improved by taking that open road to Baghdad the first time around.
Apart from the humanitarian aspect of calling up rebellions we then left to their fate, it would have prevented the savage suppression of the Shi'i revolt that inflicted such a grave sectarian wound on the country, opening space for Iran, and it would have removed Saddam before the long immiseration of the Iraqi people under the sanctions that hastened the turn to the faith, would have avoided the restructuring of society to empower imams, and would have prevented the creation of the powerful Salafi infrastructure, both in its tolerated dimension and the underground militant scene, that produced so many of the Islamic State's most celebrated figures.
Can be added: eliminating Saddam would have avoided the need to keep American troops in the Islamic Holy Land of Arabia to contain him, a provocation with resonance far beyond the Bin Ladenist circles.
Obviously making regime change the policy vis-à-vis the Islamic Revolution should have been done a long time ago ... As you say, so many what-ifs.
I still remember myself. Never seen my mother so scared before nor since, and we weren't even New Yorkers, nor did we have family there. It had been such a beautiful late-summer Tuesday, too.
We've already paid too steep a price via our deliberate campaign of forgetting. If we had been more courageous in our convictions, we would never have handed the keys to the kingdom to the likes of Khan and Mamdani. All our magnamity against racism towards non-European Caucasians, in worry over an anti-Muslim backlash, wasn't returned in the slightest. Their hatred and chauvinism against the Free World is far worse today than it was twenty-five years ago. The hatred of the children of immigrants of the former colonial subjects is too worse than the hatred of their parents.
Unless their hopes of returning the favor of conquest for Euro-American colonialism are crushed utterly, and the perpetrators of crimes against us are reliably destroyed, we will never see the end of this menace. We have to believe in ourselves enough to keep fighting for as long as they continue to behave as momentarily-embarrassed conquerors, and as well stomp out the traitors in our own lands too. The battle is still on, and we should not think ourselves lucky enough that we'll live to see the end of it.
I often find myself thinking that the U.S.A. failed to finish the job of clearing up the mess left by the Cold War. How would life have changed if the tanks had continued rolling to Baghdad in 1991? Would there have been as much of an issue with Islamic terrorism had the US tried to destroy the Iranian regime in the 90's at a point when Russia was relatively weak and China was relatively economically backwards? If either of these things had been done, would the attacks have taken place? If either of these things been done, how would the Middle East look today?
All in the realm of counterfactual, officially the ground a historian dare not tread ... but I can't help thinking everything would have been improved by taking that open road to Baghdad the first time around.
Apart from the humanitarian aspect of calling up rebellions we then left to their fate, it would have prevented the savage suppression of the Shi'i revolt that inflicted such a grave sectarian wound on the country, opening space for Iran, and it would have removed Saddam before the long immiseration of the Iraqi people under the sanctions that hastened the turn to the faith, would have avoided the restructuring of society to empower imams, and would have prevented the creation of the powerful Salafi infrastructure, both in its tolerated dimension and the underground militant scene, that produced so many of the Islamic State's most celebrated figures.
Can be added: eliminating Saddam would have avoided the need to keep American troops in the Islamic Holy Land of Arabia to contain him, a provocation with resonance far beyond the Bin Ladenist circles.
Obviously making regime change the policy vis-à-vis the Islamic Revolution should have been done a long time ago ... As you say, so many what-ifs.