With the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban, we can say that the 9/11 era has officially ended. America’s response to the 2001 terrorist attack is over. We have entered a post-9/11 era that woefully reflects the decay of our institutions and resolve.
America Has Changed
Indeed, America has changed in these twenty long years. The edifying unity and patriotism that bonded us back then are now transformed into fragmented and polarized discord. Our robust economy has suffered two major debacles and is now mired in debt, government spending and socialistic controls.
COVID has taken hundreds of thousands of lives, scrambled our certainties and shattered the nation. Above all, we might recall how in 2001, we looked briefly to God from the depths of our great affliction. In the pandemic, by locking people out of the churches, we abandoned Him.
Now, the terrible swift sword of our military might is humbled by the nation’s inept leadership.
The vacuum left by our defeat opens up the dangers of the post-9/11 world that awaits us.
The Target Is America
The 9/11 world concentrated on defending the postwar order from the threats of terrorism and disintegration. It required organization, sacrifice and commitment. It assumed notions of good and evil when judging the irrational acts of terrorists on innocent people. At stake was the survival of the West with all its admitted shortcomings.
We now enter a dangerous new post-9/11 world. It also has as its target the destruction of the American model. It assumes a world without rigid rules, moral judgments or defined borders. It calls on America to abandon its aggressive stance against disorder and adopt a cynically isolationist position. At stake are the fundamental premises of who we are.
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We will not be left alone in this post-9/11 era. We can be sure that our enemies will attack us because we sustain the unified, rational, and universal systems that ensure Western prosperity. Even in our weakened state, we are an obstacle to the anarchical, green, and egalitarian worlds envisioned by Eastern and Western ideologues.
The Enemy Outside the Gates
We face two enemies in this war. The first is the external threats that gather at our gates to undermine, substitute and fill the vacuum created by our ineptitude. They see and exploit our weaknesses. They encourage spineless mediocrity.
Communist China is one of these external threats. The Red Chinese regime threatens to engulf the world with its atheistic, communist system that has killed tens of millions, persecuted the Church and now seeks to dominate the world. Joining China are Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea and Marxists worldwide who conspire to undermine American influence. Of special concern is the growing alliance of Russia and China.
The other enemy is radical Islam. It has declared jihad against America and the Christian West. Islamists in Iran, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Pakistan, and now Afghanistan leverage these nation-states against us. Other Islamists wreak havoc across the Greater Sahel. Their fundamentalism harkens to a distant and savage past. It stems from a reconstructed and remystified Islam tailored to be a powerful rejection of all things Western.
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All these enemies will continue to attack us because we still resist the march toward their Marxist or Islamist utopias.
These outside enemies may have different methods, orientations and goals, but they share a hostility toward the West. They target America as the most visible manifestation of Western and vaguely Christian ideals. They correctly reason that if America goes down, so also does everything Western, good and bad.
The Enemy Within Is the Greater Foe
Dangerous as these external enemies are, America’s greatest foe is the enemy within. This enemy is also bent on the destruction of all that represents Western Christian civilization. Its partisans seek to subvert everything informed by Christianity: our rule of law, property rights and free enterprise, public morality, family, education, religion, culture, and civilized society. The advocates of critical race theory, for example, rewrite history to nullify all things Christian and Western.
The liberal corporate establishment gleefully participates in this suicidal impulse. It finances anti-American sentiment. Its media mainstream the left’s radical proposals. Figures inside academia’s rotting structures amplify this political correctness, “wokeness” and deconstruction of the West.
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America has committed faults throughout its history. However, these sins are not the target of those inside America who work for our downfall. The real target is the Christian order. All the structures, customs and traditions that even remotely reflect Christianity and the society it forged. Any displays of hierarchy, identity and even prosperity are condemned and framed into the worn-out class struggle narrative to fragment the nation. All is done to make Americans hate who they are.
The Post-9/11 World
Thus, the post-9/11 world represents a greater danger than the twenty years just ended. The 9/11 Attack on America showed the enemy clearly, whereas our present plight is marked by uncertainty. One unified the nation in tragedy and sorrow; the other, today, splits us into a thousand chards of chaos and hatred.
The first step to confronting this new threat is to recognize the goal of our enemies: To destroy America and overthrow all things Christian and Western. Thus, we must continue to engage in the fight for our culture. We must regroup, rebuild and fight harder than ever, both here and abroad, wherever the Christian West is threatened.
However, we must also humbly and prayerfully admit that the problems facing us are beyond human solutions. Our sinful liberal order is exhausted and spent. It cannot regenerate the West. If America and the West are to survive, we must return to order. We must return to that supernatural wellspring from which we first sprung. We must reconnect with that powerful Christian message that once changed the face of the earth. We must repent of our iniquities and amend our lives as requested by the Mother of God at Fatima. Then and only then will there be hope. Aided by God’s sublime grace, we will be proportional and ready for the universal conflict bearing down on us.
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