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Five Years After September 11Is Anybody Safer?
After the vicious September 11 attacks, President Bush vowed to make the nation safe by launching a global “war on terror.” His administration has prioritized military muscle and forcible regime change over diplomacy. It has justified torture and illegal spying to defeat “evil.” Five years later it is evident that these policies have been a dangerous failure. “Glance at any television screen . . . and chances are that the screen will be showing mayhem in Lebanon , Baghdad or Gaza . It usually takes a minute or so to decipher which Arab city is burning,” observed the New York Times. These policies, often supported by Congressional Democrats, have polarized the Middle East , turning it into an ever-worsening killing field. The entire Arab and Muslim worlds are now aflame with anti-U.S. rage. WHY DO THEY HATE US?Hassan Dirani lost three children when Israel bombed his Beirut neighborhood. But he blames the United States . “Thank you, George Bush,” he told the Christian Science Monitor, “for those ‘smart’ bombs.” “That’s how they create terrorists,” said a restaurant owner, who watched as his neighbors dug out their shattered homes. “And they ask: ‘Why do they hate us?’” On Sept. 2 the Pentagon reported that Iraqi civilian casualties soared by more than 50 percent to nearly 120 per day in recent months. Well over 40,000 civilians have been killed since the U.S. invasion, and it is estimated that 200,000 more have died from war-related causes. A University of Michigan poll in August showed that 91.7 percent of Iraqis want an end to the U.S. occupation--and nearly half approve of attacks on U.S. soldiers. Since the U.S. invasion Afghanistan has become the world’s largest producer of opium. An all-time high harvest was reported on Sept. 3. “Beneath the surface [Afghanistan] is boiling,” says Ahmad Fahim Hakim, deputy chairman of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. In August 2006, he told the New York Times that the government is corrupt and controls little territory outside the capital, Kabul . The U.S., NATO and the Afghan military have not been able to eradicate the Taliban. The White House policies that justify forcible regime change and even nuclear first strikes on “evil” countries have also greatly heightened the dangers of nuclear war. To deter threatened U.S. attacks many countries are looking into acquiring nuclear weaponry. Yet the Bush Administration “stays the course” and paints anyone who opposes the U.S. or Israeli policies in the region as a terrorist or an “appeaser of fascism.” This approach “will reverberate in the region for decades, directly strengthening the hand of extremists of all stripes,” says Robert Scheer of the San Francisco Chronicle. U.S. NO SAFERThe U.S. public feels no safer. In a recent survey by the Quinnipac University Polling Institute, 62 percent of respondents worried that terrorists would strike the nation in the next few months. In airports all over the country, the daily theater of passenger screening plays to packed houses. This ritual seeks to convince the public that the government is actually doing something to protect them. Meanwhile much of the luggage and commercial cargo routinely carried on passenger flights goes unscreened. People, including U.S. citizens, who are perceived as Muslim or Arab are singled out, searched and detained--or even denied entry to their own country. Fears of terrorism have also fueled new anti-immigrant legislation. A prison-style wall is being built on the U.S. border with Mexico and 6,000 National Guard troops are being sent to “secure the border from terrorists,” as if Mexico were the only gateway to the U.S. The one time when the country really did need the government to protect our homeland--the Hurricane Katrina disaster--the administration failed spectacularly. One year after Katrina, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) lamented, “We’re seeing the same thing going on with the recovery as we did with the immediate response. We’re going through another unfolding disaster.” While the Bush Administration touts its efforts to spread freedom abroad, it has implemented illegal wiretap programs and asserted unprecedented executive power. The great U.S. historian Howard Zinn warns us to prepare “for the next barrage of lies that will accompany the next proposal to inflict our power on some other part of the world.” He says we must “create a different history for ourselves by rejecting nationalist arrogance, so that we can join people around the world in the common cause of peace and justice.” Rebecca Gordon teaches ethics at the University of San Francisco. |
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