Do you really think America wasn’t involved in torture, secret prisons or wanton death and destruction before 9/11?
The record shows that they existed before. In fact, 9/11 was in many ways a REACTION to those things, not the cause of them. The USA has NEVER lived up to the virtues Temporal Flush mentions here. Read Zinn’s “People’s History”. The myth of America may survive in the minds of many Americans who don’t read the history of their own country, but outside if the US borders, many people know the other side of the story.
All 9/11 provided was justification to be more aggressive with programs that had been running for many decades in one form or another and continue today under the Obama administration.
There are two Americas – the mythical one that most Americans seem to believe is real, the country that are the good guys, the white knight, the protector of democracy and freedom – and then there is the real America, the one run by corporations and the wealthy elite, the one that, for the entire country’s history, has oppressed the poor and the weak in countries around the globe and at home. The one that stole land at the point of a gun, first from the Native Americans, then from the Mexicans, then from the Cubans, then from the Alaskans, then from the Hawaiins. The one that built its power and wealth on the back of the slave and segregation and imported Chinese labour. The one that did and does deal with the most despicable dictators around the globe to protect American corporate interests.
9/11 may have brought some of the other America to your attention, but it’s a mistake to think that it started then. It’s always been there. You just weren’t paying attention.
Why is the America that tortures and enslaves and suppresses any more real than the America that gives more to charity than any other country in the world or the America that stormed the beaches at D-Day or the America that continues to push the boundaries of science and technology and innovation?
Charlie, I think if you scratch the surface of America’s “charity” you’ll find that it usually comes with self-serving conditions. EG America provides billions of dollars of “aid” to Israel every year. However Israel needs to spend most of it on buying weapons from American corporations. So what is the net effect of this “charity”? The American public’s money – that could be paying for education or healthcare – is given directly to American corporations (making their rich executives even richers) via Israel. But it’s called “aid”.
Further, if you examine America’s “pushing the boundaries”, much of that comes from R&D into building scarier weapons that threaten all life on earth.
Anyway, even if your charity and science examples DID stand true, it wouldn’t detract from my original point – that America didn’t suddenly lose its way after 9/11. It has NEVER been the shining example of tolerance and freedom that the mythology portrays.