Post 9/11 hangover
The anniversary of 9/11 has come and gone and now it's time for a few thoughts.
About part 2 of the ABC special... it was just plain weird. Were they drunk when they edited it? Seriously, there were strange cuts at the end of scenes which leads me to believe they were last-minute edits to avoid certain problems with the truth. And what was the deal with showing the entire hijacking scene twice? Was it a glitch in the Matrix? I sat here flashing on Yogi Berra thinking it was just like deja vu all over again.
And why were we not shown El Presidente on the morning of 9/11? And I thought it very odd that Richard Clarke was portrayed as calling the shots that morning until the ABC special after the movie, when I learned that Clarke is now ABC's security consultant.
There were a number of other things but really, my brain was a bit scrambled watching the footage of that horrible morning.
And in the middle of this we had Dubya giving a speech, and a rather odd one at that. He didn't just speak of 9/11. He also spoke of the war in Iraq and although it appears someone finally beat him over the head with a baseball bat to get him to stop linking Iraq and Hussein to 9/11, there was still this explicit link made between the War on Terror and Iraq.
To some degree I now agree with this linkage. The problem is that it was our invasion that made Iraq Al Qaeda's playground. As I mentioned in one of yesterday's post, prior to our invasion, there was no Al Qaeda in Iraq. Hussein made sure of that. We unleashed that hell and perhaps before he finally leaves office Bush might admit that. Instead, we get his tepid protest that the world is safer without Hussein in power.
He repeats this as a mantra, hoping We The People will buy into it. But no, I refuse. Hussein was contained. We had his eye on him and had him pretty well under our thumb. If he got a little weird, a few well-placed Tomahawk missiles would have sorted him out. Instead, it's now the Wild West over there and no place in the country is safe for ordinary Iraqis- or even unordinary ones. There have even been attacks in the so-called "Green Zone" that is the most heavily fortified section of Iraq.
But I will give El Presidente credit for pointing out that we are at war, even though it doesn't always seem like we are. But it is odd in that our country doesn't behave like it's at war. We're not asked to cut back or sacrifice; there's no campaign to buy war bonds. We're not being asked to conserve energy, use less oil and gas, or do any of those other things commonly done during wartime.
This, however, cuts both ways. Unfortunately, we don't seem to have a credible strategy for dealing with the threat of Islamic fundamentalism. Instead of trying to come to grips with it, understand it, and develop a counter-strategy for dealing with it, El Presidente and his team demonize it and slap simplistic tags upon it.
There was one passage in his speech that cracked me the hell up:
We have learned that they form a global network of extremists who are driven by a perverted vision of Islam -- a totalitarian ideology that hates freedom, rejects tolerance, and despises all dissent. And we have learned that their goal is to build a radical Islamic empire where women are prisoners in their homes, men are beaten for missing prayer meetings, and terrorists have a safe haven to plan and launch attacks on America and other civilized nations.
It cracked me up because this doesn't sound a hell of a lot different from what the Fundamentalist Christian Right does here in America. It also concerns me that the President does not see these things. And again, there has been little public effort to understand the enemy and their true motivation beyond the simplistic mush of "they hate freedom".
Until we can do that, we are doomed to remain at war.
Tags:
About part 2 of the ABC special... it was just plain weird. Were they drunk when they edited it? Seriously, there were strange cuts at the end of scenes which leads me to believe they were last-minute edits to avoid certain problems with the truth. And what was the deal with showing the entire hijacking scene twice? Was it a glitch in the Matrix? I sat here flashing on Yogi Berra thinking it was just like deja vu all over again.
And why were we not shown El Presidente on the morning of 9/11? And I thought it very odd that Richard Clarke was portrayed as calling the shots that morning until the ABC special after the movie, when I learned that Clarke is now ABC's security consultant.
There were a number of other things but really, my brain was a bit scrambled watching the footage of that horrible morning.
And in the middle of this we had Dubya giving a speech, and a rather odd one at that. He didn't just speak of 9/11. He also spoke of the war in Iraq and although it appears someone finally beat him over the head with a baseball bat to get him to stop linking Iraq and Hussein to 9/11, there was still this explicit link made between the War on Terror and Iraq.
To some degree I now agree with this linkage. The problem is that it was our invasion that made Iraq Al Qaeda's playground. As I mentioned in one of yesterday's post, prior to our invasion, there was no Al Qaeda in Iraq. Hussein made sure of that. We unleashed that hell and perhaps before he finally leaves office Bush might admit that. Instead, we get his tepid protest that the world is safer without Hussein in power.
He repeats this as a mantra, hoping We The People will buy into it. But no, I refuse. Hussein was contained. We had his eye on him and had him pretty well under our thumb. If he got a little weird, a few well-placed Tomahawk missiles would have sorted him out. Instead, it's now the Wild West over there and no place in the country is safe for ordinary Iraqis- or even unordinary ones. There have even been attacks in the so-called "Green Zone" that is the most heavily fortified section of Iraq.
But I will give El Presidente credit for pointing out that we are at war, even though it doesn't always seem like we are. But it is odd in that our country doesn't behave like it's at war. We're not asked to cut back or sacrifice; there's no campaign to buy war bonds. We're not being asked to conserve energy, use less oil and gas, or do any of those other things commonly done during wartime.
This, however, cuts both ways. Unfortunately, we don't seem to have a credible strategy for dealing with the threat of Islamic fundamentalism. Instead of trying to come to grips with it, understand it, and develop a counter-strategy for dealing with it, El Presidente and his team demonize it and slap simplistic tags upon it.
There was one passage in his speech that cracked me the hell up:
We have learned that they form a global network of extremists who are driven by a perverted vision of Islam -- a totalitarian ideology that hates freedom, rejects tolerance, and despises all dissent. And we have learned that their goal is to build a radical Islamic empire where women are prisoners in their homes, men are beaten for missing prayer meetings, and terrorists have a safe haven to plan and launch attacks on America and other civilized nations.
It cracked me up because this doesn't sound a hell of a lot different from what the Fundamentalist Christian Right does here in America. It also concerns me that the President does not see these things. And again, there has been little public effort to understand the enemy and their true motivation beyond the simplistic mush of "they hate freedom".
Until we can do that, we are doomed to remain at war.
Tags:
posted by Stevie Z at 2:32 AM
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