September 11, 2003

Anniversaries are historical page markers; they denote a time to pause and reflect. On the second anniversary of the September 11 attacks, we mark not only the terrible loss of life on that day but a failure of American leadership. It is also a time to raise the fundamental question that has supposedly focused the national effort for the past two years: Have we become safer, more secure, today?

Wherever we look the answer is no. The Bush Administration has squandered the good will that flowed from the rest of the world after the attacks. The Administration's go-it-alone, militarist foreign policy divided and weakened the United Nations and alienated longstanding allies. Now an isolated United States faces rising casualty lists and costs in Iraq and turns to the UN it once scorned for help--with an arrogance ill suited to winning friends.

The Iraq war, promoted by a White House disinformation campaign, diverted resources and undercut global antiterrorist strategies. Bungled postwar planning fueled anti-Americanism and unleashed chaos and disorder. These consequences were foreseen by antiwar critics, including this magazine, but the critics' warnings were swamped by the Administration's lies.

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