| Subject: Bush gives the US an offensive reputation |
Author:
Betty
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Date Posted: 15:44:32 10/19/04 Tue
Amid the patriotic displays, ROTC ceremonies and religious services to commemorate the anniversary of the terror attacks against the World Trade Center and Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, last month, it is essential -- now more than ever -- to use the occasion to think critically about the Bush administration's response to those attacks, the consequences of American actions, and the U.S. impact on global stability.
President George W. Bush should have handled the attacks as a criminal act needing global police action. Instead he, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and other administration hawks saw Sept. 11 as an opportunity to exploit the shock and outrage against the terrorists to get vast increases in military spending and fight wars abroad. Meanwhile, at home, they engineered grave restrictions on our individual liberties with the ill-named U.S.A. PATRIOT Act and the Department of Homeland Security.
Bush clearly took advantage of the intense fear created by the attacks to push his bellicose and anti-democratic agenda, and the American public, its sense of immunity shattered, generally went along.
In the aftermath of Sept. 11, the United States had the world's sympathy, and there was an international outpouring of good will toward Americans and a shared sense of shock and grief.
A few years later, Bush has dragged America's influence to new lows. The nation's image globally has sunk to unbelievable depths, and the United States is viewed by most of the world as an aggressive and imperial power, acting unilaterally in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Bush's financial commitment to the "war on terror" has run into hundreds of billions of dollars and continues to rise, while he has also enacted a half trillion dollar tax cut which will primarily benefit the wealthiest Americans.
The U.S. intervention in Afghanistan, while it ousted the Taliban, hasn't brought stability to that country.
The U.S.A. PATRIOT Act has given the government, including the Homeland Security Department, unprecedented power to infiltrate into the most private aspects of our lives -- to read our mail, listen to our conversations, detain us without stated cause -- all in the name of a contrived "war on terror."
In Iraq, the policies of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld have been the most disastrous. The U.S. justifications for war -- the alleged threat to its neighbors, bogus links between Baghdad and al-Qaida, the laughable claims of Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction -- have all been undermined and much of the world simply does not trust American leadership.
Since the Iraqi war allegedly ended, more Americans have been killed in Iraq than during the fighting. Indeed, the United States is actually reinforcing its troops in Iraq after the war has ended.
In Iraq, perhaps 40,000 civilians were killed, the social order was upended and the public health system was devastated. There are cholera outbreaks, religious sectarian struggles have intensified, terrorism is on the rise and there is no indication any kind of sovereign government will emerge.
As we commemorated the anniversary of that day, last month, we have a short but harsh legacy of military intervention at a huge cost in lives and money. We see our democracy eroding and America's image in free fall.
So, while it is proper to pay our respects to those who lost their lives on 9/11 & in Iraq, we must just as importantly think about the consequences of the Bush administration's hawkish, inhuman, antidemocratic, unilateral, and ineffective response. We must put a stop to it as soon as possible.
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