9/11, Alvin Lee, and Ten Years After

By Jason Gold

(“I’d love to change the world, but I don’t know what to do. So I’m leaving it up to you”. “I’d Love to Change the World” by Alvin Lee/Ten Years After)

I had planned to write and post this right around 9/11 but the muse strikes when the muse strikes and not always on demand. When Alvin Lee and Ten Years After recorded “I’d Love to Change The World” in 1971, the world was still basking in the hangover of sixties hippiedom and all that came with it including the refusal to let go of Woodstock, the realization that the age of Aquarius was not around the corner, and bracing for the oncoming rush of the lost decade of disco. The song spoke of disenchantment and was rife with hard-core cynicism, apathy, and the reality that not much had changed despite best efforts of all involved, so as old “speedfingers” Lee opined in song and blazing fast guitar, best to leave the changes needed to someone else.

I think of the appropriateness of this song and its message of apathy 10 years on from the attack on the Twin Towers that day as memories flood back; sitting in the beit midrash learning with chavruta before going to work when the first plane hit; watching on television and not quite believing this was real; my children being brought home from school early; frantically trying to reach friends/neighbors/relatives in the city to make sure everyone was OK; the government hermetically sealing the country for a week; communicating by BlackBerry with a friend who was stranded in London as we both watched the BBC dumbfounded as they proceeded to blame the attack on the Israeli “occupation”; US flags going up all over Israel in solidarity while the Arabs danced on rooftops and gave out candy; and Bush being presidential while I and others were thanking Gd Almighty that Al Gore was not President.

But now, the patriotism and the resolve of that day ten years ago, are under attack by a corrosive mix of apathy, erosion of national will, and the continuing attempt of the left/progressives/Islamists/mainstream media stooges and useful idiots to redefine the narrative in a haze of nation-killing political correctness. Rather than blame the terrorists themselves, the left is retelling the story as “we had it coming”. We had it coming for the US support of Israel, we had it coming for imperialistic ways and the murder of “innocent” Arabs and any other story that self-hating Jews or Americans or both could care to spin. It is that corrosive mix and loss of will to do what needs to be done that has crippled the noble war on terrorism that Bush rallied the US and the world to.

If one were to try and identify the exact moment that the corrosive mix was set into motion, I would have to say that Moshe Feiglin defined it in his usual precise and insightful way. Feiglin found himself caught in the US during 9/11 and was quite fearful of not being able to get home to Israel for Rosh HaShana. He watched Bush’s rallying “ war on terrorism” speech and was quite impressed until Bush got to the part of Islam being a religion of peace. Feiglin promptly turned to the owner of the restaurant he was in and said, “You have just lost the war on terrorism”. His point to the shocked owner was that if one could not fight off political correctness and could not identify who the real enemy was, the national will would eventually be sapped and the knockout punch would never be delivered. Unfortunately we are seeing this now with the creeping attempt of sharia infiltration into the US, the lack of national leadership and will to truly finish the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with meandering around and “leading from behind”in Libya.

Feiglin would again prove prescient during Lebanon II when he stated that post-eviction of Gush Katif, the Israeli army had lost the ability to identify who the real enemy was, and that the words “enemy” and “victory” were seemingly expunged from the army lexicon. This, he predicted in the first weeks of the war to an incredulous media, would lead to a resounding defeat of the Israeli army. We know what happened next. This scenario is playing out in the US right now in all its foreign battlefield engagements, albeit in slow motion. How will it end? It depends who controls the narrative and if the US can shake off the apathy, the anti-US agenda of the Left, and “let someone else do it” attitude. As for Israel, as the public shifts Right while the Left continues its inevitable descent into irrelevancy while kicking and screaming all the way down, as the future leaders in the army and government tilt more right and more nationalistic, it is clearly not a question of “if” but “when” the yoke of the Leftists and their hatchet men in the courts/ media is thrown off and they are driven far out to pasture. Change the world, indeed. Wonder what Alvin would say about changing the world now? Will we overcome the Leftist assault and shake off the apathy and even the feelings of helplessness? Will we be able to do what the sixties generation was unable to do in the seventies? As some Jews plan their exit strategy to the true homeland (no, not Flatbush, Monsey or the 5 Towns) we will find out and much sooner rather than later.