Response to Terror

Rescue units in New York City worked non-stop for 52 days after the attack.

The last survivor rescued was carried out of the smoking rubble on day two.

The official WTC site death toll is 2752 people, from more than 80 nations.

189 die in the Pentagon attack.

44 die in a Pennsylvania field.

Have you thought about how the war against radical Islamic terror will end?
It won’t be in a signing ceremony on the deck of a battleship. Nor will it be an agreement between the U.S. president and Osama bin Laden, or his disciple, or any single leader of the Islamic fundamentalist movement, which is, after all, a multi-headed snake. And it won’t end because the U.S. and its allies kill all of the jihadists. The war against these radical religious fanatics will not be marked by any definitive boundary or event, or any headline’s or leader’s declaration of victory. It will be a gradual and ephemeral crossing into silence, which can only happen when there is no longer reason or desire for young Muslim men and women to end their lives in violence or live their lives in poverty, sorrow, hopelessness, and hate. The war will end when peaceful social change ends these characteristic traits in the lives of those who now wish death for America and Israel, in conjunction with effective law enforcement, unfettered by constraints of political correctness, to apprehend and silence those who only know to preach and incite the violence and hatred, no matter the circumstance, cost, or consequence. There is a generation in them that cannot change and must take time to die and be silenced before new roots can take firm hold.
Is this change going to be realized by inciting wars in Iraq? By bringing more death and reasons for jealousy and hatred? The answer is, “no.” And this is why America is on the wrong track when it follows the vision of Bush, and Cheney, and the motivations of those for whom they front.
The Lebanese gush praise and devotion over those in Hezbollah who brought death and destruction down upon them. Aside from the dollars handed out by their tormentors, the hate that blinds them, and the fear, is the same in Palestine and among the downtrodden of Arabia and Egypt and those found at every point of the Middle-Eastern compass. This is the enemy that provokes the violence that brought down the Towers on the other side of the world, and which will continue to strike out until it is made to, one day, fade away in the wake of social change that brings education and jobs and a future that is denied by the greed and extravagances of the kings, princes, dictators, and clerics who deal the official rule of life with the West for the region.
Where is America’s interest in partnering with this clique? The cost of a few dollars in a gallon of gas? The elimination of a middleman? Is that really worth the past and future of violence and the death of soldiers and fanatics and targeted innocents across generations of time? No matter who or what rules Iraq or any other Mid-East nation, the oil will, directly or through middlemen, find the world market because all sides want it and all sides want to sell it. Since this is true, is it not also true that propping up elitist governments by inserting force and arms is really trading lives on the price to be paid for a barrel? Is there any other way to see it? Perhaps Americans should hate their leaders for the death of their sons and daughters in this barter as much as the fanatics hate for the death that characterizes their lives and memories. When did the value of peace become diminished by the measure of the worth of a barrel of oil?
Is Iraq a threat to America and a deserving post-911 target? A top-secret military report, which came to light in September 2006, concerning al-Anbar province, in western Iraq, where intense fighting has ranged from the provincial capital, Ramadi, to Fallujah, estimates that up to an additional 60,000 troops would be needed to gain control where 50,000 troops have had no success. And, since such buildups will not happen, which alone speaks volumes on the threat to the U.S. posed there, the raised possibility of an eventual “ceding” of the province to the “enemy” begs the question: why leave any soldiers behind anywhere in Iraq to die and be injured?” The willingness, or even the compulsion of Bush to abandon any part of Iraq is an undeniable signal that Iraq is not and never has been a threat to U.S. security, or a factor for the, as Bush said in his 911 speech, “safety of America that will be determined in [Iraq’s] streets...” Rather, such concession helps to illustrate that Iraq is only a source of income and potentially vast future resource for Bush-administration industrialists, who now, in the face of increasing violence there and opposition at home, are merely trying to salvage some source of continued enrichment which, to date, has been scandalously extravagant. From a military perspective alone, the report speaks of Iraq as an obligatory political objective, not one of national survival. If Iraq really were a threat to the U.S., there would and could be no ceding, no withdrawing, and no allowing any sector of that threat to remain unopposed and undefeated, and there would not be.
In Bush’s election-season, political, fear-mongering speeches, he talks about “havoc” in Iraq and fighting in the streets, but it is he who ignited and fans the flames of global street violence. Order and control were replaced with violence and widespread fear by Bush when he illegally ordered troops into Iraq. The violence and fear will never end there so long as U.S. troops remain—that will not be allowed to happen by disparate forces, separately opposed to each other and commonly opposed to the U.S. When troops are ordered out of Iraq, those Mid-Eastern forces that will never accept American control will vie for and re-establish order and control, ending the on-going tragedy of daily violence and death. Bush and America will likely not favor the new regime that emerges, but the same is true in Palestine, where American-backed, democratic elections produced the radical and unfriendly Hamas government. The difference is that Palestine is not a temptation to Bush industrialists. The new regime that arises in Iraq after U.S. troops leave, if it wishes to remain in place, will not, as Saddam did not, threaten America and will not harbor or support terrorism or the violent objectives of the Islamic radicals, because America will not withdraw unconditionally with respect to those possibilities, or genocide, and America will then be free of the yoke, callously and carelessly thrown upon it by Bush, which ever tightens to strangle its prosperity.
For those who are not a part of the benefitting and money-driven corporate base that drives the Bush administration’s intractability in Iraq, and who have been unable to see the truth behind the treason and crime of Bush’s grab for control in the oil-rich and industrial-based-infrastructure-lacking nation, this is yet another eye-opener that should make the travesty and abomination that is the Bush administration, and that is really behind more than 4,100 American deaths and tens of thousands of injuries, even more clear for them to see.
But the end of the violence will not come with the end of Bush’s war in Iraq, drawing closer as the voices of regret and change grow in America. The end of the violence will be heralded by a long parade of new Islamic voices, growing ever louder and more numerous, drowning out the bearded, jabbering seeds of war in their midst. It has already begun, even as America continues to prod down the illicit, bloodied path chosen by Bush, begun with the brave, lone voice of a factional Palestinian leader who cautions his people to look in the mirror to find blame for their circumstances and not just to Israel.
On this anniversary of 911, America should also heed that voice when looking to lay blame and find reasons why.

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