Did everything change?
Ever since 9-11, we've all heard to the point of meaninglessness, that the attack on that date "changed everthing."
The right wingers in particular have seemingly clipped the phrase on to their belts so they can whip it out as some sort of magical blanket justification for every wild quasi-constitutional or even illegal policy or action that Bush and the administration has taken which otherwise would have been considered abominations and afronts to the notion of liberty itself.
I could offer a list of considerable length on things that have changed since 9-11.
But this time I'll let you do the heavy lifting.
Perhaps after considering how things have changed, we can then look back and draw some conclusions.
They say "everything changed" on 9-11.
What's happened to our country, our culture, our society, and our relationship with the rest of the world since that day.
posted by The Inside Dope @ 1/15/2006
8 comments
8 Comments:
We created an enourmous Department of Homeland Security when all we needed was a 1-person Department of Not Letting People Take Knives on Planes.
John Ashcroft tried to institute a program whereby cable guys, utility workers, and others were encouraged to report "suspicious" activities or anything they saw while accessing people's homes.
There was a huge rash of people reporting innocent neighbors and others to the FBI as suspected terrorists.
People would get off planes if anyone who looked remotely middle-eastern was aboard, including a few instances where pilots refused to fly because some dark skinned person happened to be a passenger, leaving hundreds of people stranded and their plans wrecked.
And a pervasive culture of hate and fear has replaced rational thought and basic human decency, often created,abetted and encouraged by Karl Rove and the Bush administration.
We now know that 9/11/2001 was the date on which the Bush Administration, using as an excuse that we were at "war", starting systematically breaking the law, spying on US citizens inside the US without a warrant, detaining people without charges, torturing detainees and handing them over to others to be tortured.
QCI, that's priceless! My side hurts from laughing.
Not only funny as hell, but so true. The government proved itself to be utterly clueless and ineffectual. Their first instinct was to throw billions at misguided attempts to secure air travel, while largely ignoring all the miriad of other more likely vulnerabilities.
Reminds me of the tactic of poking someone in the eyes so they'll immediately raise their hands to their eyes, thus leaving them covering their own eyes and leaving the rest of the body unprotected.
It was the reaction of people operating on fear rather than logic, ignoring the fact that the chances of repeating an attack using aircraft were next to impossible, even if they were foolish enough to try it.
As someone with darker skin and facial hair, I can attest to having the hell profiled out of me everytime I fly. I don't fly that much, but every single time since 9/11 I've been pulled aside in airports and had my carry-on and checked-in luggage searched (I have a collection of "Homeland Security has looked at your stuff" papers from the latter). This never happened -not once- before 9/11.
I shouldn't complain - I have an acquaintance of Pakistani descent who changed her last name because of all of the hassle when traveling, especially in and out of Canada (where I believe she has relatives). Of course, that will probably just raise more red flags.
That and it's become acceptable to invade countries with the same skin color/predominant faith as the 9/11 attackers are the big things, in my opinion, that have changed. Neither change makes us any safer.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/12/26/ shields.terror/index.html
Its a 3-week old article, but its an good read.
QCI... thanks, you're right, good piece. The author's point should be more widely recognized.
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