September 11th, 2013 - 12 years later - my short view of history

I have sat and pondered 9-11 over of the last few days – I realized that there sure has been a LOT of water under a lot of bridges.  The sting of the shock is gone now, but on the heels of another potential war I just have to think about what the last 12 years have meant, for me, for our country and for those folks in the Middle East. 

So on that fateful day 12 years ago two thousand, nine hundred and ninety six souls were lost; nineteen of those were the terrorists.  I have even thought long and hard about the word terrorist -- what does that really mean?  Terrorism is defined as “the unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons”.  That does not say Muslim, it does not say middle easterner, and as a matter of fact it does not say anything about the religion of Islam.  But what is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear someone say terrorist?  We tend to immediately think in our minds eye, someone who is brown and wears a turban and loose fitting layered clothing.  I am almost ashamed to admit it, but I too am guilty of that picture popping into my head.  

I watched a video on the interwebs yesterday from a show that puts people in odd situations and then records how they react.  I generally don’t like that kind of thing but it mentioned a soldier so I thought I would take a look.  The setup was a man behind the counter of an order-at-the-counter restaurant, decked out as a Muslim and some kid playing this jackass who did not want to be served by him.  The scene played out a number of times and most folks did the right thing and told him to stop or to leave.  Then we come to this Army Sargent who said it best:  he is allowed to be anything he wants to be.  That is why I wear the uniform -  to give him that right.  I suppose we all racially profile in some ways, even if we don’t want to admit it – we do it all the time. 

But when I think back before 9-11, what did terrorist mean then - was it what we feel today?  I don’t think it was.  I think it was Ted Kaczynski, it was Eric Robert Rudolph, it was Tim McVey – terrorists for sure, Rudolph was the Olympic bomber in case you forgot.  Why did these men hate America so much?  Have folks in the middle east always hated us?  Maybe, maybe not.  When we think about the two sovereign nations that we invaded, Iraq and Afghanistan, what was the goal, the governments of those countries were horrible hateful ass wagons and probably deserved to be deposed.  BUT, and I say BUT both of those regimes were regimes we created in sovereign countries.  We funneled billions into Afghanistan when they were engaging the USSR.  We funneled billions more into Iraq when they were engaging Iran.  Then what, they go from ally to foe, overnight.  How many times would it take you getting stabbed in the back and tossed under the bus before you start to think, hey wait minute here…….. there seems to be a trend here – the United States could start to look like a terrorist to the common folks of those countries. 

Sorry, I diverted a bit.  I wanted to say that since 9-11 of 2001 one million seven hundred and forty two thousand five hundred and twenty three souls have perished as a result of the attacks of that date.  1,742,523 dead as a result of the attacks.  That is the equivalent of every man, woman and child in the states of Alaska, North Dakota and Wyoming combined.  Or the cities of Austin TX, or Charlotte NC or the City of Mickey Mouse in Orlando.  This is our legacy folks, we lost 2,977 and we caused the extinguishment of 1.7 million souls in retribution.  That does not include ours or our allies military losses, so the number is probably closer to 1.8 million.  Playing with my calculator that comes out to 604 souls dead for every one of the ones we lost on 9-11.  Talk about kicking some fucking ass - holy shit!  What other analogy could we use where the odds are 604 to 1?  There are no analogies to that because here in the real world NOTHING is that lopsided – 604 to 1 WTF?   

I don’t care who they were, what their nationality was, what their religion was or what color eyes they had.  I, for one, will NEVER be convinced that all of them were combatants of the group Al-Qaeda.  Hell the best estimate are less than 20,000 members total over the 25 year life of the organization.  Even if you added in the Muslim Brotherhood, who have been around since 1928 and Hezbollah and Hamas, we still don’t even get close to the 1.8 million number.  I am in no way advocating that we should have done nothing.  I am only thinking maybe we did not take the correct course of action.  Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq did anything to the United States.  Terrorists called Al-Qaeda did, and I am saying maybe, just maybe, we should have just tracked down offending bad guys, regardless of location and feelings of whatever government that ruled the country they were hiding in and terminated them with extreme prejudice.  Then maybe, just maybe, we would not be in the position we are now, having most of the world hating us and us contemplating yet another crazy fucking boondoggle war. 

We just cannot afford to be engaged in another war.  We cannot afford it financially, we cannot afford it militarily, we cannot afford it politically and we cannot afford to have our reputation tarnished any further internationally.  What is happening in Syria is HORRIBLE, it is freaking HORRIBLE!  There is no doubt about it!  BUT what is our interest there?  I have heard the words humanitarian relief bandied about, due to the women and children, to which I say BULLSHIT!  If we as a country cared about providing humanitarian relief we would have stopped the genocide in Rwanda.  I am sure you remember that, a million men, women and children were slaughtered!  Or maybe Dafur, but there were only 400 thousand who died there.  In both cases, the United States did nothing…… WHY?  I think the why is that there was no oil under those places.  They are located outside the region where our primary oil supply originates.  That has to why we give a shit about the countries of the middle east -- what other reason could there be?     

I was also thinking about a couple interviews I watched with Russian President Vladimir Putin.  It scared the shit out of me when I realized that he was making more sense than my own President.  I am sure you have seen them, but he asked a lot of questions that I don’t think we have answers to yet – hell we are not even asking the questions!  I feel we need those answers before we can make informed decisions.  Our ability to rush to judgement and make important military based decisions has a bad track record since 9-11.  I think we have been so focused on retribution that we may be missing a larger point – we are the United States.  We do not invade foreign nations.  We are, or used to be, the ones who had a moral and ethical base to our national decisionmaking.  I don’t feel that anymore, although some fanatics flew some planes and killed three thousand people, we have turned that around and are responsible for causing the deaths of 1.8 million more – retribution at a whole new level!

I had a string on FB about our potential role in Syria.  It was an interesting string for sure.  I have a couple of old Navy buddies who are now firefighters, so an analogy popped up about putting out fires.  While I agree the fire needs put out in Syria, I argued that I would not expect one of them to drive down from Maine or Massachusetts to put out a fire at my neighbor’s house.  What is happening in Syria is HORRIBLE!  It is, and shouldn’t it be just as horrible to their neighbors.  Why not let those who are better suited and better positioned to lend assistance on that fire? 

This eye for an eye path we have been on has proven to be BULLSHIT!!  What about turning the other cheek, what happened to that.  I think we have more than settled the score.  So, the day after  President Assad of Syria’s birthday I ask – haven’t we done enough, enough killing, enough alienating, enough damage to our reputation, enough harm to our young men and women serving on the Military, enough money wasted abroad that could have been used here, enough erosion of our souls – haven’t we done enough?