Crusader

Issue date: 11/18/05 Section: News

William Kristol draws a large audience for his Hanify-Howland lecture.

"It's a little better to be in Worcester than Cambridge, but not that much," William Kristol mused, poking fun at the liberalism of Massachusetts. Kristol, a prominent conservative, presented the Hanify-Howland 40th Memorial Lecture in Hogan Ballroom Wednesday night, speaking on the topic "American Foreign Policy after September 11th."

Kristol was explicitly called today's post-September 11th world of politics a "very unusual moment in history." He pointed to the cataclysmic terrorist attacks of 9/11 to be a momentous occasion, which breaks "the era of peace and prosperity" that was the 90s. "It was an abrupt and shocking transition. Things keep changing. We're not going back," he explained.

As many argue, Kristol agreed that we are now living in a "new world," one which we have been immersed in for a mere four years. Therefore, he contended that "it is hard to tell if policies made will be vindicated or proved mistakes." Kristol believes that the newness of the post-9/11 world does not allow for ultimately conclusive decisions to be drawn and that rather, time must allow the final outcome to emerge.

He analogized today's political instability and fickleness with that of the post-Cold War Truman era: "Truman was expected to be a domestic policy president and finish the New Deal agenda. If you said in '45 that we'd look back on Truman (and his administration) as far-seeing statesmen, no one expected that…That's not that different than the last four years."

He emphasized how in October 2000, in the late days of the Bush/Gore presidential election, "terrorism was not much of an issue at all." Kristol mentioned the often-forgot terrorist events in mid-October 2000, such as the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. He clarified his stance and that of his publication; he spoke of how "The Weekly Standard" headlined the story as "US at War," thus foreshadowing how the international arena should see this event as part of a war against terror, not just an individual act. Nevertheless, he concluded that by Election Day, thoughts of terror had been virtually forgotten. "It is really startling to go back to that era…it is striking in retrospect," Kristol described the world pre-9/11.

Changing pace to talk about the internal policy changes that are a direct result of the terrorist events of 9/11, he continued: "We don't know what the post-9/11 world will look like and we don't know what Bush's post 9/11 foreign policy will be."

Continued...

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