And yet the irony slaps me in the face...
By turning 9/11 into a big deal, we've accomplished exactly what the terrorists wanted. I mean seriously,
We're the US.
We're the mother fucking United States of America.
What's 3000 people and two buildings to the US in the long run. It's nothing, absolutely nothing...
At least, it wasn't. Then we got all these speeches about how we shouldn't be afraid because we were going to hunt down the terrorists and destroy them. Then in response all the skeptics asked "well, is that plausible? Can we defend our borders in a serious way? can we destroy all the terrorists?"
No. We can't.
And it's not like we can ignore the child that stole the cookie simply because we can afford to buy more cookies. So we went to oust the taliban. Congrats, we won.
Unfortunately, to keep the idea that America was vulnerable to attacks alive we had to keep going. These things killed more people and cost more money than A LOT of 9/11's.
We could have smirked. We could have said "you destroyed an important symbol of America? Whatevs, we'll rebuild it." We could have said that because we are the US. We have an extremely strong economy and the strongest army in the world.
Or at least we did.
We talk about schools not getting enough funding and old people not being able to afford meds and too many poor people existing, and the fact that we have to pay 60 bucks to fill up our escalades. That's not the terrorists' fault, that's our fault. We're the cause of our own destruction. America "changed" on 9/11 because we changed it, not because of anything else. The terrorists wanted terror and they got it. Our fear crippled us, and it still does as we're constantly updated on all the things that could kill us. Terrorists, germs, genetic engineering, homosexuals, it doesn't matter what the topic is, the fear has made us forget an important fact about America.
We're Invincible.
Or at least, we were.
7 comments:
^ You have nothing on which to stand.
I think pchis' argument is interesting, and somewhat compelling. It certainly embodies a more realistic rationale than those of political diehards who refuse to acknowledge changes in the status quo.
US reputation is on the toilet, the American dollar is losing out, and pretty soon having English as your only language won't be a boon that everybody else has to stoop to.
Pchis says many things that I would agree with... though discounting the lives of people who died in 9/11 is rather unfair.
How many people do you have to kill before it's murder? It's not really justifiable to compare one group's suffering to another's. There is no measurement. Morally, I don't think there's a difference between killing 1,000 people or 10,000...
But, America has serious issues and wages an unjust war.
So sorry, but I disagree that the fear created by the terrorists is what crippled us. Oh no no, it's the fear-mongering of our wonderful government that brought us here. It was completely purposeful. The concentration on eradicating all terrorists is obviously not feasible, but to create a state of paranoia in which we constantly anticipate an attack? Hell yeah, most definitely effective for controlling a nation.
I didn't say the lives didn't matter. It's purely from an economic view that they don't matter (from a large picture).
It's sad, and revenge/justice has it's place, but I think it was a tad much.
Pchis, I have to say that I largely agree with everything you've said in this post.
When I read it, I thought to myself "amen sista"... take that how you will.
We're the mothefucking yew-nye-ted stay-ts of Uh-mehr-ee-cuh.
I guess that's really starting to lose meaning, nowadays.
I'll tell you what's hurting America:
Read Jimmy Carter's Crisis of Confidence Speech.
It still applies.
it's disappointing that all of you guys are so focused on the "economic viewpoint" of it all.
^ then state your viewpoint. come on now... the only views we read are the ones published. we're sure as hell not going to hack your head and extract an alternate ideology from you.
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