9/11 didn’t change anything

Glenn Greenwald points out that a number of American right-wingers recently went to Paris to advocate in favor of MEK, the anti-Iranian (and also anti-American) terrorist group, formerly backed by Saddam Hussein.
Greenwald’s analysis of the hypocrisy and insanity of this is worth reading. So I’ll just note that this proves, once again, that 9/11 didn’t change a thing—except in the sense that it rolled back time.
From the late forties until the Soviet Union collapsed, our government’s worldview was shaped around the Cold War. It was the apocalyptic struggle of our time, with America as the good guy and the USSR and its allies (all Communist governments, Communist parties and anyone vaguely to the left of McCarthy) as the black hats. Really black. Evil. A menace that had to be defeated, no matter what the cost.
In which light, everything we did was sanctified by the justness of our cause. Overthrow democratic governments? Not a problem if they were “left-leaning” or “socalist.” Install and support tyrants, genocides and fascist thugs? Hey, they were anti-Communist! Anyone who wasn’t with us was presumed to be against us and never against us because we’d done anything bad—no, it had to be because they’d been seduced by the Dark Side.
Then the Cold War ended, and we spent the nineties discussing a peace dividend, and trying to figure out our role in a world that was no longer structured (at least in our minds) around the two poles of Americanism and Communism.
And then came 9/11. And like Pavlov’s dogs, we reacted to it the way the Cold War had trained us. Anything we did was justified because our enemy was evil, and we were vulnerable, just as imperiled as when the USSR had its missiles pointed at us (large numbers or right-bloggers have insisted that al Qaeda is a much, much more terrifying threat than Nazi Germany). Torture? Illegal detention? Hey, this is war! The Constitution isn’t a suicide pact!
And likewise, anyone who isn’t allied with us deserves whatever we do to them (as I also mention here) whereas equally bad governments that ally with us are washed in the blood of the lamb. Iran is an unacceptable theocratic tyranny but Saudi Arabia is—well, acceptable, even though it has everything bad Iran has and then some.
And since Iran is Our Enemy, an anti-American terrorist group is now a useful ally (so much for the war on terrorism).
Maybe if 9/11 had happened when we didn’t have Bush’s cabinet with its staff of aging Cold Warriors we’d have done better. Maybe not. Iran has defied us, which automatically makes it persona non grata in American eyes: It crossed us by seizing the embassy, and now it’s permanently on our shit list.
Maybe once the older Boomers die off and we have leaders too young to remember the USSR, our worldview will change. As the last election showed, the number of people motivated by charges of “Communist!” is dwindling—though the Tea Party movement (heavily older and conservative, from most of what I’ve read) shows they’ll do a lot of damage before they fade from the public view.