The day after 9/11, Kagan father-son duo said ‘take the war’ to Palestine

Here’s some radical news. A video has emerged with a montage of clips from an interview recorded the day after 9/11 featuring Donald and Frederick Kagan, two members of a leading neoconservative family. This father/son Kagan duo were advocating responding to the 9/11 attacks by invading Palestine and taking out the Palestinian Authority. Speaking of those who had attacked America, they said with assurance that we should attack Palestine. “We have to take the war to these people,” Frederick Kagan said.

Donald Kagan is a Greek scholar at Yale, so he must know! Son Frederick is at the American Enterprise Institute. The year before they’d penned a book called While America Sleeps.

Milt Rosenberg: Are you suggesting that we’ve got to go to war or rather we should..

Frederick Kagan: We are at war. We are at war. We have no option. See, I would like to see military operations commencing immediately.

Donald Kagan: The longer we go chasing around the actual perpetrators our job is going to be next to impossible.

Frederick Kagan: I didn’t say that we know exactly who conducted this attack. What I pointed out is that there are a few groups out there that are dedicated to conducting exactly this sort of attack and I said that we should attack those groups regardless of whether we know exactly which one specifically conducted this. But we hardly need any more evidence to know that it would be a very good idea to take Bin Laden out even if he had nothing to do with this.

Milt Rosenberg: He’s done enough already is your point.

Frederick Kagan: Exactly

Milt Rosenberg: Who else is?

Donald Kagan: And one key place is certainly the Palestinian Authority, these guys are at the center of all sorts of terrorist organizations that we’ve seen operate before. ...