The Price of Retribution

[Donnachaidh]

http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=osama_bin_laden_the_price_of_retribution

On September 11 2001, terrorists acting on the orders of Osama bin Laden killed almost 3,000 innocent people in New York and Washington, D.C. Almost a decade later, bin Laden met his end at the hands of American special forces -- not in a cave, as those who cultivated his legend as an ascetic might have us believe -- but in a large compound in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad.

The attacks of September 11 left thousands dead, families broken, and turned the center of the proudest city in the world into rubble. But they also left a festering wound in the American psyche that has yet to heal.

In the years following September 11, America lost its mind. Fearful, Americans gave over more power to their government than ever before in the form of the PATRIOT Act. Reflecting on hideous legal memos justifying government-sanctioned torture, Justice Department Official David Margolis exonerated the authors suggesting that they were victims of a lapse in judgment brought on by the aftermath of 9/11.

The march to war in Iraq was bolstered by two false narratives: one laying the blame for the September 11 attacks on Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, the other manufacturing a false link between Iraq and al-Qaeda. The American people, frightened as they were at the time, acquiesced to a foolish and unnecessary war. Things didn't improve after Barack Obama took office. Former Vice President Dick Cheney effectively turned the shame of torture into a badge of honor. The once-bipartisan goal of closing Gitmo became an impossible task as one side gave into fear and the other embraced it. Several weeks ago, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the United States of America was too afraid of its own legal system to try the alleged perpetrators of 9/11 in the very city where the slaughter took place. Nations such as Israel, India, and Pakistan had weathered the harrowing reality of terrorism for decades, but despite the bravery of our first-responders and service members, in other ways, America proved exceptionally fragile.

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