9/11 II

That's 9/11 two - like World War two.

Stu Bykofsky at the Phildalphia News thinks that's just what we need to keep America on track. He doesn't spend much time questioning where the track leads. Citing the brief sense of community that the attack on New York generated - the slogans, the made-in-Taiwan plastic flags and ribbons, he wishes we had it back. He thinks we just got distracted from the need for war because we're "politically splintered" and we need another attack to make us more patient with the Forever War of George W. Bush.

"America likes wars shorter than the World Series." Says Stu. So what? Great Britain kept troops in Northern Ireland for 40 years, he tells us. Bad comparison. The test of a war's worth is whether the results were worth the sacrifice and whether the results could better have been obtained in another way. This war fails both tests. If by some bit of magic, Iraq became a country where ancient hatred disappeared and a functioning secular democracy allied with the US arose, it would become, like Israel, a magnet for it's neighbors' hatred and the nucleus of another war - and another. Bush's war is rapidly destabilizing the world and every day brings us closer to a new front in Iran and perhaps Pakistan. Every day recruits new enemies, persuades democracies to vote against leaders who support us.

America is not splintered, America opposes the war of George Bush and by a wide margin. America can see that another attack would bring another war against another not-guilty party; another occupation of attrition. If we are impatient, it's because this war is going nowhere, not because it is taking longer than it did to defeat Germany and Japan. It's because there's nothing to win and winning would be losing. It's because this war is steadily destroying all traces of the country we were supposed to be punishing for 9/11 and then were supposed to be rescuing from tyranny and now is the enemy they were not before we attacked them.

To suppose that the solution to the bungled, misguided and mislead crusade is more of the same and renewed patience with it's spread across the world's borders, is an insult to our country and it conveys the same smug snobbery and disdain for democracy that our administration exhibits.