From Sam Smith of Progressive Review [View All]

[Mairead]

TODAY WE memorialize a tragic result of fifty years of bad foreign policy towards the Arab and Muslim world. We do it in what has become typically hyperbolic fashion - with a disneyfication of death that exploits the pain of those who lost friends and relations and the memory of those who were lost.

We also memorialize two years of denial. Although surveys show we feel no safer now than before the attacks, we continue to act as though the foolish, ineffective, oppressive and anti-constitutional steps taken in reaction are our only choice. Thus, America has become to the rest of the world as Israel is to the Middle East - a moated castle massively armed, ready for vengeance, suppression, and revenge, yet incapable of defending itself against shoe bombs and box cutters, or the lone attacker to whom suicide seems the only option.

This irony is not only without resolution, it is driving us mad. Like Israel, we have traded our ideals, our decency, and our raison d'etre for the illusion of safety and the transitory satisfaction of retribution. We are destroying ourselves rather than admit we have been wrong and must now try another way.

No more billions of dollars, star chamber proceedings, de facto constitutional amendments, or invasions with CNN as bugle boy will change this. To be safe, we must start over, removing the causes of anger and distrust against us with the same vigor as if we were dismantling weapons of mass destruction, which, after all, is what they really are.

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