Have we forgotten what we learned after 9/11? - LIVE with Douglas Murray

Dan Senor (0:00)

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Douglas Murray (0:22)

One of the remarkable things about the post-911 world was that we were simultaneously told two things from the highest levels of government across the West. The first was, and there was much value in this, not to generalize or essentialize Muslims. Not to say that the hijackers, for instance, had any connection with Muslims in general. But at the same time as we were told that no Muslims should be held responsible for an act of terror carried out in the name of Islam, we were told that everybody else is collectively responsible for any ill ever done by anyone in the West. And I reject this.

I think you could play one of those programs, but not both simultaneously, or not both simultaneously without some of us putting up our hands and calling BS. And I deeply object to this, the idea that a generation should be taught every imaginable ill that has ever occurred in the American or Western past as being something for which they today must atone.

Dan Senor (1:37)

It's 3 p.m. on Friday, September 11th in Israel as Israelis prepare for Rosh Hashanah. It is 8 a.m. on Friday, September 11th here in New York City.

A solemn date, of course, for New Yorkers and all Americans as we mark the 25th anniversary of the September 11th attacks. Before today's episode, a quick housekeeping note. On Thursday, October 22nd, just five days ahead of the Israeli elections, Call Me Back will hold a live taping at the Stryker Center in New York City where I'll sit down with Dan Shapiro, Dahlia Scheinlein and Brett Stevens to discuss what's at stake in Israel's 2026 election and what its results will mean for the US-Israel relationship. Tickets have gone on sale, so if you want to join us, please follow the link in the episode description. Now on to today's episode. Earlier this week, I had the privilege of sitting down for a conversation with Douglas Murray at a forum for the Manhattan Institute, a think tank here in New York City. The program was focused on the 25th anniversary of the September 11th attacks. The forum explored what the legacy of 9-11 demands of us now, and also how New York City's security posture has changed, as well as the evolution of Islamist and anti-Western radicalism throughout the West over the last couple of decades. Again, I had this conversation with Douglas Murray, who is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He is also a columnist for the Free Press and is with CBS News. He is a best-selling author. We have featured his most recent book on this podcast. Here is an edited version of my conversation with Douglas as we reflected on this 25th anniversary since 9-11. My conversation right after this short message.

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Douglas, I want to start the conversation by going right back to September 11th, 2001 There's a real sense that there's so much we got right, and there's so much that we as Americans and the West understood after September 11th, 2001 Let's call it on September 12th. What of those things that we understood, do you think we have since forgotten? Or maybe now suddenly, you would look back and say we misunderstood.

Douglas Murray (4:42)

Well, first of all, of course, it's an enormous pleasure to be here with you, Dan, and with so many friends and colleagues here today. And some readers will know, I've quoted this a number of times in Collins, but there's a passage in the Czech writer Milan Kondera's book, Testaments Betrayed, which he published in the 1990s after the fall of the Berlin Wall, in which he said something about the nature of history, which is always on my mind. He said, mankind operates in a fog and stumbles along the trail, makes the trail as he walks.