Was it Worth It?

I haven't been updating this blog for a while, and with the 2012 now officially underway, I thought I'd post an article I wrote a while ago, but never published, as it was a bit charged and used "I" too much in it for a formal article. Anyway, it's about the apparent death of Osama bin Ladan, and it's the non-conspiracy version, as I believe the man died a long time ago.

For many Americans, the image of Osama bin Laden is associated with two words: terrorism and the date 9/11. It’s not the man that matters to them, for it’s his image that enrages the populace. We have thrust upon him our own ideas of what a man who would dare touch this benevolent country would be like. He’s the embodiment of all things anti-American, because seeing him as such an embodiment rather than as a man is exactly what’s needed to bring forth a surge of American nationalism and pride. In fact, he grew to be a classic Boogeyman we tell of in legends rather than an ailing, fringe political man. “He hates freedom and the banner that flies it!” some will say. Others will take it a step further and associate all Muslims with this ideology and proclaim, “They’re ultimate goal is to bring down the United States!” This is all obviously because they so strongly disagree with our humble ideals. I’m not going to go into any conspiracies. I’m just going to ask you, in light of his official death, “Was it worth it?”

I was fifteen-years-old on September 11, 2001 and was in P.E. when the announcement came. I remember seeing throughout the whole day those towers come crashing into the earth. I remember the President declaring that “the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us!” and the shouts of Americans clamoring for revenge. The implications of such a thing didn’t hit me right away (I was a teenager), but it wasn’t long before there was one man’s face plastered all over every news channel, and along with it came a great surge in nationalism. While we told of the heroics of many ill-fated people that day, we simply didn’t want to ask ourselves any big questions. All we needed to know was that these people hated freedom, and considering that we’re the only free country in the world, we were obviously the choice for attack. It had nothing at all to do with the fact that we’d been occupying the Middle East for years, toppling their leaders and installing puppet governments; it had nothing to do with the half million Iraqi children who died because of our Empire building prior to that fateful day; no, it was all because we’re so good that it’s only natural for evil to try and bring us down.

Allow me to take a break and add a disclaimer. The last thing I want to do is downplay that horrible day or make it somehow seem that we deserved it, but the intellectual failings of a populace when they come under mob thinking floors me. Again, I don’t think America deserved attack, but whenever there’s a murder the police look for a motive. It doesn’t mean that the victim deserved his fate, just that there is almost always a reason for their killer’s actions. I firmly believe this whole thing could have been averted had we adjusted our foreign policy long ago and worked to build good relations instead of trampling on their holy ground and playing their governments like marionettes. Remember, we put the Shah into power, radicalized Osama bin Laden and his crew, training them in warfare so that they could attack the Soviets for us; and placed sanctions and embargos on peoples throughout the Middle East. I’d say that we need to practice what we preach and adopt the non-interventionist foreign policy promoted by our Founding Fathers to avoid making such hateful and bitter enemies in the future.

Moving on, I remember when the War on Terror began, without Congressional approval, and wondering why Osama bin Laden had never been charged when both the media and our politicians were certainly toting him as the ultimate evil in the world and the mastermind behind the attacks. Everyone wanted him dead, and no one seemed to look further than that. We went into the Middle East, first in Afghanistan supposedly looking for bin Laden, then into Iraqi under the flawed assumption that our former ally, Saddam Hussein, possessed weapons of mass destruction.

Saddam Hussein wasn’t a good man, like most dictators, but he had diligently kept the likes of radicalized Islam out his country and even protected the Aramaic-speaking Christian minority during his dictatorship. By hunting him down, we opened the door for those we know as Al-Qaeda to come into the country and the Christians in the area fled to Iran and other parts of the Middle East, as we didn’t do that good a job of protecting them.

Moreover, we didn’t do a very good job of telling civilians apart from terrorists and the body count rose. For those of us who looked a bit deeper, or who spoke with veterans who had been shocked by our own brutality in this war, we heard the stories of American soldiers shooting up vehicles only to find that they’d killed entire families, or sometimes left young children orphaned when they shot their parents to death mistakenly; when a Good Samaritan came by they would mistake them for terrorists and shoot at them. Some soldiers even claimed that they’d signed up for Iraq in the first place so that they’d have an excuse to kill humans. I know these kinds of people are in the minority, but for every mistake we make and every no-morals soldier we produce, we lend that much more credibility to the ideas of terrorists, and more kids grow up hating Americans and more disgruntled Arabs join the ranks of those trying to kill us. All of this leads to more dead Americans.

That’s the great fallacy of declaring a war on terror. “Terror” isn’t an individual, a militia or other radical group, nor is it a government or a country; it is simply an idea, and you can’t fight an idea through the use of physical arms. To change an ideology you need to promote a different ideology. Killing will only lend strength to a rapidly-spreading idea, but activism will reveal the murderous flaws of terrorism. Terrorism itself is attacking a civilian population to achieve a favorable political outcome, and even Americans have engaged in such activity. The whole world can be accused of terrorism, whether it’s Nanking or Hiroshima, Dresden or 9/11. You can’t stop it, as much as I wish I could. Declaring war on Al-Qaeda and hunting down the members of that group is more specific and more prone to victory, in my opinion.

This also led to an unprecedented loss of freedom on our part. We were supposed to be fighting to protect our freedoms, yet every war seems to bring nothing but a loss of those intangible things, and they slipped away more quickly during these invasions than any other point in history. It was just as Abraham Lincoln predicted when he said that “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and loose our freedoms, it will be because we destroy ourselves,” not because of any foreign enemy that seeks to take them from us. The Patriot Act, an act frighteningly Orwellian in both name and nature, came to pass and many Americans were stripped of their privacy. Habeas Corpus was suspended, and warrantless arrests and searches became routine in some areas of the country. I am always thankful that I live where I do because the tyrannical reach of our own government will reach us last, and I fear that more than I fear any terrorist.

We as a nation also conveniently forgot that our rights are not given to us because of our race or nationality, or because the government finds it convenient, but that our Founders believed that our rights are “inalienable” and “endowed by our Creator,” belonging to each individual human, not just Americans. Because of this, when an Arab was spied on or arrested without warning, we would shrug our shoulders and say, “What did he expect? He’s an Arab!”

As the war continued on and spread throughout the Middle East, it grew to costing us trillions of dollars. We borrowed it, taxed it, and even still continued to expand both the war and our domestic programs. We’ve begun to go the way of the Soviet Union prior to its collapse. All Empires fall when they over-expand their military and inflate their currency. It happened to Germany during WW2, the Soviet Union, and many more Empires throughout history. All those “temporary” bases from WW2 still remain, angering the citizens who must put up with them and their waste of natural resources, sucking up taxpayer money and putting us in massive debt to the Chinese. We’re fighting more and more wars (Libya now, too) that we simply can’t afford, and we’re trying to increase our domestic programs, which not only fly in the face of the Founding Fathers’ ideals, but we also can’t afford! This country would be bankrupt if not for our useless fiat money, and even that won’t save us forever! Our monetary troubles are more complicated, but I’m not writing this rant against our monetary policy in this country.

Finally, what does human life mean to you? We’ve killed so many through our foreign policy, and even declared that it was worth it! In retaliation, America comes under attack and we lose roughly 3,000 lives. In retaliation, we invade the Middle East under UN resolution and continue to kill even more, which in turn radicalizes even more. It’s not only a senseless cycle of violence, but it is compelling evidence that neither side cares much for the lives of others. The Middle East is running with blood, but neither side will ever get enough of it.

I’m a bit odd in that I tend to follow the ideals of mercy and forgiveness rather than any perceived sense of vengeance or justice. Yes, I believe that revenge and justice are almost the same, and I tend to despise both, especially when it means that someone will have to die. In the case of Saddam Hussein, he died and he didn’t even do anything to Americans specifically, and killing him destabilized that whole region! Now, Americans dance in the streets in a way reminiscent of the Israelis and Arabs who danced when the towers came down because a man whom they knew little about other than what ideals his image supposedly represented, has been killed. He was never charged with 9/11 despite all the hate that was thrust on him, and he was incredibly ill – not even able-bodied! What has killing him done? Did it raise those towers from the rubble and restore them to their glory? No. Did it bring back all our dead civilians and soldiers? No. Did it even end the war? No. All it did was help quench the thirst for revenge and revitalize American support for a war that was rapidly growing unfavorable.

Am I glad when I hear of the deaths of our soldiers, the enemy’s soldiers, or men, women, and children? Of course I’m not. I tend to value life to the point where I’m going to make it public that if I’m ever killed, I don’t want my killer to die. It doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t put my soul to rest, bring me back, or anything else of value. All it does is prematurely end the life of another human being, and you have no idea what kinds of things he might decide to do with his life. That’s why we have jails.

So, now that we see the death and carnage of this war; the economic ruin it has left this country in, and the ideals of our Founding Fathers and pieces of our Constitution scattered about like remnants after a storm, I ask you, “Was it worth it?” Was seeing Osama bin Laden killed worth the bloodshed, the financial ruin, and the loss of freedom? Was the birth of the TSA, the passing of the Patriot Act, and the spying worth it to see this man dead? Was it worth your neighbor’s foreclosure and you’re increasingly tight budget because of the inflation and bad moves of our banks and Federal Reserve? Is it worth it to be indebted to China and other countries? What about the lives of those killed, both our soldiers’ and the citizens of Muslim countries? When you see that picture of Samar Hassan covered in the blood of her parents, screaming in agony because our soldiers killed her parents, do you think it was worth it? I certainly don’t. I say end this horrible cycle. You can’t kill an idea through physical means, and trying to only exacerbates the problem. It’s destroying lives everywhere and is destroying what made this country so great to begin with! I’ll take my freedoms, please, even if it leaves me vulnerable. Bring our troops home!