Saturday, February 12 2005   -   9/11 Consequences

By Don Monkerud
February 07, 2005

From the American Conservative magazine to the Smirking Chimp website, views on 9/11 consequences are starting to converge. Here is a short sharp meditation from the latter source to remind us once more that we are here. - Editor

As the world mourns the anniversary of the Holocaust, we continue to wonder how one of the most advanced countries in the world could commit such an atrocity. We forget that the slaughter didn't occur overnight but took years to set up. Little by little individuals assuaged their consciences and found it advantageous to go along with authority, committing a number of small acts, ultimately culminating in genocide.

Anyone with a smattering of awareness today questions the path down which our leaders are taking us. Consider the direction. As America pursues an aggressive military policy-Bush's preemptive strike-invading Iraq and Afghanistan, threatening to bomb Iran and North Korea, and imposing our economic form of corporate democracy around the world, Americans are becoming more nationalistic and more willing to support acts we considered totally unacceptable in the past... The military engages in domestic spying and Congress is days away from appointing an Attorney General who justifies torture-newly defined as anything short of death.

Our bombs have killed up to 100,000 people in Iraq and we justify our continued occupation as "bringing democracy to the world"... The American people remain quiescent, good citizens, fulfilling their primary role as consumers. Are we in danger of becoming like Adolf Eichmann?

 

Monday, February 7 2005   -   9/11 Consequences

by Dogen Hannah
February 7, 2005
Contra Costa Times (California)

They failed to prevent the invasion of Iraq, to unseat President Bush or, so far, to extract U.S. troops from Iraq. One might expect anti-war activists to feel defeated.

They don't.

National activists say they have gained ground with tactical triumphs, that their fight to force America from Iraq is not lost. More mass protests are on the way, they say, including many on the second anniversary of the war's March 19 onset.

"No, we haven't stopped it (the war) yet," said AiMara Lin national coordinator for the activist group Not In Our Name. "But to me, that's not a good enough reason to not keep going."

Anti-war leaders are searching for ways to revitalize their movement in the wake of Bush's re-election, the apparently successful Iraqi election and public support for the 150,000 troops in Iraq.

FULL MONTY: Here!"

 

Friday, February 4 2005   -   9/11 Consequences

War to export democracy may wreck our own.
by Scott McConnell
February 14, 2005

The Iraq war has brought out a "hunger for dictatorship" in the Right that could signal the end of American democracy. -- Editor of American Conservative

Students of history inevitably think in terms of periods: the New Deal, McCarthyism, “the Sixties” (1964-1973), the NEP, the purge trial--all have their dates. Weimar, whose cultural excesses made effective propaganda for the Nazis, now seems like the antechamber to Nazism, though surely no Weimar figures perceived their time that way as they were living it. We may pretend to know what lies ahead, feigning certainty to score polemical points, but we never do.