Sept. 11, 2001, now eight years behind us, still hovers over the American psyche like a far-off thundercloud. The brutal assault was like nothing the United States had experienced in living memory - not since the British invasion of the War of 1812, with its burning of Washington, D.C., had such devastation occurred. Not even the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor caused such devastation. It was directed against purely military targets, in an attempt to disable the United States' ability to wage naval war in the Pacific - a purely military goal. By contrast, al-Qaida's goal was merely to damage American prestige, and to draw attention to the conflict of interest between the United States and the Middle East.
Al-Qaida certainly backfired as the world rallied around America - if only in the short run. Its long-run effects remain to be seen, for the Bush Administration was able to parlay international support and domestic solidarity into political capital that permitted it to carry out its neoconservative foreign policy strategies. The American public, whipped into nationalistic fervor, acquiesced; the rest of the world, in a show of support for a wounded America, went along. And we invaded Afghanistan, then Iraq.
Behind the scenes, the administration took the opportunity to expand executive power. The president authorized indefinite detainment and torture of prisoners the government declared (by fiat) to be "enemy combatants," exploiting technical loopholes in international and domestic law to deprive people of the fundamental rights of habeus corpus and fair trial. On the political front, the president, when he signed into law various bills, issued signing statements declaring that he was not bound by the newly declared law. Congress, abdicating its responsibility to check and bind the executive branch, rolled over under political pressure and relentless propaganda. The government illegally - until Congress declared it ex post facto legal - issued wiretaps for American citizens and co-opted several telecommunications corporations in order to spy on internal communications.
After Sept. 11, the size of the government underwent an unprecedented expansion in tandem with unchecked executive branch authority. And this expansion, along with the single-minded pursuit of foreign-policy goals, was cloaked in the flag. Patriotic rhetoric appeals to national pride, coupled with reminders that the very security of the country was at stake. And lies. The propaganda blitz leading to the war in Iraq included no less than 900 false statements, and many more misleading. The Bush Administration famously created a connection in American minds between Iraq and Sept. 11 by mentioning them together without ever actually saying that Saddam Hussein had played a role in the planning of 9/11.
To add insult to injury, the propaganda campaign promulgated a false model about the geopolitical causes of al-Qaida's animosity toward the United States. Why were we attacked? Because the terrorists hate what America stands for: freedom, liberty, the American way and the American dream. Not a single word of this claim is true. In reality, Middle-Eastern fundamentalist terrorism is a product of a complex geopolitical process with its roots in the European colonialism of the 1800s. The current mood of animosity toward the United States is the result of years of American meddling in the Middle East, including unwavering support for Israel and exploitation of the region for its oil.
After Sept. 11, the people who pointed this out were labeled, a la Stephen Colbert, the "blame America first" crowd. But this is the most accurate model of the situation, uncomfortable though the truth may be.. Is Sept. 11 America's fault? Not directly: the actions of al-Qaida were reprehensible. Nobody needs to point that out. However, if we wish to ultimately solve the problem of Middle-Eastern terrorism, we must examine the roots of the problem by modeling it as accurately as we can. Any other approach is pure folly, and that's where, in our national grief after Sept. 11, we permitted ourselves to be led.
Not only did we bury our heads in the sand when it came to foreign policy, we ignored the unconstitutional developments in our government. As Ben Franklin said, "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Much as we refused to see the problem of al-Qaida for what it was, we refused to see our president's actions as they were. Now, the executive branch is reluctant to give up its newfound powers - witness President Obama reneging on a campaign promise to immediately close Guantanamo Bay, for instance.
After Sept. 11, we screwed up. And our chief mistake was refusing to see the world as it was, rather than as we wished it to be. Let us learn from that mistake. The most important quality you can develop is to see reality rather than your desires.
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