My age, 23, puts me at 18 when the planes hit the twin towers. While I watched the them burning on television my father called me. “When they call you [for the draft], join the Navy,” he said, because it seemed so sure that the entire world would soon be at war. I began my fresh, adult life paying very close attention to what we would soon call the war on terror. The commemoration of the September 11th attacks last week had me, and everyone else, asking if the United States is any safer now than it was five years ago.
This year on 9/11 President Bush asserted, “The safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad.”
On just one day last week in Iraq, arguably America’s future flowerbed of terrorist attackers, 65 bodies were found “tortured, shot and dumped,” according to the Associated Press. Death squads, militias and gangs are runing wild through the country. If the chaos and civil war in Iraq are any indication of how safe we are, we have reason to worry.
Some say that you can rest assured. The Department of Homeland Security website asserts that, “Today, we are safer, but we are not yet safe.” The president echoed this in his speech last week, despite the growing chaos in Iraq. Americans aren’t buying any of this rhetoric, though. According to a CBS News/”New York Times” poll, more Americans feel that America is in more danger now than did five years ago.
A few months back, I saw a political cartoon that showed a US plane dropping bombs and each bomb read “terrorist seed.” I believe that there is some truth in the cartoon, though our bombs alone aren’t sewing the seed for future terrorist attacks. National ignorance and arrogance is also responsible. In Rolling Stone last week, writer Matt Taibbi suggests, “We now hang our heads when we remember that dark day, kneel before the appropriate icons (Pat Tillman, firefighters, the Flight 93 passengers) at the appropriate times, and periodically make sure to remember the Big Lesson, a.k.a. anything can happen, even to those such as us.” He argues that it is this celebratory idolatry; our reducing September 11th to symbols and emotions, that is making the country a more dangerous place.
“In this light one could almost view our response to 9/11 as a triumph of the American system,” said Taibbi. “If nineteen knife-wielding lunatics blowing a hole in the middle of Manhattan on international television can’t even temporarily knock us out of ‘What, me worry?’ mode, you have to feel pretty good about our future chances for remaining just as cheerfully numb through even a more serious disruption of our fantasy existence.”
The United States is more dangerous than it was five years ago, as the citizen has forfeited decision-making regarding foreign policy to politicians alone. On Sunday, September 10th, the Vice President insisted that despite the many mistakes the administration has made in Iraq, and despite the growing chaos (that wasn’t there before we arrived, and on which our safety hinges), we did the right thing and he would do it again. On September 11th, the President rhetorically propelled the country further into war against an ambiguous enemy without suggesting any option other than blowing them to hell.
And in our homes, we sat quietly.
Now our reckless foreign policy breeds more anarchy chaos abroad, on which our safety does, in fact, hinge. We are in a more dangerous position now than we were five years ago because we have not yet demanded a dramatic and necessary change.