IS AMERICA SAFER TODAY THAN ON 9/11/01?

This is a reprint of an article I wrote in September, 2004, and it is a theme that has been repeated in this blog since. I reprint it here because I still consider its message to be meaningful and even necessary for our country to consider carefully. I DON'T like the direction my country has taken. I don't think it is good for us, and I don't think it is good for the rest of the world, either. What we must guard against most of all are: leaders whose true agenda is so contrary to the will of the people that they can't tell us what they are really doing, and; being so unaware of what our leaders are doing that we support them without evaluation. Right now, I believe we are in great danger from both.

America today is at much greater risk than it was on 9-11, but not from terrorists.
In deciding to go to Iraq we helped Osama bin Laden find new recruits, but the real risk we face is internal. Walt Kelly’s Pogo said it most succinctly, “We have met the enemy and they is us.” Republican president Dwight Eisenhower warned us about the military-industrial complex, but we didn’t listen. Now we are governed by a group of neo-conservatives including many members of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), whose stated objectives include the replacement of diplomacy with warfare as foreign policy. No one seems to care that this group, who now compose most of the president’s advisory staff and cabinet undersecretaries, is accomplishing its stated objectives which include a military presence in the Middle East, establishment of a “Pax Americana” (American controlled ‘peace’ through domination), military control of outer space and cyberspace, expanded nuclear weapons capability and even genetically targeted weaponry. (See www.newamericancentury.org/publicationsreports and read the paper titled Rebuilding America’s Defenses.)

The economic policy this group espouses sounds great in sound bites – smaller government and less taxes in a safe society – but in actual practice results in high deficit spending, accumulation of wealth among only the top earning 1% (and, by default, reduced earnings among the lower 20-50%), reduction in domestic spending (justified by the deficit), hugely increased military spending (justified by fear and adding to the deficit), and American domination of the world economy through force if necessary.

War in Iraq was one of the goals PNAC published for the Bush campaign in September, 2000. What they said then was, “While the unresolved conflict in Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.” (ibid. p.14) My heart weeps for the America that was the true champion of freedom and the savior of the world from Nazi and Japanese domination; the America for whom I wore an Army uniform. I mourn our transformation into a nation that thinks pre-emptive war resulting in American domination of the world is the right way to go. The neo-cons’ Pax Americana is just pox to the rest of the world.


When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace. -- Jimi Hendrix

Yours in Peace - BR