We can again be the country we were after 9/11

We flew the flag, helped our neighbors, opened our hearts, and supported our government.

Nine days after the 9/11 attack on America, I sat in my living room watching President George W. Bush address Congress. When he uttered the since much-quoted line, “Whether we bring our enemies to justice, or justice to our enemies, justice will be done,” I felt surprise, slight discomfort, and a wave of pride. Surprise because I had written the line and sent it and other suggestions to a friend working on Bush’s National Security Council staff, without any expectation they would be used. Discomfort because I was a Democrat who’d worked for President Bill Clinton, and it felt strange to hear my words spoken by a president I hadn’t supported. And pride because Bush was our president, and in that moment of grief and resolve, we all needed to help him lead the country well.

The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack was an act of evil. It also revealed America’s comparative advantages, the ones we used to take for granted but no longer can.

National unity in meeting great challenges was one of those strengths. Most people put partisanship to the side for at least the first few months after the attacks. We flew the flag, helped our neighbors, opened our hearts to those who’d lost loved ones, and supported our government in doing what had to be done.

Americans mostly got their news from the same sources then. So even if we were on different sides politically, we argued from the same set of facts about what had happened and how the government was responding. Conspiracy theorists about 9/11 were dismissed as the nut jobs they were.

Human nature being what it is, there was anger at the culture and religion the 9/11 terrorists falsely claimed to represent. Bush could have poured gas on those flames for political advantage; instead, he understood that this was exactly what our enemies wanted. He insisted in that same speech to Congress that “the enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends.” He visited a mosque soon after the attacks. He tried, on his best days, to channel sorrow and fury into a positive vision of what Americans could do to rid the world of hate.

Around the world, America had strong allies that rallied to our side. NATO invoked its Article 5 mutual defense clause for the first and only time in its history—to protect the United States. European aircraft helped patrol American skies after the attacks. Allies shared intelligence and sent troops to help our military in Afghanistan. Democrats and Republicans alike appreciated this and worked together to strengthen and expand NATO and to increase foreign aid to win hearts and minds everywhere.

I never warmed to Bush’s senior team, and I often disagreed bitterly with their decisions, but there was no question that these were serious men and women, with honest and patriotic motives. They were supported by—and mostly supportive of—the incredibly competent people who staffed the State and Defense Departments, the intelligence community, and our domestic security agencies, including the FBI. Thanks to the efforts of these career professionals (now known to some as “deep state bureaucrats”), there were no more major attacks on the United States. They were respected and honored for their service.

The Bush administration eventually made terrible mistakes, from the invasion of Iraq to the torture of suspected terrorists. These mistakes revealed another strength: the ability of our democratic institutions to correct themselves.

The Supreme Court repeatedly ruled against Bush, affirming that detainees had basic rights of due process, and its word was respected as final. A Republican senator, John McCain, led a Republican majority Congress in banning the abusive interrogation methods that a Republican president had approved. Bush’s Republican critics forced him to change tactics in Iraq, leading to the adoption of a strategy that ended the insurgency there.

No law firm was bullied for representing people whose rights the Bush administration violated. No news outlet had to fear lawsuits for reporting administration failures. No non-profit (including the one I worked for, Human Rights Watch) worried about losing its tax-exempt status. Dissent, whether expressed from outside government or by government officials who challenged the president when they thought he was wrong, made America stronger.

My biggest worry on this anniversary of 9/11 is that America is no longer as equipped as it was 24 years ago to meet such a grave challenge. We don’t know what the next crisis will be—another terrorist or crippling cyberattack, a Russian threat to NATO, a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, or something that will surprise us as much as 9/11 did in its time.

But can our government prevent that crisis—and will it respond effectively if it comes—with a commander in chief who is surrounded by third-rate yes men; with members of Congress and business and civic leaders afraid to contradict him; with intelligence agencies being purged of anyone who tells the president what he doesn’t want to hear; with almost half our frontline FBI agents diverted from their mission of stopping terrorism and foreign plots to chase Uber drivers with expired visas; with a vice president saying that the “highest and best use of our military’ is blowing up with dubious pretenses little motor boats in the Caribbean as our Defense Department deprioritizes defense against far more dangerous great power enemies; and with the goodwill of our allies destroyed by America’s tariffs, insults, and abandonment of foreign aid?

And how will our society come together when our leaders respond to external threats by stoking internal divisions, and when Big Tech algorithms have so corrupted our information system that we can’t even agree on what reality is?

I don’t ever want to relive a tragedy like 9/11. But I want to reclaim the country that overcame it. And I don’t think it is impossible or too late to try. Let that be our resolution today.

Tom Malinowski is a former member of Congress from New Jersey who was an assistant secretary of state in the Obama administration.

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