On Forgetfulness and 9/11

There's a disconcerting moment in one of the many triumphalist stories today about the world's Obama-inspired jubilation. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for jubilation, and like Andrew, I think that Obama's popularity is an important (though perhaps ephemeral) weapon in the war on terror. But Ethan Bronner's piece in today's Times contains this odd, unknowing passage:

It would be hard to overstate how fervently vast stretches of the globe wanted the election to turn out as it did to repudiate the Bush administration and its policies. Poll after poll in country after country showed only a few -- Israel, Georgia, the Philippines -- favoring a victory for Senator John McCain.

"Since Bush came to power it's all bam, bam, bam on the Arabs," asserted Fathi Abdel Hamid, 40, as he sat in a Cairo coffee house.

Bronner doesn't call out Fathi Abdel Hamid, so allow me: If I recall correctly, George W. Bush was pretty much uninterested in dropping bombs on Arab and Muslim countries until a large, diverse group of Arabs, operating out of the Muslim country of Afghanistan, attacked the United States on September 11th, 2001, murdering more than three thousand people.

There are many in the Muslim world who find America's actions over the past seven years inexplicable. Some of our actions have indeed been inexplicable, but they're all rooted in a trauma that many people seem to have forgotten.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2008/11/on-forgetfulness-and-9-11/9053/