What was the appropriate response to the attacks of 9/11? Less than a month after the collapse of the World Trade Center, J. Bryan Hehir outlined the pastoral, social and policy responses necessary to meet the challenges of the post-9/11 world. Father Hehir called the policy response the most difficult of the three. "A measured response to transnational terrorism cannot be primarily a military response," Father Hehir wrote. "Deeper issues than the use of force lie beneath terrorist actions."
What Should Be Done?: From October 8, 2001
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Around the affluent world, new hostility, resentment and anxiety has been directed at immigrant populations that are emerging as preferred scapegoats for all manner of political and socio-economic shortcomings.
“Each day is becoming more difficult, but we do not surrender,” Father Igor Boyko, 48, the rector of the Greek Catholic seminary in Lviv, told Gerard O’Connell. “To surrender means we are finished.”
Many have questioned how so many Latinos could support a candidate like DonaldTrump, who promised restrictive immigration policies. “And the answer is that, of course, Latinos are complicated people.”
Catholic voters were a crucial part of Donald J. Trump’s re-election as president. But did misogyny and a resistance to women in power cause Catholic voters to disregard the common good?
In those early days, it was not so obvious that these attackers not only were attacking the US but were attacking the very legitimacy of the effort to limit war to state actors. To a certain extent, they have succeeded in legitimizing non-state warfare again. Taking up the problem of non-state warfare, especially when we have a major GOP candidate who is championing it (Dr. Ron Paul's 2001 and 2007 bills on reinvigorating letters of Marque and Reprisal) is something that could not have been realistically covered in 2001 but would have been a timely effort in these days. Well, maybe next year.