Eight years after the Islamic terrorist attacks of 9/11, it appears that America has largely drifted back into complacency. Certainly, many Americans still understand that the threat of repeated attacks remains real, but the sense of urgency has faded with time.
Meanwhile, the country’s current leadership and its supporters are inhabiting the willful blindness of a pre-9/11 mindset, if not acting as apologists for and, in some cases, active supporters of America’s enemies.
Misconceptions that began with the Bush administration continue unabated. There is an inability to grasp that, to quote Robert Spencer, the “stealth jihad,” being visited by Islamists upon our educational, cultural, and governmental institutions is the greatest threat to Western civilization. The self-censorship of political correctness, the moral vacuity of multiculturalism, the surrender of creeping dhimmitude, and the corruption of Arab dollars and influence continue to ensure that we are not actively engaged in the ideological battlefield.
As someone who was galvanized into a political awakening and eventual transformation by 9/11, it has been disheartening to see the country slide back into somnolence. Indeed, I have wondered at times whether we have entered a post-post-9/11 age. I believe the memory still lingers in our collective consciousness, but it has retreated to the farther reaches.
When one looks at history, this depressing pattern emerges time and time again. One has to wonder if human beings generally don’t learn from history, but rather, are doomed to make the same mistakes over and over again. Jolted out of slumber every so often by horrific events, we then sink back into oblivion once the threat no longer seems urgent. A few will always stand on the sidelines trying to bring attention to the looming threat of the day, but by and large, we only listen when forced.
Nonetheless, the fight must go on, for the alternative is far too frightening. That’s something for all of us to remember on 9/11/09.
Cinnamon Stillwell is the West Coast Representative for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum. She can be reached at stillwell@meforum.org.
