Bald Eagle, my concern is the following:
9/11 was the most horrible recent experience Americans have encountered and it happened on a scale comparable with natural disaster. It was huge!
But when something horrible happens the important question becomes: Why did it happen? I never heard this question ever asked by the Bush Administration.
Have you ever heard an American political leader ask: Perhaps we took too much copper, too much tin, too much gold, too much silver, too many diamonds, too much timber, too much rubber and too much oil from so third world nations. And perhaps in order to get all of this, we supported too many ruthless dictators around the world, dictators who persecuted their own people in order to maintain their power to make the nice economic deals with a willing U.S.
As a consequence, over the decades, people living in nations rich in resources saw only impoverished and dictatorial living conditions. Millions of folks in so many third world nations have died because of living under dictators, and have suffered immensely from all of the power grabs and consequent reprisals--almost all of which were met with US favor so long as the US insatiable corporate appetite got nourished.
So, yes, on a certain day three thousand Americans needlessly perished. And, afterwards, how many around the world thought: "Whatta ya now, they finally got a taste of their own medicine." When profits are put before people, it's not at all surprsing that a ripple effect like this would spread around the world in the aftermath of 9/11, especially in the Arab world where US oil policies have long been contingent on beefing up monarchies that shared very little with their people.
But also rippling throughout the world at this time was a huge sadness, one in incomparable form. The French introduced into the United Nations a resolution to form a worldwide coalition to rid the world of terrorism. The world had become more united than it had ever been, and from this an opportunity for America to show the very best of leadership.
Indeed, a rare moment had dawned on earth. There was finally an opportunity to begin a dialogue unlike any other on the world stage. Yes, there was widespread consent and understanding for taking the Taliban/Al Qaeda Afghani government down and moving against the heart of terrorism. Everyone was then on the same page!
But Bush's lack of diplomacy, lack of foresight, blew it! Big-time! You see, he forgot to ask an important question: Why did 9/11 happen? He forgot that education was also a powerful and needed tool to accompany any kind of a meaningful response to our September tragedy.
With Afghanistan still incomplete, and without skipping a beat, Bush immediately moved into a widening theater of war and terror politics, heaping lies and distortions about Iraq and spreading a false sense of fear over genuinely concerned people.
There was no reaching out to other nations; there was no self-criticism over past US policies; there were no new dialgues dealing with religious and racial intolerance.
In fact, only the month before 9/11 Bush threatened that the US would boycott the world conference on racism, sponsored by the United Nations. "You're either with us or against us" may work on the Texas praries, but not in a world filled with poverty and despair.
I submit that in concert with the military actions against Al Qaeda/Taliban, in the whole of the campaign against terrorism, that both self-criticism and education were and are necessary tools that have been and continue to be ignored by the Bush Administration.
We hear more and more that the Iraq War was long-planned. Is this why the only Iraqi government building that was protected was the oil ministry building? Is this why the Arab hatred of America grows more post-war than pre-war? Where are the happy Iraqis? Where is the quest for truth and the answer to why? |
