By Tom J. Wright

    On September 11, 2001, mere nightmare became deadly reality for the United States Of America.  In the blink of an eye, the political, psychological and emotional landscape of the world's most powerful nation was dramatically altered, maybe forever.

    The coordinated attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and The Pentagon in Washington D.C. have shaken this nation--its citizens, its political leaders and its military figures--to its core, despite desperate attempts by our government to make it appear that it is all "business as usual".

    No one is convinced.  This many innocent people have not been killed at one time by an overt attack of this nature since the U.S. incinerated hundreds of thousands of people at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in Japan.  And on U.S. soil, you have to go back to the Civil War to see this much killing.

    An attack of this magnitude, which destroyed so many innocent lives and which caused so much destruction and chaos begs the question--"Why?"

    Why? Indeed.  It is a question very few, if any, in the U.S. national media dare, or desire, to ask.  In fact, our political leaders are absolutely terrified that the American People may start asking themselves that very same question, and come to their own conclusions.

    Our leaders are terrified because if those Americans were to come to a certain conclusion, blood might fill the streets of every American city and cries of revolution pierce the air.

    So, let's ask and answer the question, right here and right now, and try to find the truth, no matter to what ugly and awful place it leads us: Why did the person, or persons, responsible for this terrible act, choose to harm the United States, and the United States alone?

    According to George W. Bush, and a long line of U.S. Presidents and other American government officials before him, we have been singled out for aggression because we have such an outstanding democracy that other people in the world just can't stand it; so they kill themselves in attacks on us.

    But France isn't getting bombed by angry militants upset over that country's democracy.  Neither is Britain or Germany or Sweden or the Netherlands or Mexico or Australia or Chile or Japan or any other democracy in the world.

    And besides that, if thousands of years of history teach us nothing else, it is that people just do not get suicidal or emotionally crazed beyond all recognition, to the point where they are ready to kill somebody, just because they envy another country's democratic form of government.  People get suicidal or homicidal or frenzied over violence done to them or their loved ones, or by attacks on their country or government or fellow citizens.

    And not coincidentally, the government of one country in particular has spent the last 50 odd years wreaking havoc and destroying lives around the world--it is none other that the United States Of America.

    The government of the United States has been very, very busy all these years: helping the right-wing dictatorship of Guatemala as they mass-murdered the native Mayan Indian population; arming and training the brutal Indonesian military as it illegally invaded East Timor and butchered the Timorese by the thousands; overthrowing Chile's democratically elected President and clearing the path for thousands of murders of innocent, left-wing Chilean citizens; slaughtering Greek citizens who dared to vote for a candidate too liberal for Washington's Reactionary Elite; torturing and murdering various African leaders, including the Congo's Patrice Lumumba; and sponsoring right-wing, nun-raping, murder-mad Death Squads in El Salvador and Nicaragua, to name but a few of the atrocities our government has committed across the globe.

    In the Middle East, our government forcefully and illegally overthrew the government of Iran in 1953, installing in its place a murderous and corrupt leadership that terrorized the Iranian People for many decades.  Our government has meddled in the internal political affairs of countries all over the Middle East, from Egypt to Jordan to Lebanon to Syria, and always to pursue its own selfish interests, whether it hurt or helped the local citizenry of any particular country.

    More recently, our government has overseen the slow, torturous deaths of at least half a million Iraqi citizens, mostly children, through its decade-long policy of economic sanctions against Iraq.  (Try to convince a potential terrorist, or anyone else for that matter, that killing 500,000 innocent Iraqis is any less morally repugnant than killing 10,000 innocent Americans.)

    Our government has also been busy in and near the Middle East supporting blood-hungry fanatics in Turkey who are doing to their minority population exactly what the ruthless Saddam Hussein has been doing to the Kurds, as well as helping the Israelis continue their 34-year, illegal, foreign occupation of Palestine and their exploitation of the Palestinian population.

    A comprehensive discussion of all the democratically elected governments that the United States Government has overthrown and innocent civilians it has purposely, or recklessly, or uncaringly murdered or maimed, would require a multi-volume set of full-length books.

    And so we see that the U.S. Government has been doing whatever it wants, to whomever it wants, whenever it wants, with as much moral depravity and pure uncaring crudeness as any group of madmen or murderers could muster.  And it has all been done in our names, as American citizens and with our tax dollars, aided and abetted by a lapdog news media only too eager to please its corporate masters.

    That, folks is why so many people around the world hate us.  That is why citizens of foreign countries burn American flags so menacingly in front of news cameras (which of course offer no context or genuine discussion of the cause of such anger). That is why American Embassies around the world, and virtually no others, get attacked so frequently.       These violent attacks on American Embassies, American ships, and other American interests around the world are very frightening, very real examples of 'blowback'--a word that was coined to describe retaliation against the U.S. government for its actions around the world.   This latest series of attacks, in New York City and Washington D.C., are just the worst, most recent examples of blowback.

    However, it is thousands of innocent American citizens who have paid with their lives for it.  Tragically, those who attack the U.S. do not realize that the American People are so well propagandized that most have no inkling of any of its government's criminal acts, and would be just as disgusted with those acts as others around the world if they knew of them.

    And so my deep anger at those who carried out this heinous attack is matched only by my bitter and intense anger at generations of American political, military and intelligence figures who have uncaringly put the American People in harm's way and provided countless terrorists around the world with motives to commit unspeakable acts against us.

    These American leaders have recklessly, shamefully, disgustingly and criminally put all of us, every single one of us, in danger.

    These stupid son-of-a-bitches have been so greedy for empire, so sick in the head for ever-increasing corporate profits and world domination and so morally depraved in their pursuit of both, that they have enraged virtually the entire world, turning billions of people, and tens of thousands of potential terrorists, against us.  (That is another reason why killing one terrorist, or a group of terrorists, in retaliation for the recent attacks here, will do nothing but create yet more, even angrier terrorists in their place.)

    The human blood of innocent Americans, and others, that drips from the hands of the perpetrators of those awful acts in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, drips too from the expensive suits and regal military uniforms of our Empire Builders in Washington and on Wall Street.

    George W. Bush, in one of his speeches to America in the aftermath of the attacks in New York and Washington, quoted from the Bible.  But he used the wrong quote.  A more appropriate passage for him to have used is: "As you sow, so shall you reap."

    What our government has caused us to suffer is sickening, atrocious and disheartening.  The American Empire (one most T.V.-obsessed, book-allergic Americans don't even know exists), like the Roman Empire before it, has finally made too many enemies.  Enemies that are only too anxious to return the favor of senseless violence and crude acts of injustice and hate.  Enemies who have become powerful, or devious, enough to strike the Empire at its very core.

    So what then, are the ramifications of all this, both the recent terror strikes against the U.S. and the fact of lawless American Empire?

    Will the apparent success of these latest attacks in terrorizing Americans embolden the attackers to strike again, assuming some are still alive?  Will other potential plotters of our destruction be encouraged to strike?

    What will the U.S. Government, Military, CIA and FBI do in reaction?  (It appears as I am writing this that the Jesus-obsessed George W. Bush is planning a massive Holy War of his own, in retaliation for what he says is a pure, simple case of Good vs. Evil.  God help us.)

    Will these organs of U.S. power shred our Constitution and trample our civil liberties in their stampede to destroy their enemies, as they did during the Cold War years and the Red Scare?  Will these insanely powerful entities, with a long history of brutal, anti-democratic acts, further tighten their grip on our country, while using public safety as a pretext?  Will the trillion dollar National Security State that is our country finally become a genuine police state?

    Will our government retaliate indiscriminately for the attacks on U.S. soil and cause some other group of potential terrorists to launch still more assaults upon our country?  Will we spiral into a never-ending Vicious Cycle of attack and retaliation, attack and retaliation, until no one is left standing?

    And worst of all, will some angry individual with hate in his heart and a mean grudge against the American Empire get a hold of a suitcase nuke and do the unthinkable?

    The world is suddenly a very, very dangerous place, my friends.  Our government has made many enemies for us.

    There is only one sensible, sane thing to do: Destroy the Empire.  Build a Republic.  Apologize publicly and profusely to the entire World (as Bill Clinton did to the Guatemalan People several years ago) and mean it.  Pay some reparations.  Create goodwill.  Defuse anger and build bridges (instead of destroying them).

    Make peace, with every nation, and with ourselves.  Come clean with the American People--tell them all the atrocious, ungodly things our government has done--both to the American People and to others around the globe.   Make this a new era for a new century.  We have the tools and the wealth and the know-how and the power to make peace.  All we need is the will.

    It has to be this way.  The American Empire must crumble, and real democracy, not just empty rhetoric, must take its place.  The alternative is a Vicious Cycle of death, destruction and misery never before seen on this Earth.

-- Little Nipper (canis@minor.net), September 21, 2001

Answers

I flagellate myself unto death. Oh it feels so good.

-- (Roland@hatemail.com), September 21, 2001.

Linky poo

-- (Roland@hatemail.com), September 21, 2001.

That was long and boring, and I don't possess the intelligence to understand it, even if I were to read it.

-- Typical Al Gore Supporter (Is@pat.al?), September 21, 2001.

OK, how do we count the errors of fact in this screed? Let me try.

This many innocent people have not been killed at one time by an overt act of this nature ...

"Overt." Heh. I like the way he qualifies that. It permits him to ignore the *FACT* that the Soviet Union/Russia and Red Chinese have systematically and callously murdered millions of innocents.

Case in point: the Russians are *despised* in Afghanistan, primarily because of the unbelievably brutal way that they attempted to force a communist government on them. But the Taliban-backed "Base" didn't attempt to attack Moscow or Kiev. It would behoove Tommy to ask "why" about this, methinks.

But typical of most Leftists, he can't bring himself to do that. Besides ...

It is a question very few, if any, in the U.S. national media dare, or desire, to ask.

Bullcrap. I've seen dozens of very interesting discussions about the "why." They've simply reached different conclusions, and Tommy Boy can't stand that. Thus, he feels that he must help us out: "It's cuz Amurica is EVIL."

But France isn't getting bombed by angry militants upset over that country's democracy. Neither is Britain or Germany or Sweden or the Netherlands or Mexico or Australia or Chile or Japan or any other democracy in the world.

He forgets the Sarin gas attack in Japan a few years ago, he forgets the long history of terrorism in Germany, Ireland, and a host of other places. None of them were as bad as the WTC bombing, of course, but again, it's interesting how he bends history to fit his fevered imaginings.

And besides that, if thousands of years of history teach us nothing else, it is that people just do not get suicidal or emotionally crazed beyond all recognition, to the point where they are ready to kill somebody, just because they envy another country's democratic form of government.

This is so wrong I don't know where to begin. I'll just say this: there is a long history of professional assassination in the Middle East, and that mindset needs to be considered. The classic stereotype is the Bedouin who does it for money: you contract the hit, the assassin pumps himself up on quat, then goes out and does a job with no feeling for the victim whatsoever -- fully knowing that he may die in the process.

This has been going on for milennia. They don't think as we do.

And not coincidentally, the government of one country in particular has spent the last 50 odd years wreaking havoc and destroying lives around the world--it is none other that the United States Of America.

Ah, there we go. Having laid his shaky foundation, he can finally get around to what he REALLY wanted to do all along -- bash the United States. The rest of his screed isn't worth responding to. Having bent history to fit his world view, he then draws pointless conclusions.

-- Stephen M. Poole (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), September 21, 2001.

Sorry LN, I'm no buying. Yes, Clinton did some stupid things in ROW but it didn't warrant this. People keep trying to analyze the terrorists in normal, rational terms. There is no logic to it. They view us as Satan who needs to be destroyed. Talk about your religious fanatics! They're the ultimate example.

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), September 21, 2001.

A suicide bombing is an irrational act, so it begs the question: Why try to impose reason on insanity? Young Tom needs to open his history books and look up the definition of Pogram. The actions of Stalin and Mao make the WTC look like a Sunday School picnic.

The neo-Marxist fantasy about a proletariat revolution is just idiocy. The America that Tom hates saved Europe from the Nazis and Asia from Imperial Japan. I guess the Kamakazi pilots had "rational" reasons. Right.

America is getting attacked because it has the balls to show leadership. The Muslim radicals are still pissed that we sorted out L'Affair Kuwait. They are pissed because our media, our culture and our decadent western ideals have taken the world. They want to circumcize their woman, these free-thinking proto-feminists. I don't mind looking at America objectively and honestly acknowledging our government has done some lousy things. While Tom drinks a glass of guilt, he fails to recognize we've also rebuilt post-war Europe, provided aid to Latin America, lost lives in humanitarian missions time and time again.

What is empty is the intellectual well of socialism. America is not soggy, wet and full of self-doubt and self-loathing, and Tom will learn this after he finishes his Pravda.

-- Boo (hoo@hoo.com), September 21, 2001.