After Pearl Harbor, We Rose; After 9/11, We Fell
By
Leonard Zwelling
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/08/opinion/911-twin-towers-life-death.html
Bret Stephens writes eloquently about his experiences of regrowth in the wake of 9/11 in this op-ed from The New York Times. His experiences and mine differ. What I remember of the days and months following the terrorist attack, is that my fate at work, and that of the United States in the world ran in parallel. Neither my career nor my country got better. But let’s break it down a bit.
I am not old enough to have been born on December 7, 1941. My parents didn’t even know each other that day, but both knew where they were when the Japanese attack on Oahu occurred and sent the United States to war.
The country had resisted entering the war that had started in Europe in 1939, but after Pearl Harbor America was locked in, committed. We had been attacked by another sovereign nation that was part of a fascist Axis movement to conquer the world. From that day forward to the war’s end, the United States climbed ever higher in the eyes of the world. The American industrial machine went into high gear to produce war materiel and American GIs saved millions in Europe and Asia from lives in chains so they could bask in the freedom enjoyed widely on both continents today. WWII was our shining hour. The United States saved the world.
I was very much alive on the morning of September 11, 2001. My office, Research Administration, was giving its annual presentation to the faculty and staff of all MD Anderson departments about changes coming in the oversight of clinical and basic research in the year to come. I left the presentation and arrived at the office of the Chief Academic Officer and my boss, Margaret Kripke, which was down the hall from Hickey Auditorium. It was in her office that I learned of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center tower and then, of the second explosion. What was first thought to be an accident, was clearly an act of terrorism on American soil.
Pearl Harbor was a direct attack on our country, even as Hawaii was not a state yet. It was American soil. That’s where our fleet was. The enemy was well-defined and the President, Franklin Roosevelt, knew we were going to war against other sovereign enemy states, formal sources of evil. We did so in an alliance with our friends in both Europe and Asia. Everyone in the United States was mobilized. Men were drafted, and many volunteered. Those who could not fight, had their lives changed by contributing to the war effort at home. As a country, we were all in.
9/11 was not an attack on the United States by any sovereign state. It was a massive homicide by a terrorist group, Al Qaeda. Unlike after Pearl Harbor, after 9/11 there was no sovereign country for us to attack. So, we made one up and invaded Afghanistan and later, Iraq. The latter invasion was based on horribly faulty intelligence (Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction that never were). Furthermore, it was the failures of our intelligence agencies to detect terrorists going to flight school in America (and not learning how to land planes) that allowed 9/11 to occur in the first place. 9/11 was a failure of intelligence and a failure of imagination. Our government did not imagine that a terrorist foe might fly planes into buildings in massive suicide missions to kill civilians.
Other than the first responders from New York and D.C. and our standing, volunteer military, most Americans got back to their lives pretty quickly after 9/11. We should never confuse free concerts by rock stars and a stoppage of air traffic for a week or so with a true mobilization of every American as occurred after Pearl Harbor. Several post-WWII presidents served in the war. No post-9/11 presidents served in Afghanistan or Iraq.
There’s plenty of blame to go around for 9/11. Bill Clinton should have dealt with Al Qaeda after the USS Cole was attacked in 2000 in the wake of other terrorist actions prior to the Cole bombing. He knew damned well that a criminal group was out to get us and what happened to the Cole was only the latest terrorist action by Al Qaeda. It was just the beginning of the group’s terrorism against American targets.
President George W. Bush, who had been elected by just over 500 votes in Florida thanks to the Supreme Court less than a year before 9/11, rather than take a deep breath and figure out a good way to defend the country after 9/11 and capture those criminals who killed 3000 Americans, struck out at a moving target and missed. The war the neocons longed for was finally here. Our response was anything but effective.
It took ten years for Seal Team 6 under the leadership of Admiral McRaven, to kill Osama bin Laden and when they did, so what. It made a good movie (Zero Dark Thirty), but changed nothing. The damage to America had already been done the moment that we went to war against a terrorist network that had no country and a pretty ragtag army, but whose people were willing to die for the cause which was basically killing Americans.
Pearl Harbor was a clear act of war. Most of the dead that day were uniformed military personnel. 9/11 was a criminal act by religious zealots. Most of the dead were innocent civilians and first responders. An act of war requires a response by the military. A criminal act requires a response by a police force—identifying and capturing the perpetrators, making arrests, and prosecuting them for all the world to see—like the Israelis did with Adolph Eichmann. There are still Al Qaeda prisoners in Guantanamo who have not gone to trial and probably never will because they were tortured and whatever confessions they may have given would be inadmissible in court.
In making the mistake of identifying what happened on 9/11 as an act of war not a crime, President Bush and the entire government plus the media set us on a course of disaster ranging from military adventurism to Islamophobia against our own citizens that persists to this day. It took 20 years to get out of Afghanistan. We are still mired to some extent in Iraq. We have been drawn into another war in Iran that is costing every American money and our nation its standing in the world. We are definitely worse off than we were on September 10, 2001.
In WWII the country spent blood and treasure, but accomplished its goal to eliminate the threat of fascism in Europe and Asia. After 9/11, we have spent a great deal of blood and treasure as well. We are still paying the price, but to what end?
Clearly, the national response after Pearl Harbor was both right and righteous. It set in motion our rise to be the saviors of the free world and set the course for the next 80 years that brought down the Iron Curtain, the Berlin Wall, and the Soviet Union.
Our response to 9/11 was tepid, foolish, impotent and far too lengthy as it goes on to this day. In essence, our leaders decided that we had to kill somebody somewhere, so launched our military into the quagmire that Afghanistan has historically proven to be, even as recently as a few years earlier for the Soviet Union. George W. Bush was never much of a student of history.
Our leadership in the world has now sunk to a new low. In a way, Donald Trump’s road to the White House, began on 9/11 with the country trying to make itself great again. Among his first actions in his first term was the “Muslim ban.” He thought this would make us great again.
He failed. We failed. Our allies do not trust us. For goodness sake, we are in a trade war with Canada. Canada!
After Pearl Harbor we were led by a great decision maker who, despite his making many mistakes, especially with regard to the Nazi concentration camps and the murder of 6 million Jews, led us up to the day in August 6, 1945 when President Truman demonstrated to the world that the United States’ atomic technology would be used to end the tyranny posed by Japan.
In 1945, the United States thought it could do anything. Our people thought they could do anything. For the next 50 years, Americans did just that.
Today we are struggling to keep up with China in manufacturing, AI, and even basic science thanks to our current president’s cuts to federal funding and his inability to create a way forward in Iran, Europe, or the Far East. The American people fear that we no longer can do anything. They wonder if we can do anything right, but I believe that we still can.
A few days after 9/11, MD Anderson president John Mendelsohn led many of us in the singing of God Bless America in The Park. Patriotism was at an all-time high. The country was behind President Bush. Within a matter of months, Dr. Mendelsohn was engulfed in the Enron and ImClone scandals and in less than a year I was on the operating table at St. Luke’s getting my blocked coronaries by-passed. For me, for Dr. Mendelsohn, and for the United States, the rest of the story goes downhill. No one on this list was ever the same after 9/11.
Thus, the real question for the American voter in November will be, who among the choices for elected office has a vision that can restore the United States to its rightful place leading the world, that can identify its true opposition by name (China), and that can devise a plan to lift the nation up working hand in hand with our allies as we did in WWII?
Who can lead us to rising again?
Twenty-five years after the end of WWII, Americans walked on the moon.
Twenty-five years after 9/11, and we still haven’t been back.
We must do better and we can, but we must have leaders who can see the truth, properly name the truth, speak that truth, and tell us the way forward. We have not had a president since 9/11 who could do that—of the United States or of MD Anderson.
