The Surprising 9/11 Response

If the planners of the 9/11 attacks really expected no immediate and deadly response, from Bush or any American president, they were a lot dumber than their planning indicated.

The source for this assertion is the man called the mastermind of the attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, through a book by James E. Mitchell. Rather than taking this at face value, it may be worth considering the advantages that both men have in proposing an alternative narrative at this time. Revealing that Khalid Mohammed talked to him about what went wrong makes Mitchell seem like a hero. Calling Bush's response effective encourages a Republican government to repeat the mistakes made then.

The 9/11 attacks were planned to destroy the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and the U.S. Capitol, using 4 airplanes with more innocent civilians aboard. The Towers alone could have meant the death of ten thousand people, and I recall estimates of up to fifty thousand on that day. It was fortunate, as far as it goes, that total casualties were only three thousand, with one of the terrorist cells unable to complete its mission. The 9/11 attacks were the deadliest day on American soil since Antietam, 149 years earlier. and comparable to Pearl Harbor, 60 years earlier. Knowing ahead of time the magnitude of expected casualties, and believing the response would be comparable to, say, the 1993 Twin Towers attack that was less than 1% as deadly, requires a vast misunderstanding of not just American policy but of human psychology.

When there are complaints about George W. Bush, they are usually not that his response was too violent or immediate. It’s that he went into Afghanistan, “The Graveyard of Empires,” with no plan for success or withdrawal. It’s that he set up a “detention center” that was not suitable either as POW camp or for civilian prosecution. It’s that a year later he pushed through an attack on Iraq using bogus intelligence fed to the United Nations. It’s that the Iraq war similarly had no realistic plan for success. It’s that the United States still has people in both of these war zones 16 YEARS after the 9/11 attacks that Bush so brilliantly responded too.

Responding quickly and militarily wasn't a mistake. Everything else was.

Don't Mess With the Hufflepuffs

At the Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, House Hufflepuff is where you go if you value the attributes of friendship, loyalty, and hard work. We don’t see a lot of Hufflepuffs over the series. Harry Potter and the other main characters are in Gryffindor, while their enemies are mostly Slytherin. Hufflepuff seems on the surface like some sort of Isle of Misfit Toys, a place to go if you don't fit elsewhere. And despite the impressive skills of dueling champion Cedric Diggory or auror Nympadora Tonks, there’s a tendency to think of them as relatively weak.

In the rich world of Harry Potter fan fiction, the limited activities of Hufflepuffs has lead to speculation of what it would mean to be in that house. One possibility considered is that they may avoid the downsides of inclusiveness by working well together, being individually unexceptional but collectively United. 

Which could be summarized as: Attacking one Hufflepuff is a good way to get a pack of Hufflepuffs returning fire. 

Or put another way: Don't Mess With Hufflepuff. 

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There had been speculation in recent weeks, before the presidential election, about what would happen when Trump lost. Supporters had made comments about picking up their muskets, and fears of altright and militia groups taking up arms in

protest were out there.

There was much less talk about what would happen if Trump won. That was at least partly due to the consideration that his victory was an unlikely event. The expectations that weak, unarmed Blue-state Hillary supporters would certainly be opposed to anything gauche or crude as physical violence may have had a part, too. 

Which was a bad assumption on the face of it, one that Trump supporters in Blue states could easily advise you on. Even now.

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Some friends were complaining about Millennial reactions to the election results, such as “cry-in” days at universities and protests on the streets. One common meme has been a comparison between 18-year-olds storming Normandy with college students needing a safe space.

It’s worth noting that the average age was closer to 25, and that many of the young men there would have been blooded in Tunisia and Sicily. Those who made it to Normandy had been through an extensive training period that weeded out anyone constitutionally unable to be part of such an endeavor. The further one digs into what was really involved, the more you find that the comparison is not nearly as simple as this meme suggests.

It’s also somewhat ironic from a generational view, since the guys who coined “Millennials” in 1991 also predicted that they would be of a similar generational type as the GI or “Greatest” generation, the very ones who had landed at Normandy and advanced to Berlin.

The assumption of this part of the generational model is that generations like GenX, relatively neglected by parents during childhood, would supervise and support their children to a much higher degree. They would make “kids look alike and work together” and “implant civic virtue.” Working well is not valued quite as much as working well as a group. That means being exceptional isn’t a prize, while being part of the team is - and that is what a participation trophy is for, isn’t it?

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Millennials are Hufflepuffs, not necessarily exceptional individually, but able to work together and bring collective firepower to bear. Whatever their political leaning, don’t assume that they will lie down or roll over in response to adversity. They were told from the start to watch out for the people around them, to help them out and work with them. Sometimes that will mean joining the armed services  - like on September 12, 2001, when any young new recruits would certainly have been millennials.  Other times it will mean taking to the street in protest against a lawful result they don’t understand or accept. It’s all part of these ingrained personal attributes, the same personal attributes that helped those Normandy attackers win World War II. Take seriously that they will go after any perceived enemy, wands a-blazing.