Although it was a bit more subdued, both speeches were predicated on 9/11 and the perceived threat from al-Qaeda.
There is nothing wrong with considering the potential threat a group of Islamic extremists may pose to our nation, but it is terribly wrong to constantly cite a disastrous event as reason to continue a policy or plan. For the same reason that America does not still cite the Gulf of Tonkin or Pearl Harbor when developing strategies for foreign policy, America should not base all policies and actions on the attacks on 9/11.
We saw what happened under the Bush Administration when 9/11 was the excuse for everything. Civil liberties, freedoms, transparency, accountability, democracy, human rights, and more were all discarded and replaced with forms of repression, suppression, detention, violations of the rule of law, and tyranny.
Cheney made a good point in his speech yesterday when he said:
“You can look at the facts and conclude that the comprehensive strategy has worked, and therefore needs to be continued as vigilantly as ever. Or you can look at the same set of facts and conclude that 9/11 was a one-off event – coordinated, devastating, but also unique and not sufficient to justify a sustained war effort.”
When considering that our military adventures in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and other parts of the world are utterly destroying families and communities, costing American taxpayers trillions of dollars, and creating opposition to American empire, why not examine whether 9/11 was a “one-off event” (maybe something that happened because somebody ignored the memo titled, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.”)?
Almost eight years after 9/11, is anything really getting past our nation’s security-industrial-complex? What exactly is the “al-Qaeda threat” and how substantial is it?
Unfortunately, Obama’s talk about “taking the fight to the extremists” was like a repackaging of the Bushism, “We’re fighting the terrorists over there so we don’t have to fight them here.”
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