Bevin Chu
September 11, 2006
CNN TV coverage of 9/11
Many Americans actually believe that "America" was an innocent victim on September 11, 2001.
Many Americans were innocent. But "America" was not.
The term Americans refers to individuals. Many individual Americans were totally innocent. Among them were Quakers and other staunch opponents of foreign military aggression.
But "America" was anything but innocent. Many Americans approved and authorized past acts of US government aggression in the Middle East, particularly on behalf of Israel.
9/11 was retaliation for these past acts of aggression.
On 9/11 "collateral damage" occurred, just as collateral damage occurred in previous US aggressions.
Many Americans can't permit themselves to accept the reality that 9/11 was a case of karmic payback, of "what goes around, comes around."
They cling desperately to Bush II administration twaddle that "They hate us for our freedoms."
As I wrote back in September 2001, neutral Switzerland and Sweden, who are not meddling in the Middle East, are as free or freer as the US.
Why didn't the terrorists target Zurich and Stockholm if "freedom" was what they hated? Zurich and Stockholm are certainly much closer and more convenient targets than New York City and Washington, DC.
As long as the neocolonialists and neoimperialists who dictate America's foreign policy refuse to wake up to reality, as long as they stubbornly refuse to admit their aggression against the Muslim world, 9/11 type events will continue happening.
"America under Attack, Pentagon open for business today"
Note the CNN headline, "America under attack," and the subtitle, "Pentagon open for business today." If truth in news reporting were the rule rather than the exception, the CNN headline would read "America under counterattack," and the subtitle would read "Pentagon engaging in foreign aggression as usual."
Terrorism by the weak is retaliation for imperialism by the strong.
Eventually, a nuclear device will probably be successfully detonated in a major US city, despite all the freedom nullifying police state measures imposed by the Bush II administration.
Eventually, the freedoms that Bush insists "they hate us for" will disappear, and not even Bush will be able to persuade us that the terrorists "hate us for our freedoms."
I'd say that the aggression shown on 9/11 extends further than merely signifying a "counterattack" against "acts of US government aggression in the Middle East." The violence made famous that day is present throughout the world. The ideology that drove the attack is characterized by the violent and adamant denial of rights of all kinds to any humans unfortunate enough to be under its control, whether they be women, Christians, or even Muslims that disagree with the entirety of Muslim religious law.
ReplyDeleteThe uproar concerning the cartoon of Mohammed, printed in Denmark, an historically neutral country, reveals the scope of the ideological entity that manifested itself on 9/11. Counterattack or not, these people very much do hate the freedom which America is considered to espouse.
Islamic fundamentalism is an extremely nasty belief system that the world would be far better without.
ReplyDeleteMainland China, for example, would be better without Islamic fundamentalist terrorism in Xinjiang.
Unfortunately "anonymous" above confuses this larger issue with the much more narrowly focused point this editorial was making, namely, why was the US attacked on 9/11?