The Top 10 Editorials for September 11th, 2001 – December 15th, 2001

11 Apr, 2012 by John Hawkins

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Since September 11th, I’ve noticed that there have been quite a few exceptional editorials written about the terrorist attacks of September 11th and the resulting “war on terrorism”. I thought that some of these editorials were so exceptional that they deserved to be recognized. So without further delay, here are the top 10 editorials since September 11th, 2001…

Writer:: Leonard Pitts Jr
Date:: September 12, 2001
Title:: Hateful attack won’t hurt us as it will you

Description:: Leonard Pitts does a moving and powerful editorial. Here’s a quote… “When provoked by this level of barbarism, we will bear any suffering, pay any cost, go to any length, in the pursuit of justice.”

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Writer:: Dave Barry
Date:: September 13, 2001
Title:: Just for being Americans…

Description:: “The people who did this to us are monsters; the people who cheered them have hate-sickened minds. One reason they can cheer is that they know we would never do to them what their heroes did to us, even though we could, a thousand times worse. They know that when we hunt down the monsters, we will try hard not to harm the innocent. Those are the handcuffs we willingly wear, because for all our flaws, we are a decent people.”

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Writer:: Cornel Nistorescu
Date:: September 24, 2001
Title:: An ode to America

Description:: I just ran across this editorial from a Romanian paper today and I appreciate the kind words for the US. I actually like this one better than the Gordon Sinclair piece that’s been circulated ad nauseam.

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Writer:: Michael Kelly
Date:: September 26, 2001
Title:: Pacifist claptrap

Description:: Michael Kelly absolutely nails these wussy peace activists in our country. Here is a quotes from the article…

“But in the situation where one’s nation has been attacked — a situation such as we are now in — pacifism is, inescapably and profoundly, immoral. Indeed, in the case of this specific situation, pacifism is on the side of the murderers, and it is on the side of letting them murder again.”

He is absolutely correct. Sitting around wringing your hands, cowering away from taking any meaningful action not only doesn’t accomplish anything, it encourages our enemies to strike again.

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Writer:: Victor Davis Hanson
Date:: September 27, 2001
Title:: What if?

Description:: This is a great piece of satire about Pearl Harbor that will put the events of the 11th into a new perspective for some of your peacenik friends.

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Writer:: Ann Coulter
Date:: November 1, 2001
Title:: The eunuchs are whining

Description:: Ann Coulter wrote one of the most blistering, acidic, attacks on left-wingers in the US that I’ve seen in a long time. The most noteworthy thing about this column is that Coulter is adopting the same style that left-wingers themselves often use. Long on emotion and riddled with vicious criticism. She also gets off some great lines like…

“We’ve finally given liberals a war against fundamentalism, and they don’t want to fight it. They would, except it would put them on the same side as the United States”

“In fact, no one is in the “grip of fear” over anthrax except the media and their most gullible targets, liberal women. Liberal soccer moms are precisely as likely to receive anthrax in the mail as to develop a capacity for linear thinking.”

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Writer:: Michael Kelly
Date:: November 14, 2001
Title:: Good evening, and welcome to ‘All Is Lost …’

Description:: Another brilliant column from Michael Kelly on the gloomy view of much the media in the face of huge victories in Afghanistan.

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Writer:: Rush Limbaugh
Date:: Dec 7, 2001
Title:: Unleash Israel and win peace

Description:: “The only way some form of quiet will ever exist in the Middle East is if Israel is given the latitude to totally defeat its declared enemies. Only then will the terrorist attacks on Israel’s civilians come to an end. Perpetual negotiations, diplomatic half measures, or land for peace deals will not bring peace to the Middle East.”

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Writer:: The Telegraph
Date:: December 10, 01
Title:: Nation-building ambition baffles Bush

Description:: The Telegraph does a good job of examining the differences between how the US and Europe view the “war on terrorism”…

“Herein lies the outline of the problems ahead between the members of this unbalanced alliance. European governments are reducing the September 11 terrorist atrocities to the category of another challenge to the “international community”, and one that can be met in the usual way: with billions of pounds of international aid and several thousand men trying to keep the warring parties apart. America sees September 11 as a direct and personal assault and one that will be met frontally. The administration demands nothing less than the eradication of al-Qa’eda and its protectors and the capture or, better still, the elimination of all its key operatives.”

Europe doesn’t have the courage or the fortitude for a long, nasty, war that spreads through multiple nations. The question is not if our “allies” will abandon us, it is when.

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Writer:: Mark Steyn
Date:: December 14, 2001
Title:: The grapes of wrath

Description:: Mark Steyn comes out with all barrels blazing in this blistering editorial. He compares the US and Europe, Clinton and Bush, and even Muslims and sharks. He also blasts England’s most famous anti-American journalist, Robert Fisk, who was beaten to a pulp not too long ago by Afghan refugees. Want a little sample?

“Mr Fisk is the quintessential New Racist. He believes that, while he and Bush are sophisticated human beings who should be held accountable for their actions, the Noble Savage (and no one’s done more to ennoble him than Fisk) should be offered moral absolution for assaulting a civilian on no other basis than his ethnic identity. As Salman Rushdie has said, this denies ‘the basic idea of all morality: that individuals are responsible for their actions’. Mr Fisk’s exquisite condescension to the people he claims a unique insight into is indestructible. The difference between him and Mr Bush is that Bush treats them as he’d treat Texans, who are at least members of the human race (however primitive and barbaric). Fisk regards them as exotic wildlife.”