Anyone who listens to right wing radio, Tony Snow, or Bush-Cheney, in other words anyone who is on a strict diet of lies, has heard the latest rationale for the Iraq war, one which is now repeated endlessly. If we don’t fight ‘em there �" in Iraq �" we will be fighting ‘em here in the streets of America. Now as one who lives in New York City, and whose wife, son, and toddler grand-daughter also live here, I have a great concern for my family’s safety, living as we do in the bulls-eye of the terrorist’s target.
But what strikes me and any sane American is that we are much more likely to fight ‘em here because we have fought them there, in that great Bush-bungle called Iraq. Among the unintended consequences of this war has been to create and to inflame terrorists throughout the world for another shot at America.
These terrorists are not preoccupied in Iraq. Sure, there must be some al Qaeda there, but they have the local insurgencies to do their work for them, freeing them up for recruitment and target practice for another assault on the USA, and if not New York, then L.A.. Chicago, Boston, Washington, San Francisco, anywhere there is a great concentration of people, and where they can get more bang for the buck. In the 18th and 19th centuries the rural areas were the symbols of America, but in the 20th and 21st it is our great cities that represent our culture and our civilization and draw the wrath of those who hate us.
I would be less fearful of another terrorist attack if Katrina had not proven the genetic incompetence of this White House to deal with any national emergency. The best military thinking tells us that this new escalation in troops will further deplete and ultimately demoralize our armed-forces, giving little comfort to those of us who fear another attack at home. No, I do not live my life trembling over the prospect of some catastrophic attack tomorrow, city dwellers learn to be fatalists, and you become a master of denial or you leave, but I take no comfort in the fight ‘em there makes me safer here rhetoric. After all these Bush years the most credulous among us cannot be taken in by these White House grifters, we know at once when we are being conned.
One can only hope that it will not be easy to replicate 9/11, now that our State Department and National Security people are officially awake, now that Sleeping Beauty Rice is up after her big pre 9/11snooze, and that perhaps the government has been doing its job of protecting its citizens by collecting intelligence that will prevent another attack. Since this is the fundamental obligation of any government, we can only hope that this is the case. Because intelligence by its very nature must be secret we can never really know what is being done to protect us. Thus, given the track record of our President, we can assume that very little has been done effectively in the way of securing our safety.
We do know that the job of protecting America would be made easier if we saw that an effort was made to work in concert with allies in Europe and the Middle East and Asia, because a fight against terrorism must be a world-wide effort. This surge to purge in Iraq will only further endanger our families at home.
Like so many citizens, I’d like to see our troops come home, not only for their sakes, but mainly for ours. We need them here to guard our borders, our seas and our skies against another attack. We need them to protect my grand-daughter and other innocents deserving of a long life, and not to justify the Iraqi horror show.
SHERMAN YELLEN, screenwriter, playwright, and lyricist was nominated for a Tony Award for his book for the musical, The Rothschilds. His screenwriting has won him two Emmy Awards and a Peabody Award, for his drama John Adams, Lawyer - in the PBS series The Adams Chronicles, and for An Early Frost, a groundbreaking drama about AIDS in America. His Beauty and the Beast with George C. Scott was nominated for an Emmy and won the Christopher Award. Yellen received a lifetime achievement award in Arts and Letters from Bard College.
As an observer of contemporary American life, Sherman believes it is the obligation of artists to speak out against the erosion of our democracy during these troubling times. His blog is shermanyellen.blogspot
Mr Yellen do you really believe Bin Laden all on his own engineered the WTC disaster.Go back to square one. I do not believe he did it, especially not alone. He has help and lots of it from inside the US.I will not try to convert you but just remember how easy it was to hijack 5 airliners. I do not see an American pilot being intimidated by a box cutter. Most of them are ex military men and can think and act quickly without panic, besides being competent enough to fly a 747 for years. The only thing that would prevent them from stopping a terrorist is a gun pointed at someone's head. And most would not let that stop them. Not one pilot pressed the hijack button on his console.Seems someone they knew and trusted was in the cockpit. Drugs in coffee might explain it. Give me the answers to this strange set of circumstances and maybe I will believe a bunch of terrorist did the deed
by
cluelessfl (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 184 comments)
on Thursday, January 11, 2007 at 11:42:02 PM
1 comments
How would you rate this?
You must be logged in (if signed up) to do ratings.
It's free to signup! And easy. And takes just a minute or two....
Must Read (
Well Said (
News (
Touching (
Funny (
Supported (
Interesting (
Inspiring (
Valuable (
