Here it is 4.5 years on from the 9-11 attacks and I'd like to look at what has changed, what has not, and what has or has not been done.
Justice. First target should have been the man who attacked us, Osama bin Laden. He is still free. He is still organizing attacks. He is still issuing public statements. We have not really even done anything serious to look for him since Bush began his misadventure in Iraq. Bush went from two days after 9/11, declaring: "The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our No. 1 priority, and we will not rest until we find him.” He also made several references to old west, WANTED: Dead or Alive posters. Sadly only six months later, laying political groundwork for the Iraq war, the president said: "I don't know where he is. I have no idea and I really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority." He has shown this to be true. The man who caused this 9-11 attacks is being left to do as he will so Bush can settle his old family score in Iraq.
Actually, a heck of a lot has been done to al Qaeda. Their primary base of operations has been converted into a US ally. Khalid Sheik Mohammed (planned 9/11), and al Nashiri (planned the USS Cole bombing, which Clinton - according to this guy's logic - didn't do anything about) were captured, as well as a couple of #3s that were promoted when KSM was captured. They are
Abu Faraj al-Libbi and
Hamza Rabia . Also killed was
Amjad Hussain Farooqi, who was involved in the murder of the journalist, Daniel Pearl. Of course, the US also captured and killed hundreds of al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan. Their latest attack (on the oil complex in Saudi Arabia) showed just how bad things are going for them. They couldn't pull off a job in their own backyard. No wonder bin Laden's calling for a truce.
Look, I want bin Laden dead. However, you are talking about capturing one guy in a mountainous area with symathetic pockets of people. It's more important to dismantle al Qaeda. So, we're taking the fight to them in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indonesia, the Phillipines, the Horn of Africa (especially the AIAI),etc.
National Security. The other big bugaboo Bush and Company talked about was National Security. They used these attacks to consolidate yet more power in Washington DC. They used it to create an entire new government bureaucracy called the Homeland Security Department. This is the department that was supposed to protect us from all danger. From Chemical attacks. From Nuclear attacks, and from biological attacks. Yet it has been completely flummoxed by that biological agent known as standing water in the Gulf Coast and one of its sub-agencies FEMA has been exposed as utterly and completely incompetent and a place friends of campaign donors get put in charge of rather than professionals at disaster management, well at least under the Bush administration.
Actually, he needs to update his information.
Popular Mechanics reviewed the particulars prior and after Katrina hit. They found:
MYTH:"The aftermath of Katrina will go down as one of the worst abandonments of Americans on American soil ever in U.S. history."--Aaron Broussard, president, Jefferson Parish, La., Meet the Press, NBC, Sept. 4, 2005
REALITY: Bumbling by top disaster-management officials fueled a perception of general inaction, one that was compounded by impassioned news anchors. In fact, the response to Hurricane Katrina was by far the largest--and fastest-rescue effort in U.S. history, with nearly 100,000 emergency personnel arriving on the scene within three days of the storm's landfall.
Dozens of National Guard and Coast Guard helicopters flew rescue operations that first day--some just 2 hours after Katrina hit the coast. Hoistless Army helicopters improvised rescues, carefully hovering on rooftops to pick up survivors. On the ground, "guardsmen had to chop their way through, moving trees and recreating roadways," says Jack Harrison of the National Guard. By the end of the week, 50,000 National Guard troops in the Gulf Coast region had saved 17,000 people; 4000 Coast Guard personnel saved more than 33,000.
These units had help from local, state and national responders, including five helicopters from the Navy ship Bataan and choppers from the Air Force and police. The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries dispatched 250 agents in boats. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), state police and sheriffs' departments launched rescue flotillas. By Wednesday morning, volunteers and national teams joined the effort, including eight units from California's Swift Water Rescue. By Sept. 8, the waterborne operation had rescued 20,000.
While the press focused on FEMA's shortcomings, this broad array of local, state and national responders pulled off an extraordinary success--especially given the huge area devastated by the storm. Computer simulations of a Katrina-strength hurricane had estimated a worst-case-scenario death toll of more than 60,000 people in Louisiana. The actual number was 1077 in that state.
So with the exception of Patriot Acts one and two which attack our Constitutional freedoms and creating a concentration camp in Cuba not much has been done here.
The USA PATRIOT Act does no such thing. Largely, it broke down
"the wall" set up during the previous administration that forbid our intelligence services to properly coordinate with law enforcement. It also provided the same tools police use for other crimes to be used for counterterrorist operations.
Let's put aside the blustery rhetoric concerning the USA PATRIOT act. There's a reason that it passed with widespread, bi-partisan support and why it continues to be renewed with widespread, bi-partisan support.
After the 9-11 attacks the sympathy and good will of all the non-Muslim world was with the USA, how has that changed? Well first we created a naziesque concentration camp in Cuba, because what we do there is illegal under both our law and international laws and treaties we are signatory meant it had to be somewhere not really US soil. A military base in Cuba fit the bill.
First, I strongly resent the NAZI comparison. Our troops serve honorably. There are problems, but the US uses its authority to punish those out of line.
There has never been a death at Gitmo. Those in the camps receive meals respecting their religious convictions, religious materials, legal counsel during their hearings, have coorespondence with their families via mail, etc. This is not "naziesque." Its a prison to house those suspected of being terrorists.
Then Bush created out of a tissue of lies, a war the rest of the world told him over and over again were lies and the war was not needed. For months Cheney and the rest of the administration outright lied and told the American people Saddam had massive quantities of weapons of mass destruction and had serious ties to 9-11 and was in fact one of those responsible for the attacks on our soil. Not only were all of these lies, but they had the evidence that shows all of them were lies and they didn't care, they wanted this war and they created it.
First, I was an intelligence analyst from 1990-2002. The consensus opinion during that entire time was that Iraq had WMDs. There was no need to "cook the books," since the books already stated Iraq had WMDs. This is why Clinton ordered Operation Desert Fox and changed the US policy toward Iraq to include regime change. The author can continue to insist "Bush lied," but only shows his ignorance of the situation.
The administration, time and again, stressed that it did not have any evidence to suggest Iraq was involved in 9/11. They did, however, note that the concept of "threat" changed dramatically that day and, as a result, they could no longer trust a murderous dictator to be good to his word.
This administration of chicken hawks who all avoided Vietnam, and none of whom have children in the fight are sending our kids to die in Iraq so Bush could avenge his father and Cheney can add to the bottom line of Halliburton. Iraq continues to degrade as more and more people are radicalized by all the violence.
Rumsfeld served honorably, as did Bush. While I feel Bush got the Air Guard assignment because of connections, he still served and had an important mission within the Texas Air Guard. He also
volunteered for Vietnam.
Trying to teach Muslims democracy is as doomed to fail as trying to teach pigs to sing.
Like all racist comments, this one is also false. Had the author bothered to inform himself, he would notice that the nation with the largest Muslim population in the world is a vote-casting republic
Link Further, India has approximately 130 million Muslims and is a functioning democracy. The Afghanis have held successful elections with great turnout and the Iraqis have held three elections, as well. Finally, the election reforms in Egypt (small, but a start), Kuwait (women's sufferage), and Saudi Arabia (women voted to the Jeddah Board of Commerce) are all promising starts.
