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Friday, November 02, 2007

There was no reason for 9/11 to change everything
Posted by Jill | 5:58 AM
The Bush Administration's mantra, and that of Rudy Giuliani's campaign, has been that "9/11 changed everything." But did it? And should we have let it? And if so, did the right things change?

It's hard to dispute that airline security and port security in this country were a joke, but six years later and they are STILL a joke, despite the boon to the packagers of 2-ounce travel bottles of shampoo. When a Jewish woman is pulled aside, interrogated for hours, and asked if she knows Osama bin Laden because she has icepacks and a paper on Islam in her luggage, and when a president continues to invoke Hitler appeasement long after his designated Hitler-equivalent has been toppled and executed; after a war that has gone on longer than it took to topple Hitler, you have to ask whether the right things have changed since 9/11 -- and in the right way.

Certainly the toppling of two of the tallest buildings in the United States live on national television and the loss of almost 3000 people was a cataclysmic, dramatic event. (I omit the Pentagon because that attack didn't occur live on television, had somewhat less destructive drama, and doesn't play on the American psyche in the way the towers do.) But it was hardly the first time this country has been touched by terrorism.

Jon Ponder at Pensito Review:

The Republican culture of fear was born out of the 9/11 attacks — which we are told “changed everything” because they were an “attack on America.” But when the World Trade Center was bombed in February 1993 by rightwing Islamic terrorists very like the ones who would take the towers down eight years years later, no one suggested that our response to this “attack on America” should be invading and occupying Iraq.


The Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta July 1996 was an “attack on America” — albeit by an American rightwing Christian fundamentalist terrorist. But no one suggested that we should eavesdrop on Americans and torture prisoners as a result.

The Oklahoma City bombing in April 1995, this time by another group of homegrown rightwing terrorists, was certainly an “attack on America” — in particular on a federal building and specifically targeting agents of the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. No one suggested shredding the Constitution as a result.

For most of the century after the Civil War, the Ku Klux Klan, a rightwing, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant terrorist group, attacked and killed Americans with guns, bombs and nooses. But during the first nine decades or so of this unrelenting reign of terror, hardly anyone seemed to mind very much, except of course for those who were the targets of the hatred and violence.

Around the globe, millions of people endure terror attacks without cowering under their beds. The Israelis have lived with terrorism since at least the 1970s — as have the Syrians, Lebanese, Saudis and others in the Middle East. The British stood stalwart against attacks by Irish separatists for generations. In just the past decade, terrorists have attacked in Colombia, Russia, China, Egypt, Mexico, Cuba, Kashmir, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Pakistan, Latvia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Chechnya, Spain, Finland and on and on.

Only in the Bush era has it become acceptable for Americans to cower in fear at the same threat that others in the world face with courage or at least equanimity. Among democracies, only does the United States government deliberately encourage and inflame cowardice among its citizens.


And that is the fundamental contradiction in the faux-macho that characterizes Republican politics these days. It's a bravado that aspires to project strength, but it relies on cowardice for its effectiveness. And it has worked smashingly on the minds of Americans. The same people who wave their flags on the Fourth of July will call talk radio shows and say "Well, I haven't done anything wrong, so I don't mind if the government listens to my phone calls." I wonder if, when these people were teenagers, they were exasperated if their parents snooped on what they were doing when they hadn't done anything wrong. The difference is that it's appropriate for a parent to be concerned with the safety and welfare of a child who may not yet have the maturity to understand the risks. It is not appropriate for a president to go snooping into the activities of Americans in the name of "safety."

In the article excerpted above, Jon goes on to point out that millions of people around the world live their lives without the promise of "safety." Life is inherently dangerous. We risk death every time we get into the car. We risk death from the roods we eat and the water we drink. Right now kids in New York and New Jersey seem to be risking death by using high school locker rooms. [Insert your own bioweapons planted in the Godless Liberal states conspiracy here.] Americans have more to fear from lax airline safety completely unrelated to security screening than they do from Brown Men™ on their flights. And ultimately, none of us gets out of this alive.

Reasonable steps to ensure national security are the government's responsibility. Public safety is a concern of the government. But when you have an Administration and a Republican Party that does not want to provide health coverage to children who need it, who forbids meat packers to test their products for mad cow disease, guts government oversight of workplace safety, and has a Consumer Product Safety Commission head who's attached at the wrists and ankles to both the Administration and industry, Americans should NOT look to these people for their "safety." A party that is so unconcerned with the risks posed to Americans every day has no moral high ground when it comes to their ability to keep them "safe" from terrorists.

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