Tucker Carlson’s Anti-Neocon Obsession Just Led Him to Endorse and Excuse El-Sayed’s 9/11 Rhetoric
While today’s headlines will rightly focus on Democrats across the country, from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to progressive streamer Hasan Piker, who have spent the time leading up to the 25th anniversary of 9/11 disrespecting the country and sanitizing anti-American rhetoric, the most shameful betrayal comes from someone who once sat at the very center of the conservative movement.
Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson used his Friday newsletter to provide cover for Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, defending the Democrat amid scrutiny over his past 9/11 remarks while demanding that Michiganders keep Republican Mike Rogers away from Washington. That is about as close to an official endorsement as Carlson is likely to give, even after his comments just last week.
However, it is alarming, and revealing. Just as progressivism, and Trump-Derangement Syndrom can become an all-consuming disease, so can a blind, raging hatred of neoconservatism.
"Everyone agrees that the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, was the worst crime ever committed on U.S. soil. Thousands of innocents died, skyscrapers crashed to the ground, and untold numbers of first responders continue to endure the long-term health consequences of inhaling toxic air at Ground Zero. But that is not the whole story," Carlson wrote.
Carlson goes on to blast George W. Bush for invading Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with the 9/11 terror attacks. That claim is true. But then Carlson climbs onto his moral high horse, arguing that Bush got “hundreds of thousands of innocents killed, had tens of thousands of American military casualties, and catalyzed the creation of ISIS.” When El-Sayed is accused of disrespecting 9/11, Carlson insists that, in reality, he merely “understands the basic concept that murdering hundreds of thousands of people is bad.”
Carlson then turns his attention to Republican Mike Rogers, who correctly pointed out that El-Sayed’s position is disqualifying: “It is disqualifying for a U.S. Senate Candidate to believe that Americans should ‘center’ their grief from 9/11” on those killed in the wars that followed, rather than first on the nearly 3,000 Americans murdered by al-Qaeda that day. Rogers called El-Sayed’s attitude toward “the worst tragedy in American history” disgusting and said it made him unfit for public office.
"Disgusting?" Carlson asks. "Understanding that the Bush administration was wrong to kill hundreds of thousands of people and waste trillions of dollars in Iraq, even though, again, Iraq did not do 9/11, is disgusting?"
"Slaughtering thousands of innocent people is atrocious no matter who is responsible. If Rogers is deranged enough to think that Jihadis are evil for murdering enough Americans to fill a Division III hockey arena, but that the Pentagon deserves two thumbs up for killing enough to pack Ohio State’s football stadium multiple times, then he cannot possibly have the judgment necessary to adequately serve the needs of American voters," he wrote, before adding:
"We hope the good people of Michigan keep this man far away from Washington."
This is the disease of anti-neoconservatism. Yes, the Iraq invasion was a mistake, innocent people died unnecessarily, and America made serious errors in the wars that followed. But acknowledging that does not require placing the Americans murdered on 9/11 on equal moral footing with every death that followed.
The argument assumes America alone is responsible for every consequence of those wars, as if the Taliban, al-Qaeda, Iran, Iraq, and countless other actors had no agency. And it is the same logic used to explain away 9/11 by anti-neocon types, especially libertarians. Bin Laden opposed U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, sure, but those forces were there at the invitation of the Saudi government after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. An individual's anger about a foreign-policy decision of their own country, does not grant anyone the right to murder 2,977 innocent Americans. Although Tucker might disagree.
Even worse, this disease puts Americans in greater danger. It's adherents advocate a kind of isolationism that assumes America can freeze its global position in place simply by refusing to engage, as if our adversaries will politely pause their ambitions because Washington has. China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea do not see a retreating America as peaceful. They see an exposed underbelly.
These Carlson-types insist America is uniquely responsible for the world’s evils, and would wait to confront threats until it is already too late, refuse to defend allies, and confuse abandoning commitments with avoiding war. At their core, they proclaim peace while rationalizing weakness.
And that is what Carlson’s newsletter ultimately boils down to, the rationalization of weakness: A weak mind; a weak will; a weak conception of history; a weak hope for the future, and a weak faith in the greatest country on Earth.
Carlson’s disease is not unique, which is exactly why conservatives must recognize it wherever it infects our politics. On 9/11, my sympathy, even as someone who was not alive to witness it, is with the 2,977 innocent Americans murdered by al-Qaeda. Their deaths are not moral props for an argument about Iraq, nor are they an opportunity to lecture America about the sins of its foreign policy. They were murdered by fanatics. America did not deserve it. And no amount of revisionism, moral equivalence, or anti-American grievance will ever make me feel sympathy for anyone but the Americans who died that day.
