An Epic Tragedy

Please don't accuse me of being sympathetic to terrorists. A terrorist is a criminal. But a torturer is a criminal too. And perpetrating a crime against a criminal doesn't justify the crime.

I remember being driven to tears during my morning commute when I heard NPR's Bob Edwards say on 9/11 that the first World Trade Center tower had collapsed. I remember the further feelings of anger and despair that bubbled up in the days to follow when I'd heard that my good friend from high school, Chris Newton, was among the passengers killed on the flight that crashed into the Pentagon. I remember listening closely to President Bush when he addressed the rescue workers at Ground Zero. I was proud at the time of what he said; that we should go on with our lives and not give into our fear, which was clearly so present in all our lives in those weeks following that tragic day.

I was ready for America to fight back against this terrorist network, and I cheered when we went into Afghanistan and joined with the local warlords to take down the Taliban.

But when the case for going to war in Iraq was announced, I got a sinking feeling that it was a bullshit set up. That Iraq was being set up to take the fall for 9/11 even though there was no evidence of a relationship between Saddam and al Qaeda. I remember that Saddam had gassed the Kurds, and I was concerned about his still having chemical weapons, but I wasn't convinced that he definitely had them. When the IAEA and weapons inspectors (led by an American) were saying that Iraq likely had no WMDs, I was feeling a lot more assured.

When Powell did his dog and pony show at the UN, however, that convinced me that it was all an elaborate deception. It was then that I discovered how wrong Bush and Cheney were, but that we were all but helpless to do anything about it. When the first airstrikes began and "journalists" in Baghdad provided the play by play, I felt disgusted. The "shock and awe" worked for me: I was shocked at how, despite Bush's entreaties to us to not give into fear, our government's deep fear of Arab terrorists had paralyzed it and caused the US to start a pre-emptive war, and I was awed at how complacent we Americans had become, at the mercy of a well-oiled machine of government spoon-feeding the media with only that information it wanted to disseminate to the public.

Now, as the truth has slowly come out regarding the culture of torture, abuse, and sadism that was authorized by the President and Vice President shortly after 9/11, as stories like this one come out about how Bush "disappeared" people who became inconvenient to the lying liars and their lies, and this one about how President Obama is threatening the UK with withholding of intelligence if the British High Court discloses certain facts about how the US tortured a British citizen, Binyam Mohammed, I am struck with just how epic the scope of this whole eight year tragedy has been.

I am so dismayed that Bush created this disgusting war and torture machine, and I am very concerned that Obama has made a decision to keep part of it from seeing the light of day. I truly see little meaning in just going about our daily lives when all that is in place to ensure that we can do so is built on deception and the abandonment of freedom. We have become a nation of cowards, believing we are simply entitled to the mantle of the greatest nation on earth, but too afraid to defend what we earned in our first 225 years with our commitment to freedom intact.

I hold onto hope that this will get better for everyone, but it's getting more and more difficult.