Quote:
Originally Posted by low&slow
With the passing of 7 years since the worst attack on our nation it seems that many are forgetting that Islamic extremism is still at war with us as they were before the 9/11 attacks. Our nation failed to recognize the threat it faced ( Beriut military base bombing, USS Cole, US embassies bombings and the first WTC bombing) and now seems to be going back to sleep regarding this continuing threat.
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Maybe so. And I have sympathy for those who were directly harmed by the 9/11 attacks. However, it has been the almost totally botched US response to 9/11 that really is the lasting legacy, not the direct harm caused by 9/11 itself.
I will never forget that 9/11 was the excuse used to invade Iraq (a country that reliable reports did, and still do, show had next to nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks).
I will never forget that 9/11 was used as an excuse to severely erode constitutional protections for US citizens, all in the name of "security".
I will never forget that right after 9/11 other governments were offering their help to the US to track down the culprits. However, the US chose to invade an uninvolved country , vs using the international good will to track down the international criminals actually responsible for 9/11 (thereby totally squandering that international good will).
I will never forget that the actions of our president (in part made possible by playing on 9/11 fears of the public) have resulted in record deficits, when we had a balanced budget going into that presidency. And this financial loss to the country will hurt our children for many years to come.
I will never forget that 9/11 was used as an excuse for the US to have government sponsored torture of prisoners. While some might say the people they were dealing with deserved such treatment, that assumes that nobody was picked up in error. And even if everyone involved did "deserve it" (and the sketchy evidence to date suggests some innocents were caught in that web), the torture combined with no due process makes it really hard for the US to claim it's citizens shouldn't be treated equally badly when they are detained by various foreign governments. i.e. this US government hypocrisy has made it much more dangerous for US citizens traveling in foreign lands.
I will never forget that 9/11 was used as a justification to spy on anyone the government wanted to, without any court oversight, simply by claiming (with no proof required) that it was a "terrorist investigation".
I will never forget the harm this administration's private war has been causing to our military's ability to defend out lands against real threats we might face. Simply put, the military is stretched too thin.
I will never forget that we have lost more people in the Iraq war, which was due solely to the administration using 9/11 as an excuse to invade Iraq, than we actually lost in the 9/11 attacks themselves!
And I will never forget how much the Iraq war (again, a war started as a result of the president using 9/11 as an excuse for his own agendas) has stretched our military to the breaking point, making US citizens much less safe should we actually be attacked by some other source (which could happen at any time).
I will never forget that those "weapons of mass destruction" not only haven't been found, but there is now evidence that some of the "evidence" the administration used (to claim they were there) was actually fabricated!
And I won't even forget that Iraq's government publicly condemned the 9/11 attacks, before they were later used as an excuse to invade Iraq itself.
All of this sure reminds me of the novel "1984" and the movie "Wag the Dog". The trouble is, it is the world we live in.
And the harms this administration has caused to our society are likely to last for many years to come. And as bad as 9/11 was (around 3000 people losing their life, large property damage, and a "loss of innocence"), it pales compared to the damage caused by the government using 9/11 as an excuse to do things that they never would have gotten away with without being able to constantly bring up the fear of 9/11.
Quote:
Originally Posted by low&slow
One success as we first began to fight back after 9/11 was recognizing that the funders of Al Queda and other Islamic extremist groups were using the wealth they received from the sale of oil to the US to attack us. Our gov't took aggressive action against so-called Islamic charities to cut off some of the money flow but has failed to address the primary reason for this massive flow of our wealth to the Middle East; our lack of energy independence.
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Following the money of extremists should be the work of police departments tracking "white color crime". The administration totally failed to take that approach, and instead turned this into just another war of "us vs. them". As a result, we have failed to make ourselves more secure, failed to deal with the root cause of the issue, and caused massive damage to our own well being.
And you are correct that our lack of energy independence is one cause for our insecurity. And I am a hypermiler here, and often try to do my small part by using my energy more efficiently. However, I will never forget that dealing with energy independence was one of the (many) things that this administration put aside in its thirst to use 9/11 for its own agendas!
But then again, some would call me a "liberal", if only because I feel we should THINK about what the consequences of our actions are, and try to address the causes of our problems. i.e. I don't believe (as some neo-conservatives are so fond of doing) that we should just deal with the current symptoms of a problem (while ignoring the long term consequences) and therefore have some knee-jerk reaction to the next crisis (so it looks like you are "doing something", even if you are making the underlying problem WORSE).
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