Never Forget?

After 9/11, we saw such phrases as "never forget" and "never again". Well, several years after the incident, I ask, "Forget what?" Do we even know what caused this attack? Well I guess we know but we obviously don't care. In response to an attack which was originally provoked by theU.S. invading and occupying a foreign country (Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia), folks from the other nation wanted to send us a note, teach us a lesson: "Hey U.S., you don't own the world. Get out of our country and leave us alone." The failure of most Americans to understand this message is mostly due to our egomaniacal belief that everything we think is "right." Imagine some other country invaded the U.S. and occupied us. Their reason: Americans are fat and unhealthy, they use too much of the world's resources and in their refusal to sign the Kyoto treaty, have shown that they do not care about how the U.S.'s careless actions are destroying the environment and hurting the world community's health. Hey, these are valid concerns. Why not invade us and straighten us out, right? Are these reasons any less valid than those of Bin Laden? All he said was "get U.S. military out of Saudi Arabia". A pretty simple request if you ask me. Why do we need U.S. military in Saudi Arabia. There is only one reason...to secure the oil.

Anyway, what do we do in response to getting attacked. Well most folks would try to unravel WHY our enemy hates us so much and then try to resolve that issue. This is a diplomatic solution and one of the oldest military tactics. If you remove the reason that the enemy is attacking you, they will have leas reason to attack you, their troops will have less moral, etc. Jesus Christ used this tactic repetitively. (And I should point out, it's obvious that Jesus NEVER attacked ANYONE physically for ANY reason. He used diplomacy for all solutions, even making the ultimate sacrifice, surrendering himself to die as a diplomatic example to represent visually to all people what is good, and what is evil.

So what has the U.S. done in response to being attacked? Well we've gone and invaded another country. I ask, how is that going to resolve the problem that we had in the first place: a small group of people hates us because we attack and invade Muslim countries. They attack us for it, so what do we do? Well, we go and do it again, thus making more passionate enemies.

In the months following the attacks, we had the world's sympathys. We could have negotiated ANYTHING we wanted. But instead of rallying the world in our support, we lied to them (Bush: "Hussein has WMD's") and distracted them (Bush: "Hussein is connected to Bin Laden"). Now most of the world thinks we are bunch of arrogant bastards and doesn't side with us.

And our original enemies: They hate us even more.

Bin Laden waited 10 years to attack us after George Bush (Senior) invaded in 91.

When will the next attack against us occur?

I ask you, How have we made our country safer?

The answer is, We have not. We have made it more dangerous and uncertain for our children.