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Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets
  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
     See {Blogger, BlogSpot, LiveJournal}.]
     A stream-of-consciousness Web journal, containing
     links, commentary, and pointless drivel.


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Wednesday, September 11, 2002
10:58 - Where do they get these people?

(top) link
Maybe I shouldn't have been listening to NPR on the way in to work today.

On Forum, the discussion featured in place of prominence an Arnold Zinn, professor of God-knows-what, speaking in that kind of infuriatingly calm and knowing and smug way about how all of our reaction since 9/11 has been entirely inappropriate. Our attack on Afghanistan was "blind" and "stupid", Prof. Zinn said, and it was an entirely "arbitrary" action: We got attacked by people from Saudi Arabia and Egypt, but we went and killed people in Afghanistan. Like we just pulled that target out of our ass, like we had some existing agenda there and were just looking for an excuse to go kill Afghan civilians. It could have been North Koreans launching missiles over Alaska, and we still would have gone on our murderous rampage in Afghanistan, apparently. See, the only people responsible for the 9/11 attacks were those 19 hijackers. Everybody else is innocent, because they didn't do anything, see? Attacking Aghanistan accomplished nothing-- nothing at all-- except deepening anti-American hatred in the world and killing a lot of civilians. It didn't disrupt terrorism in the slightest.

I guess all those al Qaeda corpses in Tora Bora count as "civilians", or maybe "freedom fighters", because they certainly hadn't taken part in any anti-American activities. Not until we brutally attacked them, out of the blue.

According to this guy, it's a good thing that the Taliban fell, that the women were liberated, that they have schools and medicine and music and barbershops now that the Taliban are gone. But, said he, it's all rendered a fatal failure because we did it through military action. Bombing places around the world, throwing our military weight around, being a bullying imperialist nation-- that's what causes terrorism. We should stop all that flying around the world for fun and just bombing the shit out of any old place we feel like, just for target practice. That's got to stop, man! We must become a humanitarian nation, giving food and medicine to the poor all over the world! Then nobody will hate us!

Fortunately, his opponent was a Howard Bikeman (?), whose strident shrieks of disbelief were a very welcome thing to hear. When he asked incredulously whether Zinn condoned the Taliban, or whether he thought there was any better model out there for a democracy than the US (with all its flaws), or whether the governments of Saudi Arabia and Egypt actively support and promote and harbor terrorism like the Taliban did, whether we should have stood back and allowed Hitler and Tojo to march all over us while we rolled over on our backs and peed on ourselves, Zinn stuttered and scrambled and tried to change the subject and reiterate his stupid points. I think Zinn came out of the discussion looking like a complete ass. As well he should have. He sat there on 9/11 and told a nation full of listeners how we were entirely wrong to go and oust the Taliban, how our obviously deliberate bombing of civilians in Afghanistan was every bit as reprehensible and unwarranted as the 9/11 attacks themselves.

The callers were equally stupid. One woman shrieked about the 9/11/73 thing in Chile. Another guy said that in ten years, we won't consider 9/11 to be any more than a footnote in history-- it'll be entirely forgotten. And another guy said that "We won't get behind a war in Iraq because we don't have George Washington, we have George Bush. And Bush wasn't even there! We don't even know where he was a year ago today! He knew this was going to happen!" Er, guy, we did know where Bush was on 9/11/01. He was at a school, talking at some event or other. We have photos of his aides coming up to him and whispering in his ear that "another plane just hit the other tower". We saw the expression on his face. We saw how terrified he looked when he addressed the nation that day at noon.

Goddamned conspiracy theorists. Except now they're on the other side of the political spectrum.

At least the US flags and banners are back up on the freeway overpasses today. Not quite in the same way that they were a year ago, but in a symbolic, evocative kind of way. Remember when we did this before? Remember how we felt?


Yeah, I'm glad somebody does.

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© Brian Tiemann