Did you ever consider what 3,023 innocents look like? Not one of them, outside of the Pentagon walls, signed-up to be murdered on 9/11.
I've never liked to bring up 9/11 in conversations about our country's international politics. After all these years, are we still functioning soley based on our urge for revenge and our collective outrage over 9/11? If we are, I fear that the American public is too easily manipulated by outrage..
There is absolutely no shred of credible evidence that Iraq had any role in planning or carrying out the cowardly acts that took place on September 11, 2001. Afghanistan is a different story, though.
Calling the pretext for going to war in Iraq for what it is does not mean that we have forgotten about September 11. The memory of those who perished will be served by going after the real villains. Remember Osama bin Laden and the Taliban?
I'm not one of them. But not forgetting the lessons taught that day doesn't mean we have to succumb to fear mongering, and be obsessed with the outrage that that day spawned. We are a country obsessed... and I don't think that's a good thing. The lessons I've learned from 9/11 don't automatically lead to military action, and further death and destruction, or the crusades that we've gone on afterward. 9/11 was cathartic for me and taught me to let go of american arrogance. We are as vulnerable as any others in the world today.
Considering Saddam actively campaigned against the Al Queda, while there's links that Saudi's have been in bed with them and the US has been in bed with the Saudis, the analogy is better as "as if the US had nothing to do with 9/11". Sometimes the hardest to look at is in the mirror. Remember Bin Laden?
The lessons not learned with the attempted bombing of the USS The Sullivans lead to further death and destruction with the successful bombing of the USS Cole by Al-Qaida. Both incidents, same method of operation, did not automatically lead to military action either, which later lead to further death and destruction on 9/11. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2000_...of_the_USS_Cole Lessons not learned and not acted upon - and - lessons learned and not acted upon lead to the same outcome. The war against Al-Qaida in Afghanistan should have started on October 13, 2000. That may have given us the time necessary to finish uncovering the 9/11 plot. The FBI was already actively looking for one of the hijackers, and the “airplane†scenario was starting to come together. I am so thankful that Al Gore was not president on 9/11. I could just imagine him convening a focus group or town hall meeting to discuss the ecological ramifications of attacking Al-Qaida as opposed to turning the other cheek.
