By Dan
McLaughlin
Monday,
September 11, 2023
The September
11 attacks are one of those events — like Pearl Harbor, the 1929
stock-market crash, or the fall of the Berlin Wall — that marks a sharp
discontinuity not only in our history, but in how people who lived through
those events understood the world around them. That is true even if, unlike me,
you weren’t there. For people around my age (I turned 30 a month after the
attacks), they marked the end of the “holiday from history” that had marked our
20s, beginning with the collapse of the Soviet empire. Even when America went
to war in Kosovo in the spring of 1999, it was possible for an ordinary
American to remain only vaguely aware of what was happening there. But after
9/11, everyone felt that everything had changed. That sentiment was vivid for the
next two or three years, and really only began to fade after the 2008 financial
crisis and the 2011 death of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan at the hands
of Navy SEALs.
For the
generations of Americans already in positions of political power in 2001 —
mainly those born between 1925 and 1960 — their view of America’s place in the
world was already set by the Cold War and its aftermath, and the lessons they
applied to the post-9/11 world were largely those derived from the Cold War,
the Second World War, Korea, Vietnam, and the first Gulf War. That explains a
lot about why neoconservative theories of remaking the greater Middle
East were so widely adopted: Not only did they provide an off-the-shelf
framework for interpreting events, but one that accorded with the experiences
of policy-makers who had seen the Cold War through to victory. It was natural
to think that a combination of American hard military power with the soft
cultural, economic, and political power of America’s superior example in its
way of life would undermine the appeal of our enemies. That’s mostly not how
things played out.
For
Americans born in roughly the decade between 1977 and 1986, however, 9/11
played a different, formative role. Born into the late Gen X and early
Millennial generations, they were too young to have more than childhood
memories of the Cold War, but old enough already to serve in the military after
the Twin Towers fell, or to enlist during the early years of 2002–04 when
patriotic sentiment was running hot and George W. Bush’s foreign policy still
enjoyed fairly broad bipartisan support with the public. Even if they were
politically engaged in their teens and early twenties, it was natural that the
years of the War on Terror would do much to reshape their thinking about the
world.
Many of
the members of that generation are now in positions of political prominence
themselves. Quite a few bring with them the experience of having served in the
military in that era, often in the main theaters of combat in Afghanistan
and/or Iraq. Among Republicans, we find among others Tom Cotton (born 1977);
Ron DeSantis, Greg Steube, Nick LaLota, and August Pfluger (1978); Jim Banks,
Frank LaRose, Zachary Nunn, and Nick Freitas (1979); Lee Zeldin, Brian Mast,
Eli Crane, Pete Hegseth, Tony Gonzales, and Cory Mills (1980); John James and
Wesley Hunt (1981); Guy Reschenthaler (1983); J. D. Vance, Dan Crenshaw, and
Mike Gallagher (1984). In the same age cohort are Blake Moore (1980, joined the
State Department’s Foreign Service) and Anthony D’Esposito (1982, joined the
NYPD).
Among
Democrats, we find a smaller but still significant group: Wes Moore and Seth
Moulton (1978); Ruben Gallego and Jason Crow (1979); Pete Buttigieg, Pat Ryan,
Jared Golden, and Jeff Jackson (1982); Chris Deluzio (1984); and Max Rose
(1986). There’s also former Democrat Tulsi Gabbard (1981), and in the same age
cohort are Brendan Boyle (1977, worked as a Defense Department consultant),
Abigail Spanberger (1979, joined the CIA), and Andrew Kim (1982, served
in-theater with the State Department).
That’s
an impressive list, including two governors, two senators, the secretary of
transportation, two members of House Republican leadership, and a number of
current or recent candidates for statewide office. DeSantis, of course, is
currently running for president; Buttigieg, Gabbard, and Moulton all ran in
2020; and in all likelihood, Buttigieg, Cotton, Vance, and Moore will each run
in the future. Some of these people were already serving in the military on
September 11, and some only went over there a decade later, but quite a number
of them were in the wave of enlistments shortly after the attacks. Their number
includes people who served in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, the National
Guard, special forces, the JAG corps, and military intelligence.
It’s
impossible to generalize with confidence about the foreign-policy and
national-security opinions of a group that includes figures such as Cotton,
Crenshaw, Vance, and Gabbard. It is generally true that few of them are
idealistic neoconservatives, while many remain hard-nosed hawks about American
national defense. The experience of serving in a war that proved either a
long-term American defeat (Afghanistan) or a costly, protracted, and
unsatisfying victory (Iraq) plainly had a sobering effect on this generation.
DeSantis, for example, has tried to forge a middle path on Ukraine between the
hawks and the doves (not always with the clearest results), yet he remains a
hawk on China, a staunch friend of Israel, and a bitter critic of Iran.
The war
in Ukraine is the first major political decision point that divides this
generation in the era after our withdrawal from Afghanistan brought the old
wars to a close. It likely won’t be the last. But as the September 11 attacks
and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq recede into the history books, the
generation forged by them will be stepping forward to their place among the
leaders who will steer us through the next generation of foreign and
national-security crises. Let us hope they have learned the right
lessons.
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