The impact on the international scene

Isaac Kramnick, left, vice provost for undergraduate education and the Richard J. Schwartz Professor of Government, and Barry Strauss, professor of history, listen to another of the panelists during the "Impact of 9/11 on the International Scene" session, Sept. 9. Charles Harrington/University Photography

By Blaine P. Friedlander Jr.

The first of the 9/11 faculty panel discussions during the week, "The Impact of 9/11 on the International Scene," was held Sept. 9 in Call Auditorium of Kennedy Hall -- where each of the week's panels were held. Barry Strauss, professor of history; Valerie Bunce, chair of the government department; and Benedict R. O'G. Anderson, the A. L. Binenkorb Professor of International Studies, served as panelists and Vice Provost Isaac Kramnick, the R.J. Schwartz Professor of Government, was the moderator and opened the proceedings.

Recalling a New Yorker magazine essay written by the noted author, editor and Cornell alumnus E.B. White '21, Kramnick quoted from White's words, appropriate to our time but written a half-century earlier about New York City, during another time of war: "The city, for the first time in its long history, is destructible ... The intimation of mortality is part of New York now: in the sound of jets overhead, in the black headlines of the latest edition."

As the Sept. 11 attacks have led to war in Afghanistan and the winds of war are swirling about Iraq, Strauss detailed the enormity of the situation and the passion he feels: "The color of this hour is not black but red. It is red for the blood that has been shed and which, I fear, remains to be shed," he said. "Red for the righteous anger that Americans still feel on this day and will always feel; red for the embarrassment of a patriot at both the inadequacy of our government's response since [the Sept. 11 attacks] and at the inanity of our intellectuals' reaction."

A student asked the panel about the days of the Cold War and of the notion of "mutually assured destruction" during that time -- a time when the United States clearly knew its enemies. The student wanted to know if anyone on the panel yearned for those days. Bunce replied: "I am not a great fan of mutually assured destruction. I think we were damn lucky, and I am not at all nostalgic for the regimes of the Cold War."

One student asked the panel, if the United States were to capture Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, what would their trials possibly look like? Anderson answered the question swiftly: "Washington has no intention of capturing Osama Bin Laden or Saddam Hussein. They're going to be dead."