Anyone who was an adult 25 years ago can remember where they were when they heard news that Muslim terrorists had flown two passenger planes into the World Trade Center.
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terrorists → remember → Center
It was one of those cataclysmic events that marks one’s mind indelibly and creates a permanent refraction, from before to after, like B.C. and A.D., or before COVID and after COVID.
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that → mark → COVID
I was driving to work in Toronto that morning, listening to a news show hosted by a Vietnam War draft dodger who had fled America when his country needed him and had, in the decades since, achieved a degree of media stardom in Canada.
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country → drive → Canada
If I recall correctly, he speculated, reasonably enough in those earliest seconds of the all-consuming news cycle, that a small plane carrying tourists to see the skyscrapers close up had met with disaster.
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skyscrapers → recall → disaster
Shortly after I reached the office, the second plane hit.
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plane → reach → office
Reporters and editors who had been watching on TV as the first tower belched smoke into the blue sky, gasped in shock and horror when the second plane flashed across the screen and exploded in a ball of flame before a live worldwide audience.
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plane → watch → audience
Global revulsion at the attack was instantaneous, and there was an emotional understanding among people everywhere, particularly in the West, that this was an act of war against our civilization.
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this → be → civilization
Yes, there was Article 5 of the NATO agreement, which states that an attack on one member will be treated as an attack on all members.
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attack → be → members
Foreign leaders and pundits declared, “We are all Americans.”
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We → declare → ?
Some dissenting voices took the side of our enemies, and there were one or two utterly cynical responses, such as that of a British civil servant who advised colleagues to release any bad news while the world was distracted by the enormity perpetrated by Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.
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world → dissent → Laden
Mostly, however, and overwhelmingly, there was a sense of reeling disbelief combined with genuine sympathy for America, and a nearly universal understanding that a great evil was abroad in the world.
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evil → be → world
Like so many others, I lost a friend murdered that day; she was on the plane that the hijackers smashed into the Pentagon.
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hijackers → lose → Pentagon
Men and women stopped what they were doing, collected their children early from school, and rearranged their lives long term.
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they → stop → lives
Men and women quit their jobs to do whatever they could to help.
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they → quit → whatever
Young men abandoned their careers to join the armed forces, stand with their country, and go to war with the newly declared and terrible enemy.
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men → abandon → enemy
President George W. Bush stirred and emboldened the nation when he stood on the apocalyptic rubble of southern Manhattan and told workers doing the grim work of retrieving bodies, “I can hear you. …
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I → stir → you
The rest of the world hears you … and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.”
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who → hear → us
It was a rallying cry for just retribution and seemed also to contain a new clear-sightedness.
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It → seem → sightedness
In the aftermath of the attack, watching the national and international reaction, I wrote that the passion released on 9/11 might bring epochal change and initiate a new age of revived American patriotism, a restoration of understanding in the West that some cultures are better than others, and ours is worth fighting for.
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ours → watch → others
I expressed hope and some confidence that, galvanized by the atrocity just visited upon it, our society would get up off its knees, end its cultural cringe, and finally see that tolerance of cultural difference should not be allowed to slump into self-abasement and retreat.
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tolerance → express → abasement
The resurgence of patriotism did not last.
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resurgence → last → patriotism
Bush himself stressed that the murder of 3,000 people should not taint America’s view of Muslims.
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murder → stress → Muslims
As we went to war in Afghanistan, the Left found its voice and, furrowing its brow, suggested that the most important thing was to avoid “Islamophobia.”
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thing → go → Islamophobia
Its adherents recovered their composure after the patriotic setback and started wearing badges declaring, “War is not the answer.”
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War → recover → badges
(That depends on the question.
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That → depend → question
If it is “how can we make sure America defeats its foes?” then war may be very much the answer).
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war → make → foes
As our armed forces went into action on foreign battlefields, skeptics and naysayers lectured us on the home front that we must not act or think ill of Islam.
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we → go → Islam
“Islamophobia” was then, and today remains, a lie.
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Islamophobia → remain → ?
It is a term intended to denigrate as bigots those who rationally dislike Muslim culture, values, and deadly aggression.
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who → intend → culture
It attempts to reframe a reasonable antipathy as gut prejudice that should be shunned by civilized people.
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that → attempt → people
Thus began a process, still with us today, by which America’s enemies, foreign and domestic, seek to shut down discussion of the obvious problems that Islam poses to the way of life and security of the West.
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Islam → begin → West
Some months after 9/11, my newspaper was approached by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which was unhappy with what we’d write about Islam’s incompatibility with the preservation of the West as we know it.
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we → approach → it
The organization did not like our advocacy of military action against jihadis.
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organization → like → jihadis
It objected to our labeling the killers and devotees of their creed as “Islamofascists.”
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our → object → Islamofascists
Just this month, prosecutor Lara Burns testified to Congress about evidence from a 1993 wiretap in which members of the Palestine Committee, a body which, naturally, was established by the United Nations, discussed their Islamist conspiracy against the West.
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which → testify → West
Burns said it “included supporting Hamas abroad and infiltrating universities, media, and politics here in the U.S. … to begin normalizing Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood extremist ideology in American society.
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it → say → society
They stated, ‘War is deception’ when plotting to lie to Americans.
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War → state → Americans
They also noted their intent to cleanse the curriculum in K-12 schools because ‘we don’t want our children growing up surrendering to the idea of peace with Jews.’ …
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children → note → Jews
They agreed to continue to pursue their agenda by cloaking themselves under the cover of legitimacy. …
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They → agree → legitimacy
It was out of this conspiratorial meeting that CAIR was created to protect the other elements of the Hamas support network.”
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CAIR → create → network
…and 55 more, not listed.
