It occurred to me that Osama Bin Laden must be laughing his head off where ever he is in Waziristan. His goal with 9/11 was not to kill 3000 Americans. His goal was to commence a great unraveling of our Empire, and by all appearances, he seem to have provoked just that.
Bin Laden played right into the psychology of American exceptionalism. (Evil men can still be very smart.) That goes: America is the greatest country in the world, normal rules do not apply to us. We can have low taxes, big houses and a throw billions at defense contractors, and somehow the Math will magically work out. It's American Math, not like that snooty French Math. Everyone can get rich here, if they just work hard enough. We don't need to ask why these foreigners hate us, and we certainly don't have to change or even look at any or our behavior that might conceivably have something to do with that hatred. We're Americans. Good Christian Engliish-Speaking Americans. When we torture (which we don't of course) it's justified.
After 9/11, we could have tracked down Bin Laden and transformed Afghanistan at a fraction of the cost it took us to invade Iraq. With another fraction of what we spent there, we could have started on a Manhattan Project for alternative energy, reducing our dependence on foreign oil and actually making a dent on global warming. (It's obscene that in my state, where the sun never stops shining and everyone drives, we 're not all behind the wheel of electric cars with solar panels on the roof of every building.) We could have had National Health Insurance by now, and reduced class sizes, and rebuilt infrastructure. Thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis would be alive.
But instead of keeping the economy strong, deficits low, cleaning up our relationships with oppressive regimes like Saudi Arabia which embody the term "Islamo-Fascism" (and provided the 9/11 hijackers), we reacted with the hubris and ineptitude of ancient Romans fighting the barbarians. As a result, we have an economy in freefall, with a national debt now at $480,000 for every household in America. And the people responsible for it are trying to tell those of us who voted against it that we're to blame, because we don't love America enough.
My friend Molly called me and told me she's probably going into a foreclosure. She bought this adorable little house in East Nashville years ago, and when she became sick with ovarian cancer, could not work and had no choice but to refinance and draw on some equity. She got better and returned to work, but then the crisis hit, and her interest rate is now through the roof. The mortage company will not budge.
It has all the hallmarks of the current mess. Because she had inadequate health insurance and was self-employed, Molly has nothing to fall back on when she got sick and has thousands in uncovered medical bills. Because her mortgage was repackaged and resold as securities (thank you Republican deregulation), she doesn't deal with a person at the bank who gave her the loan, but a voice on the phone that has no authority to alter any terms, much less get an agreement to return her to an interest rate which she could afford.
The America which was asked to make no sacrifices in crisis is now the America which will be required to sacrifice unimaginably more. I can just hear Bin Laden checking off his to-do list.
MCO 2008
i can easily imagine Bin Laden taking credit. unfortunately, i think that most of the shit we find ourselves in has very little to do with him and mostly to do with the master illusionists that tricked their way into office. the make-believe that we have been spoon fed over the last 8 years has been intoxicating certainly.
sometimes i still think the planes attacking the towers and the pentagon were performance art more than they were an attack.
but let's really look at the shift in the holding of wealth and power that has happened around it.