I first posted a version of the following on HuffPo two years ago tomorrow. It's amazing to me how little has changed in the public's thinking on the subject, and how often we still hear the major media echo the same nonsense they've been spewing since they first beat the drums of war. More disturbing still are the rash of revisionists that have surfaced this century who are still trying to sell us on the notion that Vietnam was a "winnable war" that peace loving people on the left should never have stopped. Well ... indulge me while I chose to honor this day by revisiting my frustrations from two years ago ... because so little has changed since then.
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9/11 Changed Nothing
I am sick and tired of hearing about the so-called “post 9/11 world”. I am sick and tired of reading that 9/11 “changed everything”.
As an excuse for the damage this administration has done to our military, to this country and to our reputation in the world, it rings as hollow as a tin drum. The idea that somehow the events of September 11th, 2001 changed the world is bullshit - pure and simple.
Why did it change everything? Because George Bush told you it did? Because you saw something you didn’t like on TV that day? Because, at least in the United States, people shrieked and cried and wailed and mourned that day, in much the same way they often do in the rest of the world - pretty much any day of the week? !! Well, welcome to the rest of the world.
Why weren’t the days our citizens were taken hostage the days that “changed everything” ?? Why wasn’t the day that our Embassies were bombed the day that “changed everything”? Why don’t we live in a “post 2/26 world”? Why wasn’t the bombing of the USS Cole the day that “changed everything”? Why wasn’t the Oklahoma City bombing the day that “changed everything”? Don’t we live in a “post Timothy McVeigh world”, too ???
Is it because Limbaugh or Hannity or the rest of the bought-and-paid-for media didn’t tell you that those days “changed everything”? Is it because your president and his administration didn’t repeat, over and over and over again, ad nauseam, that it “changed everything”? Is that the reason?
Think people. Answer the questions honestly, in your own mind, to your own satisfaction.
Why is the date 9/11 more important to you than 2/23? Why is 9/11 more significant to you than 4/26? Do you even remember what those dates represent?
What was it that made 9/11/01 different for you? Was it the live images on TV? Is that what did it? Couldn’t you imagine what it must have looked like when the bombs at the Embassies went off? Remember that our embassies are our sovereign territory – our soil. If they are bombed, we are bombed.
Was it the fact that nobody videotaped McVeigh’s criminal act, that the media wasn’t constantly rerunning the tape when half the federal building in Oklahoma City fell down? Are the people who died in Oklahoma City any less dead then those who died in New York? Have their families suffered any less by their loss? Please answer honestly.
Or perhaps it’s just the quantity! Is that it? How many people have to die to reach the critical mass required to totally overreact to a situation? Are more than two thousand too many? Are less than two hundred acceptable? Oklahoma City only had 163 fatalities. Is that well within your acceptable death rate per terrorist attack on American lives to NOT be a date that “changed everything” ? ? Had McVeigh killed 1,000 people in Oklahoma, would that have been a day that changed everything? Would that have been enough to start detaining citizens of this country indefinitely, without charge? Or would he have had to kill 5,000 because it wasn’t carried live on all the major networks and replayed repeatedly for weeks? Or do you need the total of 5,000 bodies - plus the president telling you that it was a day that “changed everything”. Would that be enough to make it “that day”? Would that be enough to make this the “post 4/26 world”? Ask yourselves.
If McVeigh killed 10,000 people, would that be enough to start torturing American citizens to find out information? Somebody knew something, right? ? Didn’t they ?? How many folks would McVeigh have had to kill to justify suspending the constitution and declaring Martial Law? Why aren’t we torturing American citizens in the Michigan militias to find out who the next McVeigh is going to be – before he strikes? Wouldn’t that also be following a preemptive policy? Wouldn’t that make us all safer? Didn’t he kill enough people?
Think before you answer. The answers are important. ¬
Ask yourself this: How many Americans would have to die? How catastrophic an event would have to be recorded – and played for you on television over and over and over again – for you to think it was OK to start treating American citizens the way you’re willing to treat people from Yemen, or Syria, or Afghanistan, or Iran, or Iraq, or Saudi Arabia or Palestine?
Or is there perhaps another perspective one might have of the last five years? Is there another way to look at the intervening events since 9/11/01?
Do you want to know what days really “changed everything”? Those would be the days we surrendered the moral high ground. Those would be the days we became no better than our enemies. One day that “changed everything” would be the day that we invaded Iraq without provocation or imminent threat. Our own Secretary of State, and our own National Security Advisor had publicly announced just a few months before that Iraq was a threat to no one, not even its own neighbors. It could barely project its military force to control its own country. And our own weapons inspectors were already in Iraq, stating that there were no weapons to be found. Our invasion of Iraq … THAT was a day that changed everything!
Are there others that you can think of? What about the day we started holding detainees indefinitely without due process of law - the day we started renditions to countries we knew would torture the captors we brought them – the day we started torturing them ourselves - the day we started spying on American citizens without a warrant - the day our soldiers in Iraq started to rape and murder the people Bush claims we are there to “liberate from tyranny”. I would argue that, if anything, those are “the days that changed everything”.
The day we invaded Iraq was the day that we embarked on a new foreign policy. That was the day Bush told our citizens, and through him we told the world that we, the United States of America, were willing to preemptively attack a sovereign nation that posed no imminent threat to us and no threat to any of our allies. That was the day our strutting, swaggering president thumbed his nose at the world, our NATO partners, and said, in effect, “We’re big enough now. We don’t need the rest of the world. We can go it alone. I don’t need your intelligence to warn us about impending attacks. We don’t need your cooperation. We are cocky and powerful enough to be isolationist. Even though we plan to invade, overthrow and indefinitely occupy Iraq, we don’t even need anything approaching the global support my Daddy got for the first gulf war.”
Two trillion dollars to cover their asses. Two trillion dollars to divert our attention from the fact that this country was caught with its pants down – on their watch. Two trillion dollars to obscure the fact that our incompetent National Security Advisor and our vacationing President had dropped the ball … had let the American people down … by ignoring all the warning signs, and failed to prevent what we have long confirmed was both a predictable and preventable attack.
Tens of Thousands of Lives - that’s a lot of lives. That’s a lot of human suffering. Billions of Dollars per week - with no end in sight. That’s a lot of money to spend in an embarrassingly failed enterprise. But to persist in that folly, in denial of all the evidence, is beyond inexplicable. One can only surmise that Bush finds the results in Iraq acceptable, even “according to plan” - which has to make you wonder.
And have the past five years of the Bush administration made the world safer from terrorists? Well, that’s only debatable if you completely ignore the evidence. Our NATO allies in Spain have suffered devastating rush-hour bombings in their commuter train system. Did they announce that that day “changed everything”? Great Britain, another NATO ally, has informed us in no uncertain terms that the most recent bombing attempt in their country came from HOME GROWN terrorists. Young men who were British citizens made those attempts – NOT some unmonitored imported agents of evil from Saudi Arabia, but homeys who were fed up with British imperialist designs on Iraq. In other words, they were the would-be Timothy McVeighs of the UK. Did the UK bombing occur on a day that “changed everything”?
Americans must be reminded that our allies came to our defense immediately after 9/11. They understood the meaning of the treaty. NATO is a mutual defense pact. That’s why NATO troops are in Afghanistan – fighting for us. Likewise, Americans must understand that when Spain is attacked, we are attacked. When England has been bombed, we’ve been bombed. That’s what being a signatory of NATO means. So have the past five years made us safer? No. Forget about the fact that eight years passed between the first WTC attempt and the second. We know our enemies have all the time in the world.
Perhaps the British would-be “McVeighs” understood the implications of the infamous Downing Street memo in a way that still seems to elude Americans, because the right-wing media in this country refuses to give it 1/100th of the drumbeat that they would give an issue as globally insignificant as the extradition of one alleged pedophile.
9/11 changed nada, nothing, zilch, zero
So, the next time you’re tempted to echo any of the great “deciders” dictums - bite your lip - hold your tongue - pause for a second and ask yourself some critical questions. Does what he says make any real sense at all? Or is your entire miserable political life no more than knee-jerk and lock step with the people who manipulate you - because they need your consent to rule you at your own expense.
If 9/11 changed everything, then going after the perpetrators of 9/11 would have been the most important thing for us to do … but Bush didn’t do it. Instead, two months after 9/11 he sent less troops into Afghanistan than there are police in New York City. Hardly a priority for him, was it? But the media never challenged those decisions when they were being made … and here we are today, in a morass.
Sure, ABC’s revisionist mini-series is particularly egregious, but all the networks are the same. We only kid ourselves if we believe that FOX alone is responsible for American public opinion. Even CNN put profit before country when, four years ago, their programming, all day - everyday, beat the drums of war in Iraq. Nobody’s hands are clean on this one.
Yesterday’s media circus went out of its way to exploit the events of 9/11. All the networks, without exception, did everything in their power to pull at your heartstrings. All day long, images and speeches and commentary and survivor reminiscences filled the airwaves, saturating us with programming designed to elicit feelings ranging from morose to melancholy, from frustration to rage.
That’s why they call what they do “programming” … get it? Do you want to be “programmed”? Isn’t that what got us into this mess to begin with? Our programming?
Now here this: You all have an opportunity, people. You can make change - and here’s a start. Turn off your television sets. Just turn them off – and encourage others to do the same. Give it up for however long it takes to – you name it. Turn it off until we get out of Iraq. Turn it off until they get their priorities straight. Turn it off until they stop the manipulation and the lies. Believe me, you won’t miss anything. Trust me on this. Any series you’re addicted to can be acquired at a latter date.
Get your news elsewhere. Get your sports elsewhere. Get all of your entertainment elsewhere. Send the clearest message you can to the networks. (And make no mistake about it, almost all television is controlled by the networks, even the stations that don’t seem to be.) Just wait and see what happens when their ad revenues drop like a stone. Who wants to pay for airtime when nobody’s watching? Resist the temptation of having that constant intrusion in your lives. Make the war in Iraq more important to them than who killed JonBenet Ramsey.
Or, if you prefer, continue to be programmed …
… and get what you deserve …
… War Without End.
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