Alternet
September 9, 2011.
" ... The philosopher Hannah Arendt once observed that Empire abroad requires tyranny at home. The post-9/11 police state has proved useful in suppressing “enemies”: the threat within, Arab and Muslim communities; the social threat, the left; and the demographic threat, Latinos. All have come under severe repression in the last decade, Arab- and Muslim-Americans most of all.
Ten years on, ideology has outlasted the relevance of the events of 9/11. Islamophobia serves to mobilize support for an endless war. Suppressing the left has scattered radical social opposition to the dominant order, and the war against Latino immigrants has created shadow armies of fearful workers with few rights that corporations prey on to drive down wages and further impede labor organizing.
As tragic as September 11, 2001 was, it is a historical blip because it only speeded up the process of imperial decline. Shortly after the attacks, the historian Immanuel Wallerstein suggested the American hegemony could go down one of two paths. The first was managing a soft decline. The other was a crash landing. It’s not hard to see which path we’ve been on since 9/11."
Comment: I know no one who is not deeply saddened by the tragic events of 9/11. This blog is not an apologist for killing innocent people, anywhere.
In the same vein, this blog is not an apologist for the horrific western foreign policies that gained momentum after 9/11 and led to the mass murder of innocents in the so called Middle East.
What should be commemorated today is the unacceptable loss of innocent lives not the victim-turned-victor mentality that is the mainstay of American exceptionalism.
9/11 is a tragedy that affronts all humanity. But so is the rampant rise of Islamophobia, extraordinary rendition, Guantanamo, drone murders of innocents, murderous invasions for oil, and on and on.
And while we remember those who died innocently on 9/11 we should also remember those who continue to bare the brunt of the US's uninterrupted and insane "war(s) on terror" under Obama.
This includes the US's racist preoccupation with propping up Israel at any cost.
How can anyone remember 9/11 and not remember Israel's war(s) on Palestine? Such a clinical and prejudicial separation of humanity is not possible.
Perhaps inside of an inclusive remembrance there will be enough global political will to bring Bush, Blair, and the associated murderers to trail for declaring war against humanity.
Onward!
No comments:
Post a Comment