September 11th Retrospective

Excuse the lateness of this article. Every year on September 11th, I feel compelled to write something but I never seem to get around to it. It's a vary difficult topic to approach, even for the most seasoned journalists. That day back in 2001 was the defining moment of Generation Y. Unlike the strife our grandparents faced during the Second World War, we have yet to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Eight years have passed and not a lot has changed. I'd like to take a look back at that day and give a retrospective of all that has happened since then in hopes that you will walk away with some greater insight into the subject, or at least an interest to learn more.

September 11th is one of those events in history where most people can remember vividly exactly what they were doing when the news broke. I was only 15 at the time, yet the magnitude of it hit hard even for someone that young. It forced me to question a lot of my beliefs; namely it was what finally pushed me into atheism. After all, how could people proclaiming to be the religious pious commit such a satanic act? At the time, I didn't even know what Islam was. I can from a rather white bread school. We had a Muslim student come to our class in grade 8 but the kids saw him more as a curiosity rather than a threat or someone to be shunned. Now it has become something to be drilled into the children's heads, to beware of Islamophobia. Strangely, there was little anti-Islamism in the wake of the attacks. A stark contrast to the treatment of "Japs" following Pearl Harbour. On the other side of the coin, the attacks sparked greater anti-Americanism and antisemitism across the world, not only in Muslim countries.

One does not need to dive deep to explain why 9/11 happened. Those who perpetrated the attacks were soulless bigots. Bin Laden himself is a false revolutionary, like so many others who have followed him. Wealthy madmen who claim they're fighting for "the people" when all they want is to craft the world into their own image. They end up being more tyrannical than the tyrants they seek to destroy. Adolf Hitler may have been one of the most evil men in history but at least he was unabashed about his goals and did come from a common background. Bin Laden is the rich, spoilt brat version of Hitler. He hides behind phony claims of oppression and fighting for the common Muslim while he himself was one of the wealthiest men in Saudi Arabia. Like Hitler, he believes in the racial purity and moral superiority of his version of Islam. He is a fascist like any other fascist in history. The only difference is that he is not limited to geographical borders. To people who follow the Islamo-fascist doctrine, anyone who doesn't subscribe to it is ultimately the enemy and deserves death. I have always found terrorism in the name of religion to be especially ironic. If God, or Allah, is omnipotent, can't he do his own dirty work? The people who died in the World Trade Center, at the Pentagon, and on Flight 93 died simply because they weren't Muslim, despite the fact that some of them were. Do you still become one of their martyrs when said members of your own religion slaughter you in cold blood?

9/11 for the first time in over 60 years brought the world to a breaking point and made a lot of people question our civilization. Bin Laden's goal was to create fear on that day, divide America, and drive the world into a holy war. On the last two, Al Qeada utterly failed in that mission. On fear, it was a decisive victory. The West has become more willing to give up basic rights and liberties for security, something Benjamin Franklin warned against over 200 years earlier. At the border, I can be strip searched or have my laptop and all it's information detained indefinitely without cause. I can't take a drink on a plane. It has opened the door to more snooping on the Internet. My free speech is curtailed so that I don't provoke Muslims. I can't publish cartoons of Mohammad unless I want to be hauled in front of the human rights commission. Ironically, it's still ok to negatively satirize Jesus and the Holocaust. The War on Terrorism has fizzled. Bin Laden has not been seen in years. Some question whether he's even still alive. The people who planned the attacks are living quite well despite being in prison. They're not exactly hanging the Nazis in Gitmo. Some people even believe we should feel sorry for the attackers. Not the kind of treatment you'd expect from those guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The ultra-political correctness in response to 9/11 may seem like taking Ghandi's morally superior path but where has it brought us? We're just walking in the circles. We have gotten little out of Afghanistan. Our boys are dying over there. One day it looks like we're making serious progress in instituting the most basic human rights there, the next day Karzhai is saying it's ok for Afghan men to starve their wives if denied sex. Perhaps we would have been better off just nuking the country. We went there to destroy Al Qeada and Bin Laden, instead it has turned into a bizarre and perpetual nation building exercise. There are Afghans who want change and modernization but they're up against savages in great number like the Taliban, who seem to be like the proverbial annoying house guest that keeps coming back. I think it's fair to call them that. Afghanistan is the third lowest ranked country in the world in terms of human development as measured by the UN. Take that Sierra Leon. The Human Development Index takes into account literacy, life expectancy, average education, and GDP. Canada by contrast is the third highest ranked. On average, most Afghans won't live to see their 45th birthday, and only one in three can read. Schoolgirls are unlikely to make it past the fourth grade. This is actually an improvement over what it was. How long will it be though before we're back at square one?

In the time since, other Islamic powers have risen up and are threatening the west. Iran has already hinted it wishes to nuke Israel, and is pursuing a nuclear weapons program. Sudan is slaughtering non-Muslim Africans en mass. Iraq has turned into a farce. Obama has since declared that the US will become a soft diplomatic power. However, diplomacy has proven ineffective against these enemies. Then again, so has war. It is difficult to reason with or fight a pan-national ideology, especially when there's no one person to represent it. If anything, 9/11 turned the whole field of international relations upside down. It's much harder to define the enemy. What worked well during World War II and the Cold War, 70 years history, suddenly no longer applied. The only way we can stop this second tide of fascism is to stop pussyfooting around the issue and stand together to denounce it. The Muslim world cannot be expected to do this. To this day, vary few moderate Muslims have spoken up in outrage over the attacks. Instead they'd rather lob accusations of persecution and Islamophobia against Westerners, or make up excuses for the bigots. Many Muslims cheered when the planes hit. The majority of them are not our enemies, but they are not exactly our allies either.

The last subject I want to tackle here are the so called 9/11 Truthers. I kind of let them slide until I say a truck plastered with Truther bumper stickers the other day, and Discovery's recent show about 9/11 conspiracies. They are the people who believe the US government perpetrated the attacks as an excuse to attack Muslims. From my years of dabbling in politics, I can say without a doubt that the US government is not competent enough to pull something like that off. They can't even keep the names of CIA spy agents top secret. You'd think somebody would notice the government putting dynamite in the WTC? Most of them are sad, ignorant fools just like the morons who think the moon landing was a hoax. There is simply no credible evidence to suggest a conspiracy. The Truthers are no better than holocaust deniers, and are terrorists in their own right by spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt.