Tom Friedman on 9/11; - As usual, I agree with Tom

BWhite · 2004-10-15 05:13:59

Addicted to 9/11 By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
I don't know whether to laugh or cry when I hear the president and vice president slamming John Kerry for saying that he hopes America can eventually get back to a place where "terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance." The idea that President Bush and Mr. Cheney would declare such a statement to be proof that Mr. Kerry is unfit to lead actually says more about them than Mr. Kerry. Excuse me, I don't know about you, but I dream of going back to the days when terrorism was just a nuisance in our lives.
If I have a choice, I prefer not to live the rest of my life with the difference between a good day and bad day being whether Homeland Security tells me it is "code red" or "code orange" outside. To get inside the Washington office of the International Monetary Fund the other day, I had to show my ID, wait for an escort and fill out a one-page form about myself and my visit. I told my host: "Look, I don't want a loan. I just want an interview." Somewhere along the way we've gone over the top and lost our balance.
That's why Mr. Kerry was actually touching something many Americans are worried about - that this war on terrorism is transforming us and our society, when it was supposed to be about uprooting the terrorists and transforming their societies.
The Bush team's responses to Mr. Kerry's musings are revealing because they go to the very heart of how much this administration has become addicted to 9/11. The president has exploited the terrorism issue for political ends - trying to make it into another wedge issue like abortion, guns or gay rights - to rally the Republican base and push his own political agenda. But it is precisely this exploitation of 9/11 that has gotten him and the country off-track, because it has not only created a wedge between Republicans and Democrats, it's also created a wedge between America and the rest of the world, between America and its own historical identity, and between the president and common sense.
By exploiting the emotions around 9/11, Mr. Bush took a far-right agenda on taxes, the environment and social issues - for which he had no electoral mandate - and drove it into a 9/12 world. In doing so, Mr. Bush made himself the most divisive and polarizing president in modern history.
By using 9/11 to justify launching a war in Iraq without U.N. support, Mr. Bush also created a huge wedge between America and the rest of the world. I sympathize with the president when he says he would never have gotten a U.N. consensus for a strategy of trying to get at the roots of terrorism by reshaping the Arab-Muslim regimes that foster it - starting with Iraq.
But in politicizing 9/11, Mr. Bush drove a wedge between himself and common sense when it came to implementing his Iraq strategy. After failing to find any W.M.D. in Iraq, he became so dependent on justifying the Iraq war as the response to 9/11 - a campaign to bring freedom and democracy to the Arab-Muslim world - that he refused to see reality in Iraq. The president seemed to be saying to himself, "Something so good and right as getting rid of Saddam can't possibly be going so wrong." Long after it was obvious to anyone who visited Iraq that we never had enough troops there to establish order, Mr. Bush simply ignored reality. When pressed on Iraq, he sought cover behind 9/11 and how it required "tough decisions" - as if the tough decision to go to war in Iraq, in the name of 9/11, should make him immune to criticism over how he conducted the war.
Lastly, politicizing 9/11 put a wedge between us and our history. The Bush team has turned this country into "The United States of Fighting Terrorism." "Bush only seems able to express our anger, not our hopes," said the Mideast expert Stephen P. Cohen. "His whole focus is on an America whose role in the world is to negate the negation of the terrorists. But America has always been about the affirmation of something positive. That is missing today. Beyond Afghanistan, they've been much better at destruction than construction."
I wish Mr. Kerry were better able to articulate how America is going to get its groove back. But the point he was raising about wanting to put terrorism back into perspective is correct. I want a president who can one day restore Sept. 11th to its rightful place on the calendar: as the day after Sept. 10th and before Sept. 12th. I do not want it to become a day that defines us. Because ultimately Sept. 11th is about them - the bad guys - not about us. We're about the Fourth of July.

Cobra Commander · 2004-10-15 05:39:43

Whether this "nuisance" mentality is putting terrorism in perpsective or the ravings of a fool depends largely on what is meant by it and how we do it.

Terrorism can again become a "nuisance", a minor problem we don't really worry about much, in two ways. We can fix it, through a combination of educating people here and abroad, molding cultural, economic an political conditions in the lands where terrorism breeds, and when necessary killing people. With precision. Or we can just ignore it. It takes years of planning and preparation for these attacks, they're expensive to set up and there's only so many nutjobs that voulnteer to blow themsleves up yet have the skills to do something more than detonate a block of semtex on a bus. They'll kill a few thousand people every couple years, tops. We lose more than that in traffic accidents. Nuisance.

Clearly Bush is trying for the first option. He's F'ing it up, but we get the idea. We don't know what Kerry would actually do. What we do know is that trying to make 9/11 and this war a Bush Administration problem is entirely the wrong way to look at it. I don't believe that Senator Kerry is trying to do so, but some others on that side of the aisle appear to be.

We don't want to let this war consume us, but at the same time we need to wade into it. Let's not kid ourselves into believing that terrorism is the biggest killer of Americans ever, but at the same time we must acknowledge that unlike some other dangers, this one is people trying to kill us. Mosquitos are a nuisance, mass murderers are a somewhat greater concern.

But then another angle occurs to me. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, so I hear it said. Americans... we're not the most vigilant people of late. We're soft and lazy, we truly believe that having to wait an hour to board a cross-country flight is some great hardship. Gas is $2.00 a gallon! My God, the sky is falling and it's on fire, we're all doomed! This skewed mentality is likely both the cause of our obession with terrorism and the motivator for wanting to believe it's just another nuisance. Paradox, another great American virtue.

Palomar · 2004-10-15 06:43:20

But then another angle occurs to me. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, so I hear it said. Americans... we're not the most vigilant people of late. We're soft and lazy, we truly believe that having to wait an hour to board a cross-country flight is some great hardship. Gas is $2.00 a gallon! My God, the sky is falling and it's on fire, we're all doomed! This skewed mentality is likely both the cause of our obession with terrorism and the motivator for wanting to believe it's just another nuisance. Paradox, another great American virtue.

*Of course the only REALLY important issue currently is Mary Cheney's being a lesbian and Kerry mentioning it during the last debate! VP and Mrs. Cheney are outraged, it's all over the media. Yep, Mary's sexual orientation sure is of vast concern to me, as is her parents' over-protectiveness.

--Cindy

BWhite · 2004-10-15 06:48:26

"He who has a strong enough why to live can bear almost any how [to live]. http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quote … ]Neitzsche

The same point is made in the movie Apocalypse Now when Marlon Brando talks about being struck in the forehead by a diamond bullet. They are stronger because they have a more clear (if patently false) belief as to why they are fighting. We either change that belief or kill them all. Putting boots on their necks merely grants them the glory of martyrdom.

Western secularism, unchecked, will destroy certain strands of traditional Islamic culture just as Western secularism threatens certain versions of traditional Christianity. They are fighting for their cultural identity, including the role of the male as patriarch of society.

Think about asking Jerry Falwell whether we need to oppose the "secular humanists" and maybe you can see why I deny that JDAMs and and Abrams tanks can impose democracy upon Islam.

= = =

PS - to answer Cobra. Killing with precision helps. Killing without precision greatly harms our cause.

The ONLY judge and jury of whether we are killing with or without precision is the Iraqi civilian population, not the pundits on American TV.

BWhite · 2004-10-15 06:50:50

But then another angle occurs to me. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, so I hear it said. Americans... we're not the most vigilant people of late. We're soft and lazy, we truly believe that having to wait an hour to board a cross-country flight is some great hardship. Gas is $2.00 a gallon! My God, the sky is falling and it's on fire, we're all doomed! This skewed mentality is likely both the cause of our obession with terrorism and the motivator for wanting to believe it's just another nuisance. Paradox, another great American virtue.
*Of course the only REALLY important issue currently is Mary Cheney's being a lesbian and Kerry mentioning it during the last debate! VP and Mrs. Cheney are outraged, it's all over the media. Yep, Mary's sexual orientation sure is of vast concern to me, as is her parents' over-protectiveness.
--Cindy

I wonder if the Cheneys are ashamed of their daughter being lesbian. Otherwise, why the outrage?

Palomar · 2004-10-15 06:58:29

But then another angle occurs to me. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, so I hear it said. Americans... we're not the most vigilant people of late. We're soft and lazy, we truly believe that having to wait an hour to board a cross-country flight is some great hardship. Gas is $2.00 a gallon! My God, the sky is falling and it's on fire, we're all doomed! This skewed mentality is likely both the cause of our obession with terrorism and the motivator for wanting to believe it's just another nuisance. Paradox, another great American virtue.
*Of course the only REALLY important issue currently is Mary Cheney's being a lesbian and Kerry mentioning it during the last debate! VP and Mrs. Cheney are outraged, it's all over the media. Yep, Mary's sexual orientation sure is of vast concern to me, as is her parents' over-protectiveness.
--Cindy
I wonder if the Cheneys are ashamed of their daughter being lesbian. Otherwise, why the outrage?

*Yeah, that possibility was pointed out by Mrs. Edwards yesterday, on a radio program. I saw this on ABC Nightly News last evening. Mrs. Cheney saying this makes Kerry "a bad person" is WAY over the top. Give me a break. It makes them also look desperate to try and knock him down a few points in the polls. Besides seeing news ticker headlines at Yahoo!, this is as closely as I'm following the fracas. :sleep:

--Cindy

Cobra Commander · 2004-10-15 07:02:10

Think about asking Jerry Falwell whether we need to oppose the "secular humanists" and maybe you can see why I deny that JDAMs and and Abrams tanks can impose democracy upon Islam.

I'm not suggesting we can solve all the world's problems through militray might, but merely that the application of force is one of many tools available. You can't use a hammer for everything, but to build a house you have to drive some nails.

The ONLY judge and jury of whether we are killing with or without precision is the Iraqi civilian population, not the pundits on American TV.

Unfortunately there will always be some Iraqi civilians who believe we're killing indiscriminately. Terrorists have families too after all. How much of the population sees it that way is what's important, even if those American pundits point to the angry ones.

I wonder if the Cheneys are ashamed of their daughter being lesbian. Otherwise, why the outrage?

Maybe, maybe not. Sleazy political move regardless, and in the end who gives a damn? Surely not I.

BWhite · 2004-10-15 07:48:30

Unfortunately there will always be some Iraqi civilians who believe we're killing indiscriminately. Terrorists have families too after all. How much of the population sees it that way is what's important, even if those American pundits point to the angry ones.

Exactly.

And our pundits (on both sides) have every reason to spin the data.

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#1 2004-10-15 05:13:59

Re: Tom Friedman on 9/11; - As usual, I agree with Tom

#2 2004-10-15 05:39:43

Re: Tom Friedman on 9/11; - As usual, I agree with Tom

#3 2004-10-15 06:43:20

Re: Tom Friedman on 9/11; - As usual, I agree with Tom

#4 2004-10-15 06:48:26

Re: Tom Friedman on 9/11; - As usual, I agree with Tom

#5 2004-10-15 06:50:50

Re: Tom Friedman on 9/11; - As usual, I agree with Tom

#6 2004-10-15 06:58:29

Re: Tom Friedman on 9/11; - As usual, I agree with Tom

#7 2004-10-15 07:02:10

Re: Tom Friedman on 9/11; - As usual, I agree with Tom

#8 2004-10-15 07:48:30

Re: Tom Friedman on 9/11; - As usual, I agree with Tom

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