Go with a smile!

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

No more 9/11 anniversaries

What am I going to post, now that it is the anniversary of 9/11 all over again?

Nothing. Because it doesn't really matter anymore. It was just a terrorist act. It incited a great amount of bad feeling towards Muslims, but it's done a lot of harm to the US. It basically turned the US into the Taliban. They started becoming more fundamentalist. They launched two jihads in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Well we don't call them jihad. We call them crusades.

Today, the Republicans are behaving like the Taliban, arguing for more control against women's sexual freedom. They have protested against the ability of fact checkers to restrict the freedom of the Romney campaign to act as they please.

I think that the commemorations on this anniversary will be more muted because a few things have taken place over the last one or two years. People used to be able to say, "most terrorist attacks are conducted by Muslims". Well not anymore, thanks to Anders Breivik. Recently, there were the Aurora cinema massacres, and the Wisconsin Gurdwara shooting spree.

The dialogue has changed as well. Now instead of merely Iraq and Afghanistan, people are talking about Arab Spring, Iran and Israel when they talk about the Middle East. People are even acquiescing to Iran owning nuclear weapons. They are more worried about the Syrian government killing their own people. Although - yes, Al Qaeda could surface if you overthrow Assad.

We are just beginning to see the stupidity of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. When they were waged, the US had already started to go downhill, even though this was not so apparent. But they made things even worse. They drained the US economy. They diverted the US away from looking forward and extending its amazing technological lead over the rest of the world. They distracted the US from dealing with or engaging with the rise of Asia. They alienated the US from Europe. And they kept the Republicans in power.

Maybe a few things might happen to make extremist Islam terrorism important again. Maybe after the US pulls out of Iraq, it becomes another dangerous power. Maybe the Taliban would take back Afghanistan and turn it into an old medieval kingdom. Maybe the new regimes in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt would become terorrist states owing to the fact that Islamist governments close one eye to their activities. That would be pretty ironic, because one of the arguments for the Iraq war was that when you gave Arabs liberal democracy, they would become better citizens of the world.

But I think that on September the 11th, the US should do absolutely nothing. We've had enough of this bullshit. Let's move on. Let's worry more about more important things, such as whether Barack Obama gets reelected or not.

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