Five years later

It's been five years since our world changed.  Being in New York on the anniversary of September 11th is sobering, indeed.  But no, I'm not going to wax poetic with tributes to those who lost their lives that day, or resolutely declare my resolve as an American.  There will be plenty of that today.  Besides, I think that lost in all of the patriotism, ceremony and refrains of "God Bless America" is a real examination of what happened that day, why it happened, and how we've responded to it.

 

We were attacked.  We were told we were attacked by people who "hate freedom" and "despise our way of life."  We retaliated.  We were inundated with the idea that America could do no wrong.  What could we have possibly done to deserve this?  Why would anyone hate us?

 

Those who tried to examine this issue were accused of saying that 9/11 was America's fault.  How could it be our fault, they responded angrily.  We are America, and we are always right.  Instead of a true look into the causes of this tragedy (as all events in history occur in a sequence of cause and effect) we were told simply that we were in a battle of good vs. evil, and don't you dare question who is good and who is evil.

 

No where in the "debate" did anyone mention the 1953 covert action by the United States in Iran that removed a democratically-elected Prime Minister and placed the pro-U.S. Shah in power, adding to the anti-U.S. sentiment in the Middle East.  No where in the "debate" was it mentioned that Osama bin Laden and his Mujahideen Army was armed and trained by the United States just 20 years prior, during the Soviet-Afghanistan War.  No where was it mentioned the constant presence of U.S. troops in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

 

It's amazing what 20 years can do.  We armed bin Laden in the 1980s because he was fighting the "evil" Soviets.  We gave no thought of the consequences of those actions, or how our perception of who was “evil” would change.  But that's how the United States operates.  We police the world, engaging in conflicts here and there, bombing to the Stone Age the occasional tropical island or third-world country to flex our muscles, never thinking about what might actually happen to us as a result of those actions.

 

I am by no means excusing the actions of the terrorists on 9/11.  Innocent civilians did not deserve to die that day, especially not as an indirect result of actions unknown to them taken by their government.  But to say that the action was unprovoked is not entirely true.  September 11^th was part of a chain of events stretching back to the mid-twentieth century and before, a chain that continues today.  Again, cause and effect.  In fact, it is critical that we understand why we were attacked, because if we do not accept our enemy as real human beings with wants and desires, some legitimate and some not, we will not defeat him.

 

President Bush has said repeatedly - to defend his administrations actions since 9/11 - that "America has learned the lessons of September the 11th.  I don't think he could be more wrong.  I think the main lesson of September the 11th is that we live in a world that is not content to exist in the shadow of American economic, cultural and military imperialism.  The jubilant celebrations in the streets that took place across the Middle East on 9/11 are examples of this.  They were an indication that bin Laden was not just an anomaly, that there were millions of others who also were happy to see us attacked.  The lesson is that if we continue to ignore what the other 5.7 billion people in the world want, we will suffer greatly.

 

President Bush and his cabinet of neo-conservatives, bent on a world dominated by American interests, have ignored that lesson.  They ignored it first by bringing down the military might of the world's strongest nation against its weakest, Afghanistan.  Then, with Osama bin Laden cornered in the mountains, they removed our troops from that country to begin their next campaign, against Iraq.  Is Iran next?  When will it stop?

 

President Bush today claimed that we are in a struggle akin to the cold war.  Again, he could not be more wrong.  The cold war was not only a struggle between two nations, but a struggle in which both sides exercised restraint, understanding that too much force would destroy them both.  Today's conflict against terrorists is not a conflict against a nation, yet it is being fought as one.  And it is certainly being fought without restraint.  It is also being fought without any real thought to cause and effect.

 

I fear that if we continue along this path, another 9/11 may soon be on the way.

 

P.S. – Interesting story by one of my favorite Newsweek columnists, Jonathan Alter: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14753927/site/newsweek/