by JAMES TARANTO
Wednesday, September 11, 2002 3:29 P.M. EDT

'They Will Be Stopped'
"What happened to our nation on a September day set in motion the first great struggle of a new century," President Bush declared at the Pentagon this morning:

The enemies who struck us are determined and they are resourceful. They will not be stopped by a sense of decency or a hint of conscience--but they will be stopped.

A greater force is amassed against them. They are opposed by freedom loving people in many lands. They are opposed by our allies who have fought bravely by our side. And as long as terrorists and dictators plot against our lives and our liberty, they will be opposed by the United States Army, Navy, Coast Guard, Air Force and Marines.

We fight as Americans have always fought, not just for ourselves, but for the security of our friends, and for peace in the world. We fight for the dignity of life against fanatics who feel no shame in murder. We fight to protect the innocent, so that the lawless and the merciless will not inherit the earth.

Year 23
The war didn't really begin on Sept. 11, 2001, of course, any more than World War II began on Dec. 7, 1941. Indeed, Islamist terrorists have been waging war on America for more than two decades. Daniel Pipes gets it right when he says the war actually started Nov. 4, 1979, the day the Iranians invaded the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. "In all," Pipes notes, "800 persons lost their lives in the course of attacks by militant Islam on Americans before September 2001--more than killed by any other enemy since the Vietnam war." And that doesn't include American victims of terrorist attacks in Israel.

Sept. 11 did wake America up. "The real effect of Sept. 11 is that American patience and tolerance for its global critics, most of whom do rather well out of America's benign hegemony, seems just about exhausted," writes United Press International's Martin Walker. Or, as Victor Davis Hanson puts it:

As the months progressed the problems inherent in "the European way" became all too apparent: pretentious utopian manifestos in lieu of military resoluteness, abstract moralizing to excuse dereliction of concrete ethical responsibility, and constant American ankle-biting even as Europe lives in a make-believe Shire while we keep back the forces of Mordor from its picturesque borders, with only a few brave Frodos and Bilbos tagging along. Nothing has proved more sobering to Americans than the skepticism of these blinkered European hobbits after September 11.

Mark Steyn recalls a similar reaction from Canada:

On September 12, the Ottawa Citizen ran a column by Susan Riley headlined "At Times Like This, We Thank God That We're Canadians." Oh, God, I groaned, not the usual moral preening. But no, Ms Riley skipped that and went straight for naked self-interest: "Our best protection may be distancing ourselves a little more explicitly from US foreign policy . . . pursuing a reasonable and moderate course in the world's trouble spots."

I've heard it a thousand times since and I still don't get it. By "distancing yourself" from the victims of September 11 you move yourself closer to the perpetrators, closer to barbarism. It may be "reasonable and moderate," but it's also profoundly self-corroding.

And yet--America is leading, and most of our allies, one way or another, will follow. President Bush addresses the U.N. tomorrow, and the Financial Times reports that he will "seek to shame the international community into action, when he tells the United Nations general assembly that it is being defied by Saddam Hussein's 'outlaw regime.' " The FT adds that even France says that "it might eventually join a US-led military assault on Iraq"--but it "remained adamant that it would do so only if the attack was approved by the UN Security Council."

The Casualties
It's worth dwelling on the lives and deaths of those who were murdered last Sept. 11--not for sentimental reasons but because it reminds us of the horrific toll our enemies exacted that day in a monstrous act of evil. Here are some of the most powerful stories we've found:

Daniel Lewin may have been the first casualty. The FBI believes that Lewin--an Israeli citizen and graduate of Sayeret Matkal, the Jewish state's elite commando unit--resisted the hijackers on Flight 11, the first plane to hit the World Trade Center, and was murdered by Satam Al Suqami, a 25-year-old Saudi. In an article translated by the Israeli group IMRA, the Hebrew-language newspaper Yediot Ahronot reports:

The FBI relied, among other things, on the testimony of the stewardess Amy Sweeney.

Sweeney called Michael Woodward, the flight services supervisor in Boston, from the rear of the plane: "a hijacker slit the throat of a passenger in business class and the passenger appears to me to be dead." To this day the American investigators are not convinced that Danny Lewin was murdered on the spot. An additional stewardess, Betty Ong, who succeeded in calling from a telephone by one of the passenger seats, said that the passenger who was attacked from business class seat 10B was seriously wounded. . . .

That battle in the business section ended quickly. Lewin was overcome and bled to death on the floor. Two additional flight attendants were knifed and the captain was murdered. The hijackers were already inside the cockpit. They announced to the passengers to remain quiet in their seats.

In The Jewish Week, Lyzbeth Glick, widow of Flight 93 hero Jeremy Glick, describes her last conversation with her husband:

The first thing he told me was, "My plane has been taken over by three men." He said they were Iranian-looking, they were wearing red headbands. One of them had something strapped to him that he was saying was a bomb. They moved everyone to the back.

And we just started saying, "I love you." It was an endless stream of "I love you so much." It calmed us down--we had just had a baby, we had just bought a house. . . . Then he told me he thought he was going to die; he said he would respect any decisions I made. He didn't sound panicked, he didn't sound angry. He just sounded very, very sad.

Then he started asking me questions about what was going on in New York. He said he had heard from one of the other passengers that planes were crashing into the World Trade Center. He wanted to know if this is true. I told him he needed to be strong, that yes, it was true.

Then he said, "Are they going to blow up my plane, are they going to crash it into something?"

Then he went into a planning mode. He said there were three guys as big as him--Jeremy was a large guy, a little over six feet and 220 pounds; in 1993 he was the NCAA judo champion for his weight class--and they were thinking of jumping the hijacker with the bomb. Did I think it was a good idea?

I hesitated, then I said, "Honey, you need to do it."

He was thinking of what he could use as a weapon, besides his hands. He said, "I have my butter knife from breakfast." Which is like Jeremy; he always made a light comment when things were stressful.

He said, "OK, we're going to go do it. I'm going to put the phone down. I'll be right back."

I just handed the phone to my Dad. My Dad said he heard screaming and then there was nothing. A few minutes went by and then there was more screaming and noise. Then there was nothing.

Dave Barry, a humor columnist, steps out of type in a column describing a visit to the Pennsylvania site where Flight 93 crashed:

But whatever happened, we know two things for sure:

We know that the plane went down before it reached its target--that the hijackers failed to strike a national symbol, a populated area. They failed.

And we know that the people on the plane fought back. On a random day, on a random flight, they found themselves--unwarned, unprepared, unarmed--on the front lines of a vicious new kind of war. And somehow, in the few confusing and terrifying minutes they had, they transformed themselves from people on a plane into soldiers, and they fought back. And that made them heroes, immediately and forever, to a wounded, angry nation, a nation that desperately wanted to fight back.

And now these heroes lie here, in this field where their battle ended. This cemetery. This battlefield. This hallowed ground.

Reuters, however, is true to type: It puts scare quotes around the word heroes in an article today about Flight 93.

Blogger James Lileks ponders the short life of Christine Hanson, a passenger on Flight 175, which hit the second World Trade Center tower:

She was two. The family was flying to Disneyland when the terrorists slaughtered the flight attendants, stabbed the pilots to death, and drove the plane into the building. . . .

Little Christine was [my daughter's] age, give or take a month; bin Laden's lackeys killed her--and did so to ensure that other fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters died as well, preferably by the tens of thousands. This little girl's death wasn't even a comma in the manifesto they hoped to write. They made sure that her last moments alive were filled with horror and blood, screams and fear; they made sure that the last thing she saw was the desperate faces of her parents, insisting that everything was okay, we're going to see Mickey, holding out a favorite toy with numb hands, making up a happy lie. And then she was fire and then she was ash.

The Weekly Standard's Matt Labash visits Edlene LaFrance at her home in the Bronx to see how she's holding up a year after the murder of her husband, Alan LaFrance:

Now, the first face Edlene sees in the morning is Mohamed Atta's. She keeps a New York Post cover photo of the man who killed her husband on the floor next to her bed. Every morning when she wakes up, she steps on his face. It is a small, desperate gesture, but it's the only revenge she'll ever get. When asked why she'd keep a picture of this murderer in her bedroom (she never calls him a "terrorist" or "hijacker," always a "murderer"), she says, "A lot of times when I don't think it's real, I just turn over and there's his face. Then I know it's real." . . .

The thing that's changed the most for her is time. She no longer measures it in weeks and months, but in firsts and lasts--the last time she did something with Alan, the first time she must do it without him. She doesn't cry much anymore, but the day before my visit, a light bulb burned out in her hallway. She ended up in a heap on the kitchen floor for 20 minutes. It was a 1,000-hour bulb that Alan had last changed. She has not replaced it.

There are long lists of firsts she is avoiding. She will not go on vacation, and chooses not to go to the movies, since that was Alan's favorite pastime. When she goes to their favorite diner for breakfast, she sits at the counter, since she and Alan used to sit at a booth.

Blogger Charles Johnson remembers John Heffernan, a guitar player for a New York-based punk band called the Bullys. Heffernan also did stand-up comedy, and Johnson transcribes one of his bits from a recording on MP3.com:

I hear the government of Afghanistan is waging a war upon women. . . . Anyway, it must be one tough m-----f---ing country to wage war against chicks, huh? Since some dude named The Taliban took power in 1996, women had to wear some sh-- called the Bercha or somethin', and have been beaten and stoned in public for not wearin' the proper attire. . . . Well, if they ever get into a war with the United States, they should know we ain't gonna just send a bunch of chicks to f--- 'em up. . . . I'll go to fight. . . . Anybody know where dis backward frickin' place is?

Heffernan was also a New York City fireman. A year ago today he died on the job, along with 342 of his colleagues.

You Don't Say
"9/11 Caused Stress in Many Americans"--headline, Associated Press, Sept. 10

You Don't Say--II
"Threat of Terrorism Is Shaping the Focus of Bush Presidency"--headline, New York Times, Sept. 11

You Don't Say--III
"Al-Qaida Still Considered Dangerous"--headline, Associated Press, Sept. 11

Our Friends the Saudis

"Your friends in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia denounced and condemned the September 11 attacks as strongly as did the American people. We, like you, are convinced that nothing can ever justify the shedding of innocent blood or the taking of lives and the terrorizing of people, regardless of whatever cause or motive. Therefore, we do not simply reiterate sincere and true condolences to the relatives of the victims, but assure all of our continued will and determination to do our utmost to combat this malignant evil and uproot it from our world."--message to America from Crown Prince Abdullah, Sept. 10

"Saudi Interior Minister Nayef bin Abdel Aziz said Wednesday that Riyadh will not hand over any Saudi terror suspect to the United States."--United Press International, Sept. 11

"Saudi Arabia accepts no responsibility for the September 11 attacks in the United States, Defense Minister Sultan bin Abdul Aziz said yesterday, even though 15 attackers were Saudis."--Washington Times, Sept. 11

"I would like to make it clear that true Muslims all over the world will never allow a minority of deviant extremists to speak in the name of Islam and distort its spirit of tolerance."--Abdullah, ibid

"O God, destroy the tyrant Jews and their supporters for they are within your power."--Shaykh Usamah Bin-Abdallah Khayyat in a televised sermon from the Holy Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, July 26

Somehow National Lampoon's "message of friendship" rings truer than Crown Prince Abdullah's.

Palestinians Whoop It Up
"The Palestinian Authority's security forces are on top alert Wednesday in an attempt to prevent any form of celebration of the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks," the Jerusalem Post reports. "According to information received by some PA officials, Palestinian activists in a number of cities and villages are planning celebrations marking this event." HonestReporting.com, a pro-Israel media-watchdog group, saved a screen shot of Palestinians celebrating last Sept. 11.

The Associated Press has a photo of Palestinians stepping on an American flag as they arrive for a pro-Saddam rally in Gaza yesterday. The Jerusalem Post reports, meanwhile, that "a booklet that anticipates the destruction of the US by 2004 has become a best seller" among Palestinian Arabs.

On The Lighter Side
Ha'aretz reports Israel's Shin Bet security service "announced it had seized shipping containers headed for the Palestinian Authority with weapons and cigarette lighters depicting Osama bin Laden. The containers, marked 'toys,' were found during a random customs check at the port in Ashdod in June, according to a government statement. Instead of toys, the containers carried guns, air rifles, binoculars and cigarette lighters depicting bin Laden alongside the World Trade Center as airplanes slam into the towers."

Left Behind
For a sense of just how confused Sept. 11 left America's far left, check out Adam Schatz's report in The Nation:

Curious whether others shared my own ambivalence, I undertook an informal investigation of left-wing opinion on American foreign policy since 9/11. . . . Some of the people I interviewed opposed going to war in October because they feared a bloody quagmire and didn't trust the Bush Administration, but changed their minds a month later when the Taliban unexpectedly fell. Others went in the opposite direction, coming out against the war only after US bombing began to inflict heavy civilian casualties. A few people supported targeted strikes against Al Qaeda training bases, but not the overthrow of the Taliban--not because of any sympathy for the regime but because the Bush Administration might be emboldened to overthrow other governments. Others argued, in contrast, that we shouldn't be bombing Afghanistan unless we were willing to send in ground troops. Some said that a struggle against radical Islam is necessary, but that we should be waging it in Saudi Arabia, not in Afghanistan. And many of the people who cautiously supported the Afghan intervention passionately assailed the war on terror as a new cold war, a danger to both American democracy and security.

Shut Up, They Explained--II
The National Post has more details on the anti-Semitic riot at Montreal's Concordia University, which we noted yesterday:

"It was 1939 Europe all over again," said Thomas Hecht, 73, chairman of the Canada-Israel Committee's Quebec branch. About 25 protesters screaming "Palestinian checkpoint!" encircled Mr. Hecht, a Czechoslovakian-born Holocaust survivor, as he attempted to enter the Hall Building. Several protesters pushed him against a wall, spitting on him and kicking his ankles.

Toronto's Globe and Mail adds:

Montreal Rabbi Howard Joseph and his wife, Norma, a Concordia religion professor, were kicked and punched. "The women aimed their punches at my breasts," Prof. Joseph said.

The university's response? Frederick Lowy, Concordia's rector and vice chancellor, decrees:

What is needed now is a period of restraint. A moratorium on the use of university space for events related to the Middle East conflict will be instituted immediately and until further notice. This includes a moratorium on public speeches, rallies, exhibits and information tables. We will be meeting with student leaders to develop a more long-term policy in this regard.

In other words, the pro-Arab thugs succeeded not only in preventing Bibi Netanyahu from speaking, but in shutting down all pro-Israel (as well as anti-Israel) speech. In this case, the cliché is true: The terrorists have won.

Pipes Down
Reader Joshua Sharf, who is organizing opposition to Palestinian spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi's speech at Colorado College tomorrow, said we were too kind to the college in yesterday's item on the addition of Daniel Pipes to the program:

Colorado College didn't so much achieve Pipes as have Pipes thrust upon them.

The group organizing the Hanan Ashrawi-as-peacemaker (bless her) protest managed to contact Mr. Pipes, who had an evening engagement in L.A. and offered to swing by in the morning. He offered to share the stage with Ms. Ashrawi at no cost. They turned him down. Then, he offered to speak to the protest group. CC doesn't really seem to have much say in the matter; trying to shut down a guy with a megaphone probably would have been too much even for them. So, they're making lemonade out of lemons and making it look as though they invited him.

A Bright Summers Day
Lest you think academia is populated by nothing but mush-brains and America-haters, check out the Sept. 11 address by Harvard's president, Larry Summers:

Those who killed on September 11 and those who celebrate the killing remind us of the eternal existence of evil. And we regard the world with understanding and openness, but we must also face it with moral clarity. We may debate the nature of truth, but there are truths beyond debate. Pursuit of that truth is our particular objective.

Stupidity Watch
In an interview with Newsweek, former South African president Nelson Mandela defends Saddam Hussein and lashes out at Israel:

What we know is that Israel has weapons of mass destruction. Nobody talks about that. Why should there be one standard for one country, especially because it is black, and another one for another country, Israel, that is white.

This is racist drivel. Iraq is Arabic, not black; and Israel, a multiracial democracy, is no more "white" than America is.

Life Imitates the Onion

"In what threatens to be an annual ritual, Rob Bachman, born Sept. 11, 1973, braced himself Tuesday for yet another birthday ruined by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks."--the Onion, Sept. 11

"The plans beforehand were for me to sleep on the 11th. I woke up that day and saw the buildings on TV. I was like, 'What's going on? Maybe a building caught on fire.' Then I heard terrorists flew planes into the buildings. I said, 'This is a day I'll never forget.' Every year, it's going to be hard the day before my birthday. A tragic accident [sic] that happened will always stick with me because my birthday is the very next day."--Jason Davis, a West Virginia University defensive end, quoted in the Dominion Post, Sept. 11

Another One Bites the Dust
John Noel trounced Atlanta's state Rep. Billy "J-E-W-S" McKinney in yesterday's runoff election. "I did not expect this, because I expected black folks to turn out for me," said the defeated incumbent. "They did not turn out for me. They wanted a Klansman, a son of the Confederacy." Replied Noel: "That's the kind of crud we don't need anymore. The days of divisiveness are over."

Florida Election Controversy
It's starting to sound a little like "dog bites man," isn't it? Florida's Democratic primary for governor remains undecided--the official returns give Janet Reno 43.3% to Bill McBride's 45.1%, with 95.3% of precincts reporting--in an election characterized, as the Washington Post puts it, by "profoundly confused voters, malfunctioning voting machines, rampant conspiracy theories, candidates threatening lawsuits and a general sense of outrage that stretched from the swanky, high-rise condominiums of Miami Beach to the hardscrabble neighborhoods of Jacksonville":

By midday, the depth of the dilemma was evident as problems surfaced in 14 counties, including six of the seven sued after the 2000 presidential election. Ballots jammed and tore in some machines, poll workers left their posts in frustration and some Democratic voters were given Republican ballots.

Gov. Jeb Bush issued an executive order keeping the polls open an extra two hours, and Democrats sang a familiar tune:

"We have some precincts giving out Republican ballots [to Democrats] in the heart of the black community. . . . It makes me feel like this is intentional," said Rep. Corinne Brown (D) as she toured precincts in her Jacksonville district. "I'm enraged."

In Carol City, north of Miami, Marie Love-Jackson had planned to take her daughter, Deshawn Colquitt, 18, to vote for the first time. The poll workers told her to go home because the voting machines did not work, said Love-Jackson, 42, an unemployed Carol City resident. "It's a lot of Republican bull to keep Bush in," said Love-Jackson, who speculated that somehow the unopposed GOP governor was trying to determine whom he would face in the November general election.

Reno, however, doesn't seem overly perturbed. "Last night, as the first election returns came in, aides said Miss Reno took a nap," the Washington Times reports.

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reports on one race that was easily resolved. The lovely Katherine Harris, Florida's former secretary of state and the Dems' bête noire in the 2000 election dispute, won a Republican House primary with 68% of the vote.

Other Election Results

• Erskine Bowles won North Carolina's Democratic primary for Senate. He'll face Elizabeth Dole, who easily picked up the GOP nod, the Associated Press reports.

• Rep. John Sununu beat Sen. Bob Smith in New Hampshire's Republican race for Senate. Sununu must beat Gov. Jeanne Shaheen to keep Smith's seat in Republican hands.

• Official returns show Douglas Moore is leading the Washington mayor's race, with 6% of the vote. James Clark and Faith (yes, Faith) trail, with 1% each. But the two leading candidates, incumbent Anthony Williams and Willie Wilson, are write-ins, whose votes have yet to be tallied. The Washington Post says its exit poll gives Williams a "wide lead," but official results may not be available for 10 days.

• Ron Greer, an evangelical pastor, won the nomination to face Rep. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, the only openly lesbian congressman, the Wisconsin State Journal reports. Greer, who is black, lost his job as a Madison fireman after he issued "a news release claiming Chief Debra Amesqua had showed favoritism to a female firefighter because both women were lesbians." Baldwin was among those who urged his firing.

A Blown Cover
Last week, as we wrote, we returned to the World Financial Center, alongside Ground Zero, for the first time since last Sept. 11. We've been settling in nicely, getting used to the view of a historic battlefield alongside the familiar cityscape. We've also been combing through the boxes of stuff that was recovered from our office and kept in storage for the past year--personal effects, papers, and piles and piles of books--all accumulated during the first five years we worked at the WFC.

Some of these artifacts we see in a different light after all that's happened in the past year. Case in point: a copy of "Miss Manners Rescues Civilization: From Sexual Harassment, Frivolous Lawsuits, Dissing and Other Lapses in Civility," a 1996 book by etiquette columnist Judith Martin. The cover--click on the nearby thumbnail to see a larger copy--shows a woman warrior carrying the First Navy Jack, the DONT TREAD ON ME flag with a rattlesnake on a background of 13 red and white stripes, which the U.S. Navy recently began flying on all its vessels. She is surrounded by fellow warriors for civilization: a man carrying a briefcase, a woman holding a baby, a jeans-clad youth. In the background is the skyline of lower Manhattan, including the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

Semper fi, Miss Manners!

(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Jeffrey Weinstein, Elliot Ganz, Carl Sherer, Mara Gold, Douglas Pichon, Doug Levene, S.E. Brenner, Michael Segal, Monty Krieger, Steven Baker, Tari Hoekel, Mike Saucier, Robert Webb, Michael Morley, Francesca Watson, Drew Parkhill, C.E. Dobkin, Janice Lyons, Marie Bourgeois, Robert LeChevalier, Owen Granke, David Gerstman, Miriam Himmelfarb, Robert Friedman, Gad Meir, Irene Margolin-Katz, Jerome Marcus, Yishai Ben Mordechai, Howard Weiser, Gordon Kaplan, Yehuda Hilewitz, Amir Agam, Bennett Ruda, Aaron Gross, Peg Innis, Nathan Wirtschafter, Natalie Cohen, Jenifer Sawicki, Alex Markovich, Lewis Chilton, Richard Haisley, Dan Friedman, Michel Ohayon, Sol Grazi, Nancy Zimmerman, Michael Davidson, Leanne Shain, Greg Moore, Michael Williamson, Timothy Schau, Debbie Coplin, Ben Gibbons, Jonas Zoller, Ken Jorgensen, Marty Flusche, Jay Brinker, Tom Elia, Dennis Murphy, Ryan Minor, Greg Dougherty, Paul Cooper, Damian Bennett, Brian Otey and Steve Eggleston. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)

Today on OpinionJournal:

• Review & Outlook: There was reason for optimism in America's darkest hour.
• Peggy Noonan: Tomorrow begins the post-9/11-trauma era.
• Pete du Pont: The war's first year: So far, so good.
• Claudia Rosett: Democrats everywhere support America. America should reciprocate.