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Regional - How not to win the hearts and minds of terrorists
Commentary by Patrick Keller
for Smoky River Express
For most people born after the Kennedy assassination, the defining “do you remember where you were when” moment must surely be terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
I was driving a desolate stretch of B.C. road at early that morning, listening to CBC radio. My first thought was one of shock and awe, which quickly gave way to rage and bewilderment: As an American, I was horrified, then incensed. As a human, I was ashamed.
I spent the rest of the day in a bar watching the footage of American Airlines Flight 11 as it wheeled into the north tower of the World Trade Centre. Within 20 minutes, what appeared to be a freak aviation accident morphed into an encore presentation of terrorism the likes of which the world had never seen. When United Airlines Flight 175 hit the South tower at 9:03 a.m., it erased all hope that an accident had transpired, and left in its wake a grim report: Not everyone in the world was rooting for the American way of life.
By days end, more than 2,900 people had perished. Some in the mid-air collisions, most in the collapsing towers of the trade center buildings. Soon after, 7,000 special agents had reduced a world of suspects to one cave-dwelling, evil genius billionaire, Osama Bin Laden.
Citing Bin Laden’s fatwa of 1998, which calls for the killing of American civilians, agents around the world set their controls for the deserts of the middle east, attempting to hone in on the bearded Bin Laden. He’s proved to be an elusive target.
According to the Iraq Family Health Survey, there have been 151,000 violent deaths since March 2003. The Opinion Research Business Survey suggests a number closer to 1,033,000. More than 4,000 American soldiers have died in the Iraq war, which had little or nothing to do with 9/11, but has now eclipsed it in duration and deathtoll. There has been little effort to explain why Iraq took precedence over Afghanistan or even Saudi Arabia. Both countries are known to harbour Al-Qaeda sympathizers, including the Bid Laden family.
As a society, are we safer since 9/11, or do we need to be? By baiting our troops overseas, we’ve not only brought the “war on terror” to their home court, but also spared them the logistical headache of planning attacks on western soil. Economically, the war on terror is so expensive that it carries it’s own destructive payload. We keep throwing more money and more lives at the problem, but it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.
Strangely, I don’t remember ever caring about the middle east before 9/11. It Just didn’t appear on my radar. Hindsight being 20/20, I probably could have done less Internet gambling, or watched fewer rock and roll videos featuring scantily clad women. Truthfully, I was just too busy enjoying the party to notice that I was undermining the moral fabric of the Muslim world. I never knew what a bad influence I’d become. “My bad,” I believe, is the common vernacular.
If it’s any consolation, I’d like to apologize for our way of life and the degree of our abundance, which is, admittedly, absurd. Eight years and hundreds of thousands of casualties later, we’ve had a lot of time to think about terrorism and terrorists. I wonder what they think of us now?
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