Smoke And Mirrors, Redux September 19, 2007
Posted by littlebangtheory in Politics and Society.Tags: Bin Laden, September 11, war of aggression
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So I’ve been struggling with the horrors of September 11, 2001 and how to make sense of it all and move forward in a productive way.
I remember where I was when I heard the news – in the County Court House, expecting to testify in a case involving an idiot who crashed his car in our tiny town after passing me on a corner, going at least 100 miles an hour. The court personnel and lawyers were scurrying about, looking serious and buzzing amongst themselves as we commoners sat cowed and clueless, trying to look legal and waiting for direction.
Eventually the word got out: the United States was under attack. We were being slaughtered by an undeclared enemy who had struck at the Heart of Everything American, New York City.
I was in shock, along with everyone else with the wits to understand the import of what we were hearing.
Six years later, the Best Estimate Death Toll stands at 2,749.
2,749.
And that’s not counting the thousands of folks who dropped what they were doing to rush down to NYC to lend a hand, most of whom are seriously disabled from breathing the shit which was off-gassing from The Pile, and who now struggle with authorities to try to get help with their related health problems.
2,749.
That’s an awful lot of innocent people being made to pay for the sins of the few.
So what kind of monster would kill 2,749 innocent people, and why?
Osama Bin Laden.
Actually, despite the fact that he master-minded the deaths of almost three thousand Americans (and doubtless would have done cartwheels if he had topped that by some multiples of ten,) Osama wasn’t always a monster. Seemed like he was a buddy of Uncle Sam when he was fighting the Russians in Afghanistan. At least the Average Joe might assume he was a Bud, given the fact that we armed and trained his men when they were serving as appetizers for the Red Bear.
Hey, anybody who kills commies must be A-OK, right? Right??
And he was a Favorite Son when he petitioned his family friends the Al-Bush tribe for redress of grievances, namely that he considered Saudi Arabia to be a Holy Land and wanted the US to stop supporting its Godless Murderous Tyrant Dictator and get our Infidel Army the hell outta there. Not outrageous requests, if what you want is peace and piety.
So what moved O-Man from the “support this freedom fighter” column into the “rub out” column?
Well basically it was this:
After he helped liberate Afghanistan from the Godless Ruskies, O-boy expected the US to say, “Mission Accomplished” and leave. You know, bring freedom from the Red Threat, the purveyors of stupid ideas like Workers’ Rights, Health Care For All and so on, and then go away.
Well, we didn’t go away. And we paid no attention to his entreaties about how we should get our military out of his homeland and stop exporting what many in the Islamic world see as Moral Corruption in the form of Western Values. We continued our hegemaniacal plunder of the Middle East and barely acknowledged his existence.
Well, we’re acknowledging him now, aren’t we.
It’s six years later, and Osama has become our traveling companion along the roads of our lives. He’s with us as we cross major bridges and drive through the tunnel under the bay, not because we heard his plea to let his culture be, but because he’s become a Useful Tool in the War on Sanity. We fear him because he orchestrated the slaughter of 2,749 innocent Americans.
2,749.
That’s a lot of innocent people. And murderers, or people who orchestrate murder (think Charles Manson) should NEVER be excused for their actions.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
So somewhere along the way, our fear of Osama manifested itself as a War of Aggression against a country and people who had nothing to do with Al-Qaida or Osama, a War of Aggression which has spent the lives of 3,775 young Americans, a War of Aggression which has wasted the lives of well over 650,000 innocent Iraqis, a War of Aggression which has cost more than 4,000,000 Iraqi refugees their homes, their friends, the lives they knew, the Pursuit of Happiness which We Hold to be Self Evident.
2,749.
3,775.
650,000.
4,000,000.
Where does it end? Who’s the Good Guy here? Who’s the Bad Guy? Who has caused the most suffering and despair and death?
People who orchestrate death should NEVER be excused for their actions.
