On Sep 9, 12:53 pm, plainolamerican <[email protected]> wrote:
> Where were you when the planes hit the Twin Towers?
Islamist " appeasers" are not interested in facts nor truth.
They suffer from the same mental illness of pure hate mongering and
killing as the Terrorist Islamist swine do. Oh yes ! They are the
purist of filthy swine !
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> ---
> laughing at everyone's dismay
> did they really think a US interventionist/pre-emptive war policy
> would stand unopposed?
>
> who will be surprised during the next attack?
>
> On Sep 9, 11:34 am, MJ <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
>
> > A Bloody Decade of Fear and Vauntingby Anthony GregoryOn September 10,
> > 2001, many who thirsted for liberty smelled hope in the air. The Clinton
> > era was over and the new Bush era showed signs of being less eventful, even
> > more peaceful. The Republican had won on a platform of a humbler foreign
> > policy than Clinton-Gore’s, and had by late 2001 pushed through his tax
> > cut. More to the point, he already seemed an impotent president, having
> > just barely won after one of the most contentious rounds of recounts and
> > court challenges in electoral history. The Senate was split down the
> > middle. Much of Bush’s domestic policy, itself an unconvincing continuation
> > of Clintonian moderation, seemed doomed, and on foreign policy – such as in
> > his handling of the China spy plane affair – he was refreshingly calm
> > compared to the more hawkish elements of his party.
> > Clinton hadn’t even been that bad, even considering the steady expansion of
> > regulations, a horribly unjust war (though not one as terrible as Operation
> > Desert Storm), and the largest single federal law enforcement atrocity in
> > living memory. But he was not the LBJ or FDR he wanted to be, and yet he
> > helped awaken a new distrust in government, especially on the right, that
> > had been asleep throughout the Reagan-Bush wrap-up of the Cold War years.
> > For people to hate even Clinton’s generally milquetoast tyranny so much was
> > a wonderful thing to witness. All in all, throughout the 1990s, government
> > had grown at a manageable pace compared to the economy, there was even a
> > nominal surplus in 1998, and the growing Internet pointed to new
> > opportunities for technology and freedom. U.S. foreign policy had been
> > steadily aggressive, especially in the Middle East, but this did not pose
> > the direct threat to liberty at home that would come to distinguish the
> > years that followed.
> > On September 10, 2001, I was a 20-year-old American history student in my
> > junior year at UC Berkeley, hopeful that the next decade would be as
> > relatively placid as the Clinton years. My friends and I sat and
> > watchedThis Is Spinal Tapthat night, embodying that pre-9/11 mentality that
> > has been so viciously derided ever since.
> > A phone call from my dad woke me up the next morning. A few of my roommates
> > were already watching the news. Talking heads on Fox, which I had preferred
> > to the statist liberals on CNN, were calling for blood, saying it was time
> > to let loose "the dogs of war." It was the beginning of a nightmare that
> > has so far lasted ten years.
> > Although my college buddies and I lived in the pre-9/11 bubble, having come
> > of age in the boom times of the 1990s, we were not ignorant of the
> > conditions that likely led to this attack – one-sided support for Israel,
> > the U.S. troops stationed in Saudi Arabia, the sanctions that killed half a
> > million Iraqi children. Libertarians and others had warned for years
> > aboutthe threat of blowback. Berkeley was a fairly safe place to be a
> > peacenik and that month I was glad to be where I was. Nevertheless, it was
> > depressing that virtually no one in the wider culture was drawing the clear
> > connection between terrorism and America's brutal policy of wars,
> > sanctions, and occupations.
> > With very few exceptions, war fever swept the nation in September 2001. The
> > entire right, barring a few voices in the wilderness, reverted to
> > full-blown jingoist nationalism. Most progressives were at the best
> > ambivalent on the prospect of war against the Taliban. Even many
> > libertarians clung to the state for protection. Prominent Objectivists
> > demanded that the U.S. nuke ten countries as a show of force.
> > All of a sudden Bush was a hero. His approval rating shot up dramatically,
> > even though all he did, at the very best, was fail to stop 9/11. This
> > massive failure on the part of U.S. intelligence and security policy would
> > never be looked at seriously in the mainstream media or in the top echelons
> > of U.S. politics. The fact that the FBI had been infiltrating al Qaeda in
> > the United States since 1989 and had tracked Zacarias Moussaoui in the
> > summer of 2001 is barely remembered, along with the Taliban’s offer after
> > 9/11 to hand over bin Laden if proof of his guilt was offered.
> > The immediate aftermath was surreal to observe. Throughout September I was
> > still under the impression that Gore would have reacted worse to the crisis
> > – and to this day I’m not 100% convinced otherwise, although it’s much
> > harder to believe. The anthrax scare came – another incident that has since
> > gone down the memory hole. The bombs began falling on Kabul in October, and
> > victory over the Taliban was declared. (Nearly ten years later, we are
> > still hearing about how the Taliban will eventually be defeated once and
> > for all.) Then came the Patriot Act, the destruction of almost all that
> > remained from a Fourth Amendment previously abused for years in the war on
> > drugs. Support for the onslaught on our freedoms was almost unanimous on
> > the Hill.
> > I hoped this hysteria would soon subside, but throughout 2002 we heard the
> > war drums beating, at rising intensity, for Iraqi blood. It was a most
> > ominous year, a sense that we were trapped in an alternate universe
> > permeating everything, because anyone paying the least bit of attention
> > could have told you that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Even Afghanistan
> > was virtually unrelated, at least in any way that would make the war there
> > logical. But Iraq? Saddam was Osama bin Laden’s enemy. The regime was
> > secular. Its WMD were non-existent, we had good reasons to believe, and the
> > only reason we should fear any that did exist was if the U.S. were to
> > invade – as the CIA reminded us up until the unleashing of Shock and Awe.
> > In March 2003, the U.S. government opened a whirlwind of terror upon the
> > people of Iraq, duplicating the destruction of 9/11 many times over.
> > Thousands of bombs were dropped, including some weighing in at a ton, such
> > as the celebrated Joint Direct Attack Munition that got all the press that
> > week. The obscenity of war ecstasy gripped the nation even greater than it
> > had when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan. I vividly remember a homeless guy on
> > a bus attentively studying a newspaper article featuring photographs and
> > descriptions of the major weaponry deployed by the U.S. He pointed it out
> > to a fellow derelict, who was disgusted by this morbid fascination. "Don’t
> > show me that. All they have is rocks and shit! We’re gonna go in there and
> > kill them. They’re poorer than us. They ain’t no threat to us. We’re just
> > gonna go and run them over." This exchange was intellectually superior to
> > almost anything on the networks in those days.
> > Another odd thing I noticed was how much the political dynamic had shifted,
> > not just temporarily in the brief aftermath of 9/11, but all the way
> > through the opening of the Iraq war, with the metamorphosis seemingly
> > progressing by the day. The conservative movement no longer saw government
> > as a major threat at all. The socialists, meanwhile, protested the war. As
> > a libertarian in Berkeley, I was greatly frustrated by this situation. But
> > the way that the War Party was even more enthusiastic about Iraq than
> > Afghanistan demonstrated that the problem was a long-term cultural one that
> > would likely persist for generations.
> > By 2004 there were some signs of hope.Fahrenheit 9/11was an antiwar movie
> > with popular reach. The torture scandal that erupted in April, when photos
> > from Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, a notorious torture facility run by Saddam
> > and now reopened for business by Americans, demonstrated the depths of U.S.
> > depravity, there was a silver lining: Many were genuinely disgusted. Around
> > the same time the Supreme Court began questioning some of Bush’s most
> > presumptuous claims of unlimited detention power, at Guantánamo and at
> > home. Maybe these excesses would be reined in. Maybe the war on terror
> > itself would end.
> > That was over seven years ago. Everyone at the top responsible for those
> > atrocities have been shielded by the current administration, and most of
> > their injustices continued.
> > In August of 2004, the 9/11 Commission published its superficial report,
> > the last such federal investigation of any significance. Almost all of its
> > recommendations were for a more active federal role in stopping terrorism,
> > rather than ratcheting back or even seriously rearranging its failed
> > intelligence approaches.
> > The Democrats put up John Kerry, quite the hawk compared to Howard Dean,
> > but at least he was raising some good questions in the debates on Iraq,
> > even if he was essentially a dedicated interventionist, especially on
> > Afghanistan. When Bush won reelection in 2004, every American peacenik’s
> > heart sank. It was a horrible pill to swallow. He had proudly run promising
> > to stay the course after the worst four years for American liberty since
> > Richard Nixon, and won by a larger margin than in 2000.
> > More scandals emerged in 2005. An increasing number of Americans saw the
> > Iraq war for what it was – a crusade fought in vain built on a mountain of
> > lies. The new Iraq constitution was obviously not a triumph for freedom,
> > given its socialism and blow against secularism. The terrible response to
> > Katrina in September 2005 made the Bush administration fair game for
> > mainstream criticism. In December 2005 we found out that the Bush
> > administration had been using the NSA to spy on telecommunications without
> > even the lackadaisical warrants authorized by FISA. For a few days, there
> > was outrage, and it continued to be a talking point among Bush’s political
> > opponents for a couple more years. It was good to see that the newly
> > reelected presidential team was discredited a year into their second term.
> > By the end of 2005, pundits were even musing about
>
> ...
>
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>
> - Show quoted text -
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