I've been watching these events unfold almost since they began when I got a call from my fiancee at 7am yesterday morning. This is a horrible horrible situation but I have some thoughts about the issue.
The first thing that comes to my mind is going to get me flamed a lot, I'm sure, but in a certain respect this is a situation the United States has brought upon itself. A quick look around the world makes it fairly clear that there aren't that many countries that have problems with foreign terrorists. The three biggest are probably the United States, Britain, and Israel. The Israeli situation is arguably a continuation of a conflict between Jews and non-jews thats been going on in that part of the world for more than two thousand years.
The United States and Britain have these problems for a very different reason, however. For the past hundred years or so it has been a key part of United States foreign policy that we have a right to interfere in the activities and governments of foriegn countries whenever we feel the need to. Sometimes we have good, virtuous reasons for this. Bosnia is an example. Most of the time its because its in our financial interest to do so, and this is the cause of our suffering. The kind of hatred directed at the United States by other countries is not undeserved. We have a reputation for being arrogant, rich, and manipulative, and this too is deserved. During the 70's and 80's this country supported in governments in Latin America that committed crimes practically rivalling Hitler's. My father spent time in Nicuragua and El Salvador and had his luggage confiscated by the CIA because he had proof of things going on there that then-President Reagan had sworn were'nt going on. We have manipulated and bullied foriegn governments all over the world in order to make American businesses more profitable and this is especially true in the Middle East where our greed for cheap oil has driven the activities there that have caused the hatred we know suffer from most of the Islamic world. I find it horribly ironic and hypocritical that a country that was originally founded on principles of universal human rights now feeds itself by trampling on the rights of people in other countries. Britian's activities in Ireland have brought them into the same position.
Please understand, I am not in any fashion attempting to support or condone the actions of terrorists, but it is important to realize that it is our own crimes that have brought their attentions down upon us. You might consider that nowhere else in the world do citizens have to fear skyscrapers being destroyed. We might take this event as a wake-up call that we cannot exercise our muscles in other countries without a price. It was so in Korea, in Vietnam, and even in Bosnia, but now it is a price being paid more and more by civilians, instead of soldiers.
We are paying for our cheap gasoline and Air Jordans with our own blood now, and perhaps it is time to realize that the financial wealth we have built on the exploitation of those less powerful and less fortunate than ourselves is not worth the price we will have to pay.
Another thing to consider is that it is our very nature as americans that makes us so vulnerable to such acts of terrorism. The comments on El-Al's use of armed gaurds on airlines is well noted and was the first thing I thought about when facts about the hijackings began to come out. It boggles my mind that such destruction was achieved by a handful of men and women armed with KNIVES!!!
One armed gaurd, either uniformed or disguised as a passenger, on each of those four planes could have saved thousands and thousands of lives. This was not the case because we don't want to pay an extra twenty or fifty dollars a trip for the protection of a guard.
Despite the mind-boggling destruction that has occured here, we can only pray that it serves as a wake-up call that we ARE vulnerable, we ARE subject to retaliation, not just as a country but individually, for the activities of our government in foriegn countries, and that if we wish to keep these things from happening again there will be a price that we MUST pay. Both the apparent price of protection, and the more ethereal price of changing the way we do business in the world. We do not have greater rights as a nation because we are rich. We do not have greater rights as a nation because we are strong. Our wealth and strength give us RESPONSIBILITY, not priviledge, to help those in need, rather than help ourselves at their expense.
