With tomorrow being the ten year anniversary of September 11, I thought it was an appropriate time to reflect on the last 10 years or so. I know these are sensitive and heavily debated issues, but I offer you my historical perspective.
November 2000
First, some background. I couldn't decide who to vote for in 2000. Even walking into the voting booth (then at Center School), I contemplated writing my wife in as a write-in. I had the thought, "The country is pretty much running itself. It doesn't really matter who the President is." My Republican upbringing kicked in. I voted for Bush.
September 11, 2001
9-11 changed everything. No longer did I listen to morning comedy in the car. Now I listened to NPR for any news I could get my hands on. The climate of the news changed from hearing almost nothing international to a regular stream of news about places I couldn't then find on a map, like Afghanistan.
I've almost forgotten the climate of fear that immediately followed here in the States. It's funny now but I felt the paranoia that led the then mayor of Marion to put concrete barriers around our court house. I flew to Greece right before we invaded Iraq and was immensely paranoid on the plane.
It's hard to remember how we thought before. I would never have believed someone could attack us here in that way before. I really thought they were joking that morning when I heard about it. No one ever worried about a plane getting hijacked back then. Everyone wants to blame people after the fact. We can't remember how we thought before.
2001-2002
We had the sympathy of the world. There was broad international support for our invasion of Afghanistan and removal of the Taliban. This was a great opportunity for us in the world, I thought. So far so good.
But then the Bush administration began to divert our attention to Iraq. It has emerged after the fact that Powell and Cheney likely stood on opposite sides of this issue. Most would say that history has vindicated Powell. The series of events that followed has taken a man I once hoped would be president and almost removed him from the public sphere altogether.
It would have been political suicide for anyone but those from the most liberal of districts to vote against authorizing President Bush to take action in Iraq. It is a reminder in times like these where American emotions are on a similar high. We're probably not thinking straight. I have never been a big fan of Hillary Clinton, but I didn't hold it against her that she voted in favor of authorizing Bush. It would have been political suicide not to.
I do not believe Ahmadinejad would have come to power in Iran if we had not invaded Iraq. The people elected him in reaction to our impingement in the region. I believe the horrible situation in Iran is thus one of many unforeseen consequences of the Iraq war.
2003
We invaded Iraq. I remember thinking as Powell presented evidence of WMD to the UN Council that I sure hoped they had more evidence than he was sharing. Funny not to present your best stuff, though.
I truly believe that Bush had very good intentions in invading Iraq. Remember that there was a strong avoidance of the word "invasion." People fought over a word that everyone now uses without thinking.
Almost everyone recognizes now that there was no connection between Al-Qaeda and Hussein. Yes, Hussein was a very bad man. Yes, most people were sure he had WMD at the time. But the war in Iraq is a textbook case against pre-emptive war in virtually every situation.
I believe that what was behind our attack on Hussein was a well-intentioned uber-strategy for the Middle East. With the Arab spring, it is possible that it is actually working, although ironically not at all like the think tanks of the time thought it would. It doesn't justify invading a country out of the blue morally, but it is possible that our mistake will, in the end, lead roughly to its uber-objective: a region that is more friendly to us and somewhat democratized.
At the same time, I truly believe that Bush would not have invaded Iraq if he had known that mission was not going to be accomplished as quickly as he thought it was on that air craft carrier. I pictured him making that decision with a heavy heart and only because he thought that it would not cause many American (or Iraqi) lives. Unfortunately, he was massively, massively wrong.
My hunch is that he was culturally naive on a grand scale. He thought that everyone wants democracy. Only someone who doesn't know much about other cultures would think that.
2004-2007
I was in Germany the Spring of 2004. I remember a concerned German at church saying something to me about us going into Iraq and I responded that I didn't think Bush had known what he was doing. I do believe that Bush was a lot wiser in his second term and that Cheney had less influence. It must be nice to be a second term president who doesn't have to worry about re-election.
It seemed impossible that Bush would not be re-elected in 2004. People like me were taking a lot of flack at that time for saying things everyone was saying by the 2008 election. 9-11 put us in a massive defensive and protectionist mode. In my opinion, we still cannot quite think straight. The anger and fear of that event have gone down, but have yet to return to normal levels. And the economic crisis has in its own way refueled that same mode of thinking.
The rest of the story, as I see it, tomorrow...
Showing posts with label 9-11. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 9-11. Show all posts
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Remembering 9-11
On September 11, 2001, a group of well-equipped jihadists managed to fly planes into the two World Trade Center towers, into the Pentagon, while failing to fly a fourth plane into the Capital. All those on board the planes died, as well as almost 3000 people on the ground. The twin towers both fell under their own weight.
The impact of this event has been profound. It was like America was raped and lost any sense it had that the world was a safe place. We have heard of wars and atrocities, but they have always seemed so far away, something that happens to people we don't think much about. I couldn't have found Afghanistan on a map before 9-11. Places like Somalia, Yemen--not on my radar.
And then our own human nature kicked in. We wanted to hurt someone really bad. We went tribal or, to put it in more civilized terms, we went nationalistic. The result has been a mixture of good and bad, in my opinion. It's a physiological fact that you can't reason as well when you are furious with anger (the limbic system overcomes the cerebral cortex) and the last 9 years have plenty of that. As we cool off, we are in a better position to assess our new trajectories and make good decisions about where we should go from here.
1. All except the whackos (and there are some of them) agree that we should honor the almost 3000 souls who died that day. Was this God's judgment on America? I don't have much time for those who think in those terms. "The soul that does the sinning, it shall die" says Ezekiel 18 and Jeremiah 31. In both cases, the prophet is countering the idea that the sins of the fathers are visited on the children.
It's old Old Testament thinking to think God kills Jane to judge John. There were plenty of Christians in good standing who died that day. No doubt some who died were good people and some who died were not, but we honor all the dead as victims of an atrociously evil act.
2. I personally don't have a problem with us overthrowing the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Taliban who were in charge were forces of evil in cahoots with Al-Qaeda and bin Laden. Good riddance... except of course that they're not gone...
3. I give immense blame to the Bush administration for what I consider is one of the worse decisions in American history--it could actually turn out to bring us down. Rather than capitalize on the good will of the entire world, rather than empower all the moderate Muslims in the world who were very sympathetic to us at the time, rather than finish the job in Afghanistan, the Bush administration enacted a macro-plan to bring stability in the Middle East by starting an unprovoked war in Iraq.
The result was the empowerment of Muslim extremism around the world and the ensuing polarization of "us versus them" that we've seen just this week in the ignoramus pastor wanting to burn a Quran in Florida. The result was the election of Ahmadinejad in Iran over the moderate party there--a direct result of our invasion of Iraq. The current financial crisis came directly from the housing crash but has had immense assistance from the financial bleeding of our wars in the Middle East. Make no mistake, the current financial crisis was not caused by the Obama administration.
I am sympathetic to the Congress that voted for war in Iraq. It would have been political suicide not to do so at the time for all except the Democrats who were in such liberal districts that their re-election was in no danger (which includes Obama). But Congress made a bad decision fueled by the seething country only a couple years out from 9-11 at that point.
The election of Obama showed that the majority of the country had cooled down enough to realize the mistake that Iraq was. A vote for Obama was a vote for change, a vote away from the Iraq decisions of Bush, perhaps more than a vote for Obama himself. Nevertheless, a significant portion remains angry, perhaps most easily pictured in the Tea Party movement.
4. Xenophobia is clearly on the rise right now. This also follows naturally on 9-11. All Muslims are painted with the same stroke as bin Laden, which of course is ignorance. Hatred against Mexican immigrants is at an all time high as well, again, a natural consequence of post 9-11 anger, misdirected of course. Of course there is nothing Christian about any of this and if your "church" preaches this sort of thing, you should go somewhere else that preaches social justice like the Bible does.
5. We have seen an extreme "conservative" back lash these last nine years. When it was disempowered in the 2008 election, it went psycho. Put Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan in someone's body today and these circles would call them liberals and socialists. Thankfully, anger can only burn so long. It lasted in Nazi Germany less than 15 years. I predict that the extreme conservative voices right now will run out of steam soon enough, and we can go back to normal conservatism like John McCain used to be. Ironically, this guy I used to like has had to go rogue even to stay in office as a senator.
Today I honor the dead of 9-11. And I will honor them most if I do not let the atrocity of that day distract me from truly American values, rather than the skewed ones of the current burn. America is a friend of the world. We are a friend of Muslims and Mexicans, and we want to make a way for anyone who wishes to live peaceably under our laws to live with us. We are a force for good in the world, but we're not stupid about it. People don't believe you're their friend when you tell them at the end of a gun.
You don't have to be a Christian to live here. We do not make laws to make American law mirror "Christian law"any more than God forces the world to obey Him. He prefers for the world to choose Him freely, not by force. That's not the God presupposed by the Constitution or the Christian God I worship.
This moment too shall pass. Hopefully we will not be ruined from the consequent damage in the mean time.
The impact of this event has been profound. It was like America was raped and lost any sense it had that the world was a safe place. We have heard of wars and atrocities, but they have always seemed so far away, something that happens to people we don't think much about. I couldn't have found Afghanistan on a map before 9-11. Places like Somalia, Yemen--not on my radar.
And then our own human nature kicked in. We wanted to hurt someone really bad. We went tribal or, to put it in more civilized terms, we went nationalistic. The result has been a mixture of good and bad, in my opinion. It's a physiological fact that you can't reason as well when you are furious with anger (the limbic system overcomes the cerebral cortex) and the last 9 years have plenty of that. As we cool off, we are in a better position to assess our new trajectories and make good decisions about where we should go from here.
1. All except the whackos (and there are some of them) agree that we should honor the almost 3000 souls who died that day. Was this God's judgment on America? I don't have much time for those who think in those terms. "The soul that does the sinning, it shall die" says Ezekiel 18 and Jeremiah 31. In both cases, the prophet is countering the idea that the sins of the fathers are visited on the children.
It's old Old Testament thinking to think God kills Jane to judge John. There were plenty of Christians in good standing who died that day. No doubt some who died were good people and some who died were not, but we honor all the dead as victims of an atrociously evil act.
2. I personally don't have a problem with us overthrowing the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Taliban who were in charge were forces of evil in cahoots with Al-Qaeda and bin Laden. Good riddance... except of course that they're not gone...
3. I give immense blame to the Bush administration for what I consider is one of the worse decisions in American history--it could actually turn out to bring us down. Rather than capitalize on the good will of the entire world, rather than empower all the moderate Muslims in the world who were very sympathetic to us at the time, rather than finish the job in Afghanistan, the Bush administration enacted a macro-plan to bring stability in the Middle East by starting an unprovoked war in Iraq.
The result was the empowerment of Muslim extremism around the world and the ensuing polarization of "us versus them" that we've seen just this week in the ignoramus pastor wanting to burn a Quran in Florida. The result was the election of Ahmadinejad in Iran over the moderate party there--a direct result of our invasion of Iraq. The current financial crisis came directly from the housing crash but has had immense assistance from the financial bleeding of our wars in the Middle East. Make no mistake, the current financial crisis was not caused by the Obama administration.
I am sympathetic to the Congress that voted for war in Iraq. It would have been political suicide not to do so at the time for all except the Democrats who were in such liberal districts that their re-election was in no danger (which includes Obama). But Congress made a bad decision fueled by the seething country only a couple years out from 9-11 at that point.
The election of Obama showed that the majority of the country had cooled down enough to realize the mistake that Iraq was. A vote for Obama was a vote for change, a vote away from the Iraq decisions of Bush, perhaps more than a vote for Obama himself. Nevertheless, a significant portion remains angry, perhaps most easily pictured in the Tea Party movement.
4. Xenophobia is clearly on the rise right now. This also follows naturally on 9-11. All Muslims are painted with the same stroke as bin Laden, which of course is ignorance. Hatred against Mexican immigrants is at an all time high as well, again, a natural consequence of post 9-11 anger, misdirected of course. Of course there is nothing Christian about any of this and if your "church" preaches this sort of thing, you should go somewhere else that preaches social justice like the Bible does.
5. We have seen an extreme "conservative" back lash these last nine years. When it was disempowered in the 2008 election, it went psycho. Put Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan in someone's body today and these circles would call them liberals and socialists. Thankfully, anger can only burn so long. It lasted in Nazi Germany less than 15 years. I predict that the extreme conservative voices right now will run out of steam soon enough, and we can go back to normal conservatism like John McCain used to be. Ironically, this guy I used to like has had to go rogue even to stay in office as a senator.
Today I honor the dead of 9-11. And I will honor them most if I do not let the atrocity of that day distract me from truly American values, rather than the skewed ones of the current burn. America is a friend of the world. We are a friend of Muslims and Mexicans, and we want to make a way for anyone who wishes to live peaceably under our laws to live with us. We are a force for good in the world, but we're not stupid about it. People don't believe you're their friend when you tell them at the end of a gun.
You don't have to be a Christian to live here. We do not make laws to make American law mirror "Christian law"any more than God forces the world to obey Him. He prefers for the world to choose Him freely, not by force. That's not the God presupposed by the Constitution or the Christian God I worship.
This moment too shall pass. Hopefully we will not be ruined from the consequent damage in the mean time.
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