the 9/11 commission report: chapter 2 (part 2)

doesn't it delight you to know that because of the fall-out from 9/11, our sweet government is monitoring this post because of the key words i'll be using this evening:

terrorists
bin ladin
saddam hussein
iraq
etc.

hello, sweet government. you're not going to lock me up like bradley manning, are you?

whoops, there was another key word.

i started reading this book as part of a general quest to understand why this country went to war in iraq.

at the time the war started, i was a silly college student who didn’t pay attention to such things. it just wasn’t on my radar. it is now, and i don’t understand. so i’m trying to figure it out.

what i remember hearing back then, is what people still say today. the reasons we went to war with iraq were

A) to find weapons of mass destruction
B) they were providing a safe haven for terrorists, and supporting terrorists

what i have learned since is that…

“Article 2(4): All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.” – the U.N. Charter

except in cases of self-defense:

“Article 51: Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defense shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.” – the U.N. Charter

from http://www.worldpress.org/specials/iraq/

(i haven’t read that entire article, so i’m not promoting it. that’s the best i could do to find the actual international laws at the moment.)

basically, you can’t just go and attack another country because you feel like it. iraq did not attack us, so we were not justified in attacking them. the nation that attacks another nation without being attacked first…is the nation breaking the law.

so that brings us to weapons of mass destruction…if they had some, perhaps we would be justified in attacking them to “protect international peace and security.”

however…

they didn’t. they did not have any weapons of mass destruction.

so reason two,

were they providing safe haven for terrorists?

behold, the evidence presented by the 9/11 commission report.

“Bin Ladin was also willing to explore possibilities for cooperation with Iraq, even though Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, had never had an Islamist agenda – save for his opportunistic pose as a defender of the faithful against ‘Crusaders’ during the Gulf War of 1991. Moreover, Bin Ladin had in fact been sponsoring anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan, and sought to attract them into his Islamic army.”

“Bin Ladin is said to have asked for space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but there is no evidence that Iraq responded to this request.”

“There is also evidence that around this time Bin Ladin sent out a number of feelers to the Iraqi regime, offering some cooperation. None are reported to have received a significant response. According to one report, Saddam Hussein’s efforts at this time to rebuild relations with the Saudis and other Middle Eastern regimes led him to stay clear of Bin Ladin.”

“The reports describe friendly contacts and indicate some common themes in both sides’ hatred of the United States. But to date we have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship. Nor have we seen evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States.”

beside each of these quotes, i furiously scrawled the question “WHY DID WE GO TO IRAQ?”

reason A was invalid.

according to this report, reason B was invalid.

conversations i have with people and further research provided another reason.

C) Saddam Hussein was so evil, we had to do something.

if that was the reason…why were the other reasons given beforehand? you can’t make up new reasons after the fact.

there are a plethora of evil dictators and regimes all over the world. we aren’t doing anything about that. why did we go to IRAQ? it bothers me that we went because we were told reasons that were false, and still went. i do not trust a government that misleads the public. it bothers me that people, myself included, believed those reasons without thoughtful criticism. if morals obligated us to confront him, we would have attacked him before 9/11. we did not confront him because america is so good, and moral, and had to come to the rescue. there are plenty of humanitarian issues going on in the world, and we’re not doing a thing about it. and, in some cases, we’re the ones engaged in humanitarian abuses. so that’s not the reason either.

not to mention the fact that going to one nation to promote democracy, while funding/supporting undemocratic regimes in other nations is, well, kind of confusing. and something i'm still learning about.

human lives are at stake in a war. innocent human lives. (and probably some cattle grazing in the wrong field at the wrong time). i am pro-life, so i should have been thinking more critically about war before now. i should take it seriously. there should be REAL reasons to go to war. not made-up reasons.

the 9/11 commission report: chapter 2 (part 1)

when people talk about “the terrorists”, the essence of the conversation is about how “the terrorists” hate us for our “freedoms” and our “values.”

here are a few statements in the book from/about bin ladin regarding why he hates america:

“If the present injustice continues…it will inevitably move the battle to american soil.”

“He inveighed against the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam’s holiest sites. He spoke of the suffering of the Iraqi people as a results of sanctions imposed after the Gulf War, and he protested U.S. support of Israel.”

“In early 1992, the al Qaeda leadership issued a fatwa calling for jihad against the Western ‘occupation’ of Islamic lands.”

i don’t hear anything about american values or freedoms there, do you? i hear resentment toward american actions and american policies in other parts of the world. the reason why it’s important to make this distinction is because if you don’t correctly define the motives of the terrorists, you cannot correctly formulate a solution. the united states has participated in just actions around the world. it has also been involved in situations it should not have been. denying this is not productive.

i am a Christian, so i approach everything with a Christian point of view. i believe that people are inherently sinful (meaning they do things that are wrong). this leads me to believe that there is no government on earth that is capable of being righteous or moral, because governments are run by sinful people. this belief leads to the conclusion that a government run by sinful people WILL be engaged in activities it should not be engaged in. this applies to the united states as much as it applies to any other country. sin and evil is not just “out there.” it is everywhere, in every country, in every government. once you agree with that statement (and you may not)…you have to say it is probable that the united states has done things it should not have, and when governments do that…they anger people.

this does not excuse terrorism, or violence, or murder. terrorism is not a rational response to frustration/anger with a government or nation. and i would never say that the united states “deserved” 9/11, or that it deserves attacks from terrorists in any form.

but claiming that the united states is an innocent little girl, and people hate us because we’re so moral and free…is false. and it doesn’t lead to us becoming any safer.

here is the most ironic statement ever made in the history of the world (does this use of exaggeration discredit everything else i say?)…

“Over time, their policies – repression, rewards, emigration, and the displacement of popular anger onto scapegoats (generally foreign) – were shaped by the desire to cling to power.”

that could easily

easily

EASILY be applied to the united states.

it reminds us that evil/bad people are not just “out there”…but here. the desire for power is great, and it would be naïve to think it doesn’t play a role in u.s. actions and policies.

i am not an expert on this. i am still learning about what the united states has done that has pissed off the terrorists so badly. but i have gotten so far as to realize...we've done SOMETHING. this isn't about some angry people that felt like killing people for no reason. with humbleness i proceed to study these things, and admit my own part in our nation's shortcomings. by making votes without educating myself, i have participated in the nation's wrongdoing. by blindly supporting leaders in government without thoughtful criticism, i have participated. ignorance does not excuse me. it is my responsibility to understand these issues, and do what i can to hold our elected representatives accountable. it is not my responsibility to blindly accept everything they do as "right" (if my favorite political party or person is in power), OR to automatically label everything they do as "wrong" out of cynicism.

i’ll end on that note.

i have to break this chapter into 2 parts, because the next half…is about what i’ve learned regarding the iraq war.

the 9/11 commission report: chapter 1

i'm going to summarize the chapters of this book, because my head is exploding.

these chapter summaries won’t really be “summaries”, exactly. because i’m not going to summarize anything. so, in that sense, they won’t be summaries at all.

this is a great start, isn’t it.

i’ve been scrawling frustrated messages in the margins, so i’m actually just going to touch on those.

“They struggled, under difficult circumstances, to improve a homeland defense against an unprecedented challenge they had never before encountered and had never trained to meet.” – the book

“you can’t prepare for everything.” – frustrated scrawl 1.1

my point:

we live in what Christians call a “broken world.” broken because it doesn’t work right. bad things happen. evil exists. it shouldn’t be excused, but making decisions based on the belief that you can make it go away if you do this, this and this…is crazy. human hands cannot control evil. giving up rights/liberties/freedoms, or being ok with things like “profiling” or discrimination, because you think it will lead to everyone’s safety and happiness…is crazy. read any dystopian novel. they all have a premise of a government messing everything up by trying to control what’s wrong and fix it. and, they all have a premise of people submitting to that government. submitting willingly.

i am giving the italics button a workout today.

italicize this.

you should do that, actually. read a dystopian novel. 1984. brave new world. or watch equilibrium. those are all cute, sweet little fiction versions of the 9/11 commission report.

i said it.

history has examples of people making crazy decisions because of fear. the most absurd example of course is the salem witch trials. but there are others. the japanese internment camps. the mccarthy/communist trials. there were real problems in the world that needed to be dealt with during world war 2. but not like that.

and there were real witches that had to be drowned and set on fire!

wait.

anyway.

it’s so easy to look back and think “those people were so wrong to allow that. how could they allow that?”

but it’s happening again. fear of terrorism is making people excuse things that history will show to be ludicrous* and shameful.

for more on that, read anything by glenn greenwald.

next up: chapter 2. i'm going to give the "caps lock" button a work-out.

because that's how you SHOUT ONLINE. and convey DISMAY.

the subject: how could anyone hate america?

*you're definitely going to want to click that.