Remembering and thinking ahead

I don't want just to post my memories of three years ago. I was at the dentist. It was going to be a bad enough day as it was. I remember thinking that, essentially, the world was going to end. That the US was going to launch its nukes and that would be the end of it. The dentist isn't where I would have chosen to be for the end of the world, but I guess we don't get to choose these things.

The world did end that September morning three years ago.

The twentieth century was brought powerfully to a close. I suspect that, historically, the twentieth century will be seen to begin with the First World War and to end with 11 September 2001, in the same way that the nineteenth century--in the Atlantic world, anyway--is seen to begin on 14 July 1789 and to end with the First World War.

Nothing could be the same following that tragic day. The world as a whole struggled to understand what it could mean. Nous étions tous Américains. I think that Preisdent Chiraque's statement was perhaps the most powerful of those that came out following the attacks. America's complacency had been shattered. It's sad that it took this attack for that complacency to be shattered, however. The attack on Pearl Harbour fifty years before had proved that the largest ocean in the world was no protection.

I immediately mistrusted Bush. I hadn't liked him to begin with and I instinctively knew that this would be turned to his advantage. He would find a way to use this tragedy to lead America and the world down a very wrong path. Maybe I'm just too much of a conspiracy theorist at heart, but I do feel vindicated three years later.

I was in Ottawa when the bombing of Afghanistan began. It was Thanksgiving weekend. I stood with my boyfriend at the time and watched through the window of an electronics store as they showed the green-tinted night shots. It was the middle of the day here, but the dead of night there. The world was being led further into darkness.

I guess one of the most difficult things for me to understand about all this is the use of violence. I'm a non-violent person and I would go so far, probably, to call myself a pacifist. I concede that, sadly, violence must be used. But, it must always always always be a last resort. Always. They told us that the Taleban were harbouring those responsible for the attacks and that the US had a prerogative to bring those responsible for the attacks to justice. As well as those harbouring those responsible. Because you were either with the US or you were against them. There were to be no sidelines in the new war on terror. In a way this makes sense. It's difficult to see how one could be against the idea of terrorism while at the same time against the idea of attempting to end it. Of course, this leaves no wiggle room. If anyone questions the methodology being pursued, it is a very short leap to say that they must be against the whole idea. To have a binary world leaves no room for the third way.

When the Department of Homeland Security was created, I cringed again. 'Homeland' had such a totalitarian ring to it. They could have called it 'domestic security' or 'internal security' or 'national security'. Even the word security was slightly troubling for me. Security implies not only defence but also regulation. The US already has a Department of Defence (responsible for war), so looking solely at the names of the two departments (and not necessarily what they actually do), the Department of Homeland Security would be concerned mainly with regulation of 'the homeland', and not with the defence of the nation, since that was the concern of the Department of Defence.

Then, of course, there was the US PATRIOT Act. Civil liberties are over-rated anyway. As always, The Onion, managed to hit this right on the head when they ran this headline: 'Bill of Rights pared down to a manageable six.'

Fast-forward to today.

The War in Context is running a headline today 'Three years later...':

Bush claims that over 3/4 of al-Qaeda's key members have been killed or captured. Without presenting any evidence.

Al-Qaeda's deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, declares that the US faces defeat.

Almost 60% of the deaths related to terrorism in the past three years have occurred during 2004. That's 1,709.

The US and its allies have killed between 3,400 and 4,000 civilians in Afghanistan.

The US and its allies have killed between 10,000 and 30,000 civilians in Iraq.

It's easy to get upset about the one thousand US soldiers who have been killed in Iraq. And it's absolutely necessary to get upset about these deaths. But that pales in comparison to the amount of death that the US has inflicted on these two nations which it claims to be liberating.

I'm constantly worried what four more years of Bush might mean for the nation and the world. Likely, it would be little short of catastrophic. I can only hope that enough people feel the same way--or at least feel that the path that Bush has led the world down during the past three years is the wrong path--that they vote against him on 2 November.