I’m Angry

And here’s why…

I’m angry because on September 11, 2001, terrorists struck on US soil. These terrorists were part of a group called al-Qaida, which is led by a man named Osama bin Laden. Nearly four years later, and after a war in Afghanistan to remove the regime which supported him, bin Laden remains on the loose.

I’m angry because that corrupt Afghani regime, the Taliban, is regaining power, opium production in Afghanistan is skyrocketing, women are still being killed for trying to assert a modicum of independence, and we have all but abandoned the country to further ruin.

I’m angry because we shifted our focus away from Afghanistan and al-Qaida to a vague “war on terror,” which diluted our emphasis on the perpetrators of a great American tragedy and made it eminently easy to position ourselves as the consummate victims, thereby indefinitely delaying any examination of our own role in the global community, other than the self-proclaimed purveyors of freedom and liberty at the end of a gun.

I’m angry because our leaders used Americans’ fear to secure carte blanche to commence a strategy for stabilizing the Middle East that was developed long before 9/11 ever happened, because they denounced dissenters as traitors, because they used national security as a justification for trampling recklessly on our civil liberties, and because it now appears as though the administration deliberately manipulated intelligence to rationalize their case for war.

I’m angry because it looks very likely that the President’s deputy chief of staff and ubiquitous Svengali, Karl Rove, sought vengeance on someone who tried to tell the truth about their machinations by revealing the name of his wife, who was a covert CIA operative, and I’m especially angry that the biggest part of that story, that she was working on weapons proliferation—the very thing that allegedly was of primary concern in selling the war to the American people—has been ignored. That he may have acted unethically or even broken the law is small potatoes compared to how thoroughly he may well have jeopardized good intelligence-gathering on a very real threat to Americans.

I’m angry because four years after 9/11, our borders are still insecure, the upgrading of our Coast Guard has been postponed until the year 2030, thereby leaving our shores insecure, our military and national guard are stretched thin, leaving us vulnerable at home, we still don’t have a comprehensive list of terrorists that can be used to monitor people entering the country by airplane, car, or boat, we still don’t have a satisfactory container check system for containers coming through our ports, we still lack strengthened security around chemical and nuclear energy plants and our water facilities, and our soldiers sent to fight the war on terror aren’t even properly protected in many cases.

I’m angry because when a senator suggests that a description of the mistreatment of prisoners sounds like something that one would expect from a violent, totalitarian regime, he is accused of inflaming hatred against us, or when a magazine prints accounts of mishandling of prisoners’ holy books, they are accused of inflaming hatred against us, but never, ever are the underlying acts condemned with quite the same fervor.

I’m angry because we launched a preemptive strike on Iraq, ostensibly because its dictator, Saddam Hussein, was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. When no such weapons were found, the rationale for war was slowly changed into a humanitarian effort. When it was revealed that we had replaced Saddam’s torture chambers with our own, and pictures of the atrocities at Abu Ghraib were made public for all to see, the rationale was slowly changed into Iraq’s being a front on the war on terror; we were fighting the terrorists there so we wouldn’t have to fight them at home. Today, our closest ally was the victim of a coordinated terrorist attack for which al-Qaida has taken responsibility. What will be the new rationale for this war, now that all others have failed?

And I’m angry because I just don’t know how we’re going to get out of this mess.