Steyn: America

I don’t have much to say about Stu Bykofsky’s Philadelphia Daily News column that “To Save America, We Need Another 9/11”, except to say that I’m astonished that Bykofsky’s still writing–he’s been in Philly newspapers probably since William Penn founded the city in 1681.

But Mark Steyn writes that he gets “a ton of mail every week along Bykofsky lines: ‘Oh, this country won’t get serious until there’s another attack.’ Sorry, but don’t look to a big smoking crater in Buffalo to save us”:

For a start, the author overstates the immediate unity post-9/11. Even then, there was a big difference between the “righteous rage” crowd and those who wanted to wallow in bathetic weepy let’s-hold-hands-and-drone-“Imagine” candlelight vigils and retreat into antiquated tropes about “root causes” like global poverty (notwithstanding the middle-class backgrounds of Mohammed Atta and co). The second time round, there won’t even be a momentary veneer of unity. The angry left will be demanding by lunchtime “What did Bush know and when did he know it?” and citing eminent scientists such as Professor Rosie O’Donnell to demonstrate that it couldn’t possibly have been anything but an inside job. The less angry left will demand not a punitive military response but a 12-month blue-ribbon commission co-chaired by Lee Hamilton to call witnesses and investigate where the Administration went wrong. Less motivated types will be convinced – like British public opinion after the Glasgow attack and the sailor kidnappings – that it’s blowback for Iraq. And a big chunk of the rest may even plump for the Spanish option post-Madrid: Oh, dear, we seem to have caught your eye. What would it take for that not to happen again?

The split in this country is real. The so-called “singular purpose” of Fall 2001 was mostly illusory. Lightning won’t strike twice, even if the Halliburton Tsunami-Hurricane Machine wants it to.

You can see much of that if you go back to the news stories and op-eds that early bloggers were Fisking. The lefty opinions and Vietnam-era clich