We are currently losing the battle against extremism.

Since 9/11 we have allowed our governments to use fear as a weapon to take away our rights and freedoms.
Torture has become acceptable as have extra-judicial murders.
Our police forces are out of control and kill with impunity.
We remain silent as our governments wage never-ending wars and complain little when they use WMDs in our names.
We are allowing our own war-mongering extremists to take control of our institutions for our own "security".

Given our failure to object it's what we deserve.

I need to think about these comments, much of which I agree with ~ but my immediate reaction to the last sentence above is to disagree ~

I'll come back to this thread ~

Sooz

Who voted and elected rightwingnuts in our last elections?

actually, i think the people who did NOT vote are more culpable, oskar.

That was their vote.

I've been thinking about this thread since first reading it yesterday ~ and I'm still somewhat conflicted ~

I agree with much of oskar's original post ~ but I'm not sure how anything could have been different ~ 09/11/01 took a terrible toll on the US psyche ~ I wish there had been a different administration in office on that horrendous day and in the immediate aftermath ~ but there are no do-overs in history ~ I've posted before about my own reactions, culminating [after a full 18-20 hours of serious reflection on my own life that day and night] in my determination to not let fear rule my life ~ I went back to work the very next morning, crossing between the enormous concrete barriers that were put in place during the night surrounding Sears Tower ~ I still see returning to work that next morning high in Sears Tower as being the bravest thing I've ever done ~

Hindsight is always 20/20 ~ "if I'd only known ...", "maybe ...", "imagine if ..." are tough questions to confront ~ the American public, on the whole, has allowed many of the things oskar outlines in his op ~ I'm not making excuses, but how do you fight against things kept secret from the public? ~ and how do you fight intentional misinformation and, even worse in my own mind, apathy?

The biggest difference I see between the way oskar thinks/believes and the way I think/believe is that oskar sees in black-and-white and I tend to focus on all the shades of gray between those two extremes ~ people are human, and humans make mistakes ... even when those mistakes are fueled by the best intentions ~

I have more thinking to do on this ~

Sooz

I'd agree that 9/11 "took a terrible toll on the US psyche". It has also lead to terrible responses.

The really interesting question is "why is that the case"?

About 10 times as many people die from gunshot wounds in the US every year. The number of people who have been killed in "retaliation" is at least a 100 times greater - probably much more - and growing all the time. Cyclone Katrina killed about 50% of the number who died in the towers, and roughly the same number of people die from malnutrition every year in the US. There are many more examples.

And yet none of these things evoke anything like the same level of response.

Until that question can be truly confronted then I fear Oskar is right.

We can't even control our own police forces and here we are thinking we can police the entire world.
Methinks a "reality check" is in order... and the sooner the better.

Right. However the gun violence is not directed at the entire population of the country, nor carried out by a group bent on destroying the country. Katrina was a natural disaster and unless you want to retaliate against "god", you're pretty much helpless. Malnutrition is national shame, but not a coordinated attack against any one individual or the nation.

IMO, we're fighting the wrong battle. If we don't push back against the corporatists (aka the Military-Industrial Complex) we'll be facing our own version of the "Arab Spring".

I accept that they are different Rose, that's why I picked those particular examples, But that just makes the question more significant.

And even your response displays one element of what Oskar was talking about.

9/11 was certainly "an attack on your country", but it wasn't carried out by a group "intent on destroying" it all. That's just the rhetoric, not the reality.

And where I used the word "response', you used "retaliate". That's kind of significant don't you think?

There's still the "why" to be worked out as far as I can see.

lol Cattleman, their intent to "destroy the country" was accomplished to a large degree. Attacking the financial center, which elicited the precise reaction they wanted. Terror. Causing the government to implement hundreds of new laws, several new agencies, thousands of new restrictions on travel which cost millions of dollars. Citizens who willingly accepted the new "freedom" or lack thereof, which has eventually led to the gun nutters stockpiling guns and planning for the apocalypse.
They wanted to elicit a military response, which also has cost billions of dollars and many lives.

I'd say they were successful. It's the reason the economy tanked and will never, ever recover what was lost financially. The US is now #2 economically. Took a while, but was inevitable.

Please refrain from psychoanalyzing my phrasing or use of words. Response, retaliation, tomato, tomahto. A response to an attack on our soil with military might is retaliation no matter how you look at it. No significance. Just truth.

Today is Pearl Harbor Day. Think on that when you want to know "why". It's what the US or any other country does or would do when attacked by others. I sincerely hope that you never have any kind of direct attack on your homeland.

The "attack on your homeland" is far less significant than is the response. The former is a fait accompli whereas the latter makes a huge difference as it is to come. Unfortunately, the tendency is retaliation and vengeance rather than trying to analyze the reasons and neutralizing those reasons.

9/11 may have effected your country in a variety of ways, it didn't "destroy" it. And you seem to overestimating those effects as well. China would have outstripped you economically anyway.

No "psychoanalysis" involved Rose (I detest online attempts at that), its just that "response" and "retaliation" are different things. You relied on that difference when you talked about Katrina.

And its quite clear that you could have "responded" to 9/11 in a variety of ways which didn't involve "retaliation". After all, the "retaliation" wasn't exactly a resounding success.

Putting 9/11 and Pearl Harbor in the same category is pandering to the militarists in any case. One was an act of war, the other was terrorism and no matter how much the hawks try to convince you they are the same they are really quite different things.

My homeland has already suffered a number of direct attacks.

So why to the people in the Middle East have such a hate-on for the West and the US and Britain in particular?

Why so many people in South-Est Asia have such a hate-on for the US?

Why so many people in the Balkans have such a hate-on for the US?

Why so many people in Africa have such a hate-on for the US?

i never said they were not culpable. i just said that they were not voters.

Your homeland suffered one attack from outside is is currently suffering multiple attacks from homegrown extremists. They're the real danger.

I believe you are over-estimating the antipathy towards the US, oskar ~ yes, many regimes hate the US and other countries for a variety of reasons, some of which are valid ~ but I don't remember ever reading about any of those "haters" turning down US aid dollars or other support when requested/needed ~ every nationality prefers its own laws and mores ~

Sooz

Corrupt regimes accept the dollars but I'm talking about the citizens of those countries... dozens and dozens of countries (mostly non-white) where USians don't dare wear anything that identifies them as such.