Ever since 9/11, the neo-cons have tried everything they can to convince everyone that “Islamic Fascists” are the new Nazis — a global threat that every effort must be made to stop. Anyone that disagrees is either naive, or a terrorist sympathizer, or simply a terrorist. Up until now, unfortunately, this tactic has worked, even though it shouldn’t have. There are so many problems with their arguments, many of which have been well documented at this stage. But there’s one point that I haven’t heard anyone else make.
Al-Qaeda bombed the World Trade Center in February of 1993. They set off a car bomb in the parking garage in an attempt to bring one of the towers down. It didn’t work, and we thought nothing of it. It took almost nine years before they were able to try again. There was no Patriot Act. There was no Office of Homeland Security. There was no warrant-less wiretapping, secret prisons, or Guantanamo. There was no George W., beating his chest and pointing fingers. And yet it took them almost nine years to strike again. Granted, once they did, they did so cleverly and were met with more success than probably even they expected. But the point is that you don’t wait nine years to attempt something you’re obsessed with. You wait nine years because you lack the resources necessary to accomplish your mission. In 2001, Al-Qaeda was small, under-funded, and not a big threat.
But the neo-con warning that 9/11 was the opening salvo in World War III could turn out to be true, but they only got it right retroactively. It has turned in to a self-fulfilling prophesy, thanks to the Bush/Chenney preemptive-incompetence doctrine. If someone else had been president on 9/11, we could have taken care of Afghanistan — with the world’s blessing — and left it at that. Instead we’ve enflamed the jihad movement globally, and revealed the limits not just of our military, but of our very understanding of the world, and our place in it.
The Jihad movement has been gaining momentum well before 9/11. Are you saying since it took 9 years until they actually knocked down the towers we should just wait another decade until they knock down say the Sears tower? Is one building and say 1500 people every 9-10 years acceptable losses of civilians?
Hey Sly,
Nope, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that Bush used a big sucess by a small, underfunded group of nuts to justify an irrational overreaction that is unbelievably costly, highly irrelevant, and has made us more prone to future attacks. I’m all for going after the actual culprits, but he diverted the attack on the guilty to go after corporate pdrofits and personal vendettas in Iraq.
It’s as though we’d responded to Pearl Harbor by attacking Argentina. It’s the wrong target, it wastes our military resources, and it creates extra enemies for no good reason. If we’d lashed out so blindly in WW2 we would certainly have lost the war.