Let Us Remember

As we remember the horror of the falling Twin Towers, the caved in Pentagon and the self sacrifice of those who crashed their plane headed for the White House as well as the self sacrifice of public employees who died trying to rescue others and are still severely affected by the debris of the crashing buildings, let us also remember and ponder some things that led up to and followed from this event.

Let us remember a Middle East carved up to their desires by the winning allies of World War One regardless of racial, ethnic or cultural differences.

Let us remember a democratic Iran whose government was overthrown by the United States and the dictatorial Shah installed in place of their socialist government to insure that their oil would go to us and our corporations. The invasion of Iraq was, in many respects, a replay of this consummate arrogance.

Let us remember our bargain with the autocratic Saud family to protect them against all enemies in return for access to their oil.

In all these and other precursors to 9/11 let us remember the term blowback and seek cooperation rather than domination when dealing with other countries. Let us cease letting corporations drive our foreign policy. Let us remember, contrary to Donald Rumsfeld, that it does matter that they hate us even if they also fear us.

Let us remember the thousands of Iraqi children who died as a result of the embargo we were instrumental in imposing and enforcing following the Gulf War.

As for 9\11 and all that flowed from it:

Let us remember the monumental extent to which we were lied to. Let us remember that "war" was immediately declared against a then unknown, but perhaps suspected, enemy which had no country, no army and no geographic borders.

Let us remember that no alternative, such as a cooperative global Interpol effort, was sought by the Bush administration despite widespread support for the United States. Obviously a large, concerted and cooperative police action by the many countries sympathetic to the United States was called for. The term "war" tapped into the military might we had been accumulating for over 50 years and into an American mind set of almost continuous war or preparation for war that characterized the 20^th century.

Let us remember the deer-in-the-headlights look on G.W. Bush's face when he was informed of the attack while reading stories to children. Let us ask did he know the scenario?

Let us remember the Project for the New American Century plan hatched by Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, et al to insure American dominance of the world and that 9/11 was used to put it into play. Let us remember the massive death and suffering, not to mention wasted resources this arrogant ego trip cost. Let us pursue their accountability.

Let us remember the rapid restructuring of our government to let military concerns override all else. Remember the hyped fear of colored warnings of likely terrorist activity. Remember the Patriot Act that threatens any domestic dissent.

Let us remember that by attacking Afghanistan we were able to supply the geographic boundaries and other prerequisites for war, albeit against one of the world's poorest nations. We were also able to expand the enemy from a few al Qaeda members to the ruling Taliban. In all this let us remember how we were manipulated into war.

Let us remember that in responding as we did we supplied all the manpower Osama bin Laden could wish for and converted his attack into a broad contest between religions and cultures.

Let us remember the lies by the Bush administration that led to our murderous attack on an absolutely innocent Iraq and the hundreds of thousands of innocent people we have killed or maimed. Let us reflect on the trashing of the cultural artifacts, the barbarism of Abu Ghraib, the laying waste of Fallujah and the vast destruction of Iraq's infrastructure, which despite our promises to repair, remains to this date 10 years later.

Let us remember the flag waving patriotic jingoism that preceded our "piece of cake" invasion of Iraq. Let us remember the coordinated media hype, the Pentagon-appointed experts, as one more Madison Avenue advertising campaign and that we Americans were so vulnerable to it.

Let us remember the perfidy of being told our soldiers would leave Iraq only to see them transferred to Afghanistan and greatly added to as well.

Finally, and most importantly, let us remember that the mindset of the American people has been radically and thoroughly shifted from the euphemisms of economic dominance to the stark awareness of the brutality of imperialism and the fear and folly it engenders. Unlike our erstwhile naiveté, we can no longer ask why they hate us. The fear and shame that our actions have induced have prompted us to blindly provide billions of dollars to the military presumably to keep the terrorists busy in foreign lands, as we are mentally whipsawed by the media, body scanned at airports, detained without court order, put on "no fly" lists because we peacefully demonstrate against government policies. We must now protest behind chain link fences far removed from the elected offices we protest against. We have, like despots, rendered people for torture, imprisoned them indefinitely without formal charges and deprived them of trial by a jury of their peers. Such are the consequences of fear. We are a substantially different people than we were prior to 9/11. We should acknowledge that and work to remedy it. The courage that the Norwegian people and their leaders demonstrated when faced with terrorist slaughter of their children, the courage to reemphasize democratic values and their open society, warrants considerable thought and emulation by the American people.

As Paul Krugman so simply and eloquently says in the New York Times of 9-11-11 under the title of The Years of Shame

The Years of Shame

Paul Krugman blogs today:

"Is it just me, or are the 9/11 commemorations oddly subdued? Actually, I don’t think it’s me, and it’s not really that odd. What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. The atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.

A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?

The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.

Let us remember how easily we have been led by lies into the massive killings of Vietnam and Iraq. Let us heed the pleas of the recently deceased Chalmers Johnson in his last book Dismantling the Empire: American's Last Best Hope that we demolish the American Empire before it demolishes us. Let us value our common humanity higher than our historical and cultural differences.

Bob Newhard