After 9/11 – A Lack of Rational Thought

I was a sophomore in high school on September 11th 2001.  I remember hearing of the first tower being hit while in Latin class, I remember being completely stunned.  I knew people who lost parents in the towers, it almost felt like a dream that we would wake up from one day, everything would be back as it was.  That wasn’t the case though, and that day will go down as a focal point in our nation’s history.  I’ve read a few accounts this morning memorializing that day, none better and more emotional than that of @upsidetrader found here.

Above all else, 9/11 elicited a shared response by this country, after being dazed and confused as to what had just happened, we became angry and sought revenge.  We wondered how it was possible our government could not have seen this coming, we wanted heads to roll.  We wanted revenge on the people who planned the attack, those who helped them plan it, financed it, and gave them shelter.  All normal reactions by a nation that had just lost 3,000 people, two iconic buildings, and the heart of its financial capital.  But the actions taken by our government in the wake of this disaster have been nothing short of idiotic.

The now defunct phrase, thank god, “war on terror” was placed into the lexicon of everyone on this earth.  In the wake of 9/11 our country suffered from a complete lack of the ability to think long term.  Our response to 9/11 was a haphazard war in Afghanistan with no strategy.  Our government parlayed that fear once again into a war in Iraq also without a long term strategy.  We shut ourselves off from the world, became “American” and isolationist instead of reaching out and saying, work with us to solve these issues.  So many mistakes were made they are too numerous to count.

At the core I am not a pacifist, in fact I believe there is a time and place for war, even preemptive war.  In 1967 the Israelis launched a preemptive attack on several neighbors with complete and utter success.  The attack was warranted for many reasons, and the outcome was a hands down victory.  I am a realist, we should use our power when and where it best serves our interests.  I even believe that we should, in certain instances, conduct nation building in certain parts of the world through force.  But this does not excuse our government from the lack of thought and foresight it has displayed since 9/11.  Running into Afghanistan with no strategy in order to seek revenge on ghosts in mountains was idiotic at best.

I have heard people comment this morning, and in years past, that we should have just nuked the shit out of the Arabs, or things to that effect.  I understand the grief and the need for revenge, everyone felt that way.  Does that sort of behavior serve a purpose though beyond the first time you thought or said it?

I have a plea this morning.  You may agree or disagree with his policies, but we have a new president on this 9/11 anniversary who believes in rational thought before action.  We no longer have a leader who acts as if he is a 13 year old boy playing a game of Battleship.  Take a moment to think before you speak about what you believe our foreign policy should look like.  Enough with the bomb them to hell crap.  We are smack in the middle of a war for the future of the globalization of economics, liberal democracy, and ideas, it’s time we all stopped acting like 13 year olds.  The world looks to us as an example, since our founding we have always been the innovators, the thinkers, the pioneers, a society open to new ideas.  We have lost that spirit in the wake of 9/11, it has been replaced by fear and resentment.

Think about what your words really mean before you speak, would you really like them to become reality?

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