After 9/11... aka Déjà vu
A lot of people are calling the recent Paris terror attacks, "France's 9/11," or even, "Europe's 911," so I think it makes a lot of sense to go back and have a look at how we responded after 9/11 and see what can be learned/avoided/done differently this time around.
The first thing we did is declare war on the perpetuator. Depending on how you look at it, Bush declared war sometime between Sept 12 and Sept 20.
France declared war within 24 hours.
We declared that we'd have to work with some bad people to get the results we wanted.
Today Putin and Assad are being reformed in the media and embraced - again - by the west.
We suspended or discarded many of our civil liberties.
France is already in a state of siege, and god knows what the intelligence and police are doing. Certainly they raided over 100 homes already, installed a curfew and want to extend there "emergency powers" for up to three months... so far.
The rightwing and hyper-militaristic amongst us gained power - and deep public support in America, after 9/11.
The same is happening across Europe today.
----
I could go on, but I think my point is clear: we have learned NOTHING from the mistakes we made after 9/11, have we?
Even on DU people are openly telling the NSA that they can take away their freedom to communicate privately.
I had an Irishman tell me today that, "we need another Bush/Rumsfeld...another strongman" to solve our problems, oblivious to the fact a huge chunk of today's problems were caused by the actions of the neocons in response to 9/11. And that 9/11 was itself largely in response to the behaviour of right-wing hawks in the ME.
We are slipping right back into the militaristic mindset, that we can bomb or kill our way out of these issues, which were themselves caused by trying to bomb and kill our way out of other problems. We can't.
NOW - not in 10 years - is when we need to stop a repeat what happened after 9/11.
