{"id":1109,"date":"2011-09-11T15:49:04","date_gmt":"2011-09-11T19:49:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/apagansblog\/?p=1109"},"modified":"2011-09-13T23:38:59","modified_gmt":"2011-09-14T03:38:59","slug":"thoughts-on-9-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2011\/09\/thoughts-on-9-11.html","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts on 9-11"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had wanted my first real post upon returning to be away from politics, but as luck would have it, I returned on September 10 and last night was my first night home.\u00a0 Today everyone it seems is going on and on about 9-11.\u00a0 And it was such a significant date in what may prove to be the decline of the United States as either a beacon of liberty or an example of democracy that something needs to be said.<\/p>\n

It should go without saying that the destruction of the WTC and the deaths of so many airline passengers and crew is a great crime by any reasonable standard.\u00a0 For a few days Americans of almost every political persuasion stood together in shock and outrage at the attack.<\/p>\n

And then things started going seriously awry because of the abysmal quality of people then running the government and dominating the media.\u00a0 In no particular order\u2026<\/p>\n

\u00b7 The attack was used to justify invading a country entirely uninvolved with the crime, an invasion which ultimately killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis as well as thousands of the invaders, including many good men and women who had volunteered to defend our country, not to assault other countries.<\/p>\n

\u00b7 The attack was used to justify making torture the official policy of our government.<\/p>\n

\u00b7 The attack so weakened the rule of law that the architects of that torture parade around today as heroes and some even write books bragging about what they did rather than serving the rest of their lives in jail, as they should.<\/p>\n

\u00b7 The attack was used to pass the so-called \u201cPatriot Act,\u201d which has as much to do with patriotism as AIDS has to do with safe sex.<\/p>\n

\u00b7 The attack was used by the bad to shift patriotism from devotion to our values to devotion to our power over others.<\/p>\n

\u00b7 The attack led to endless war in Afghanistan, now a truly bipartisan endeavor, with no clear goals and no sense of what the original mission was.<\/p>\n

\u00b7 The attack led to creating a privatized army of mercenaries to take over the job of American soldiers \u2013 creating a corporate controlled military elite with a vested interest in perpetual war.<\/p>\n

\u00b7 The attack was used to waste billions, perhaps trillions<\/a>, much in outright fraud and corruption, in response to Al Qaeda\u2019s expense of well under one million. This wasted money is largely responsible for the deficit that today both parties claim to be concerned about at the expense of reducing the good government can do serving American citizens. They and their corporate masters prefer bombs.<\/p>\n

\u00b7 The attack demonstrated that America\u2019s media elite has likely entered terminal incompetence as journalists who were proven correct continue to be ignored while journalists and hacks who beat the drums for war continue to have national forums to parade their incompetence and moral depravity. (Yes, I mean you, among many others, Thomas Friedman.)<\/p>\n

\u00b7 The attack unleashed the religious bigotry of far too many so-called \u201cChristians\u201d against Muslims, strengthened their malign political influence, and even encouraged some short sighted Pagans to join forces with them in their anti-Islamic and anti-American jihad.<\/p>\n

\u00b7 The attack demonstrated that many Americans lack the personal courage to stand by our country\u2019s principles or the personal devotion to freedom that our founders had, and in the process turned the word patriotism from something admirable into something many of us find loathsome.<\/p>\n

As events in Libya are now showing, our elite has learned absolutely nothing regarding the stupidity of intervening in the internal affairs of other countries.<\/p>\n

I could go on, but the point should be clear.\u00a0 The response of the American government and media was beyond disgrace, their major representatives not fit to hold their heads up in decent company.<\/p>\n

It could have been different.<\/p>\n

Here is what could<\/em> have come from those crimes, if we had had decent leaders, a competent media, and a larger percentage of Americans who understood what this country once stood for:<\/p>\n

\u00b7 We could have seen that our dependence on oil had made us dependent on many of the world\u2019s most unsavory and brutal regimes and even without the obvious ecological reasons, initiated efforts to wan the modern world from its dependence on petroleum. This shift could not have taken place instantaneously, but it could be far along by now.\u00a0 All we would need to have done to accomplish quite a bit was put a tax on petroleum, and to keep conservatives happy, offset it with cutting Social Security taxes.\u00a0 Labor would be cheaper, oil more expensive, and we would therefore be developing new energy methods while simultaneously becoming more efficient with the oil we did use.<\/p>\n

\u00b7 We could have demonstrated, as many European countries have continually done, that the best method for dealing with terrorism on our soil is the law and the courts.<\/p>\n

\u00b7 Given the Taliban\u2019s support for Al Qaeda (and I have read different analyses about just how true or solid this was) we should have blown up many government buildings in Afghanistan thereby making it clear there would be a high price for harboring bin Laden and company, but not have gone in with troops.\u00a0 No boots on the ground and no prolonged bombing.\u00a0 The point would be to make the price for harboring criminals who killed Americans too high for countries to do so, and nothing more. Many of us argued for this response at the time.<\/p>\n

That is a far smaller list, but one that would have been worth taking some pride in.\u00a0 Too bad it does not apply.<\/p>\n

(Small spelling corrections and clarifications made on 9-12)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had wanted my first real post upon returning to be away from politics, but as luck would have it, I returned on September 10 and last night was my first night home.\u00a0 Today everyone it seems is going on and on about 9-11.\u00a0 And it was such a significant date in what may prove…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[111],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events"],"yoast_head":"\nThoughts on 9-11 - A Pagan's Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2011\/09\/thoughts-on-9-11.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Thoughts on 9-11 - 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