Talking points: the pre-9/11 illusion

First of all let me admit that my mind has been heavily occupied; thinking, rethinking, hashing out, questioning, and DEMANDING ANSWERS about this terrible tragedy which I heard about today. The tragic break-up of Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston is devastating. It's terrible, and it has been consuming me. But today I wanted to talk about something else.

In a recent post, I commented on the common republican talking point which keeps being regurgitated all over me: "democrats want to take us back to a pre-9/11 mentality." I want to go a little further into that here. I think it is worth a good deconstruction. Before 9/11 we weren't Yankee fans. Before 9/11 we did not want the Patriots to win. Before 9/11 we did not live in perpetual fear. And before 9/11 we were not engaged in perpetual war. Back then we were not subjected to repetitive images of the World Trade Center buildings being flown into by hi-jacked passenger airlines and imploding into rubble, because back then (light bulb pops) it had never happened. And it is great footage. But what has it done to our mentality? And what have we allowed our government to do as a consequence?

How threatened are we? What is this war we are fighting? What are its consequences, and what are the possible outcomes? What are the greatest threats we face? Is terrorism one of them?

The United States has a population of close to 300 million people. In the last 50 years we have lost far less than 4000 citizens to terrorism on our own soil. According to CNN numbers, 2,973 people were killed on 9/11 (not including the terrorists), and as of Sept. 3rd 2006, 2,974 U.S. service men and women had been killed in Iraq and in what Bush calls the "war on terror."

In 1999 an average of 24.7 people died every day in traffic related fatalities in the United States. Nearly 10,000 people die every year in them. More than 560,000 Americans die of cancer every year. Nearly 1,000,000 Americans died last year from strokes, heart disease, and other cardiovascular disease. Our pollution of the planet is a huge factor in the rising surface temperatures of the world's oceans; this is in turn causing increased hurricane and typhoon activity, which in turn causes death and destruction. If we want to be afraid of something, we have much more we can be afraid of that is right in front of us. We are more likely to be run down by a bus while crossing the street, or shot while bird-hunting with Dick Cheney than we are to be killed in a terrorist attack. This is especially true in most of the red states. There is big news for the Bush lover who lives on a farm in Kentucky, Ohio, or Utah, who is so grateful for Mr. President protecting him the last 5 years, making sure he isn't blown up by an impassioned Jihadi. News Flash: dude, you are not a target. It's sort of odd that the big blue area's of the map, LA and New York City most of all, the places with the biggest bulls’ eye's on them, are consistently voting democrat. New York, for example, the state which received the harshest and deadliest blow on 9/11, voted for Kerry in 2004.

We are waging war. We are not under attack, and have not been for 5 years. We would do well to ask the people in Lebanon what it is like to be under attack, or the citizens of Baghdad who tasted “Shock and awe.” They were under attack. 9/11 was a tremendous tragedy. It is sad and the perpetrators of that crime should be brought to justice. But we must return to the case in point. Osama Bin Laden is not in Iraq. We are not putting all our resources into capturing him, and trying him in court. We are responsible for the situation in Iraq. We created the present environment there. Anyone who is not with us is against us. The more people you declare war on, the more people you will be at war with. We are busy making almost all of the Middle East our enemies (the special exception of course is Israel).

The other day I heard a “correspondent” on Fox news say (and I paraphrase), in reference to the American turned Jihadi/Muslim who was seen on tape inviting Americans to convert to Islam, that he had “turned to the dark side.” Not a friendly thing to say. Not all Muslims are terrorists, and saying that their religion is the “dark side” is not a very good way to influence them, or win them as friends.

Saddam was not innocent of crimes, nor a just ruler, and despite the fact that America helped bring him to power in the first place, he ruled with an iron fist. He did not tolerate terrorist organizations, or any fundamentalist groups who would inevitably be threats to his power. He is gone now. We have been, and are, inviting terrorists to Iraq by doing nothing less than telling them that “this is the front in the war on terror.” Basically an invitation. Come to Iraq, let’s have a war. This is not fair to the people of Iraq, and it is not fair to our soldiers.

I've begun asking myself what political reasons there might be which would motivate the decision makers to get bogged down there indefinitely? Otherwise why are we handling it so poorly (at least poorly to those who want it to end)? If we are going to war with the “dark side,” we certainly need a front in their territory. And Iraq is as good a location as any. It happens to be fairly central in the region.

But why would we want to do that? I don't know, and I don’t like conspiracy theories, but when you look at the situation for what it is, it doesn’t make sense. I have trouble believing that the Administration is handling everything so miserably on accident. Can they really be so hopelessly incompetent? I know many think they are.

It might be true that we are safer at home because we are fighting a war in another country; inviting the terrorists there to fight (as Bush has told us they are) so they won’t have as much time or energy to blow us up on our own turf. But unfortunately this is not a legitimate excuse to destroy a country. America's great power does not make the lives of its citizens more valuable than the other human beings on the planet, be they black, white, Hawaiian, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, or Buddhist. If we are fighting them there so we don’t have to fight them here, it is gravely unjust, cowardly, and criminal. It is the same as using torture chambers, or prisons to hold prisoners indefinitely without trial, outside the U.S. The fact that we do them does not make the acts legitimate.

Iraq was not a threat to us, even if the WMD stuff was true. To say that Iraq was a threat to America is like saying that France is a threat to China. The threat from terrorists is being overblown in the same way. We are making them bigger than they are. We are giving them more and more power by assigning them a role that they could not even at first have filled. If you show enough fear, even an armless midget will start to think he can beat you; and his friends and family will start to believe it as well. And the money comes pouring in. And so on.

Are we safer than we were the day before 9/11? Not really; we are still dying of car-accidents, heart-attacks, aids, and cancer, and we are still being shot by stray hunters bullets; and at about the same frequency. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is rising, the earth is getting hotter, the ice-caps and glaciers are melting. The voting process is being taken over by politically connected private corporations. Our soldiers are at risk in foreign countries. Considering the numbers of our service men and women who are deployed, and the fact that they are Americans, we would probably be forced to admit that by the numbers, our citizens are less safe than they were on Sept. 10th 2001. One thing is absolutely sure. Today we have more enemies. We have named them and declared war on them. We have empowered them, and we are busy uniting them against us. Each day we "stay the course" we give them more reasons to want to blow us up; maybe even you: Utah.