TERRORISM: We've got them right where they want us

[drfemoe]

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/News/Editorial+%2F+Commentary/29CDA5B39A50D21E86256ECB00387624?OpenDocument&Headline=TERRORISM%3A+We've+got+them+right+where+they+want+us

OR http://tinyurl.com/yugrl

By GWYNNE DYER
07/08/2004
At the Fourth of July stone-laying ceremony on the site where the World Trade Center towers formerly stood, New York Gov. George Pataki dedicated the building that is to replace them, using the rhetoric that is standard in the United States on such occasions: "Let this great Freedom Tower show the world that what our enemies sought to destroy - our democracy, our freedom, our way of life - stands taller than ever."
...
Imagine it's 1999, and three wild-eyed, bushy-bearded Islamist fanatics are pacing a cave somewhere in Afghanistan planning 9/11. "We must destroy American democracy," says one. "An America run by a dictator would be a much better place."
...
This is what enables President George W. Bush to explain away why the United States was attacked with the simple phrase, "They hate our freedoms," and avoid any discussion that delves into the impact of American foreign policy in the Middle East on Arab and Muslim attitudes towards the United States. It also blinds most Americans to the nature of the strategic game into which their country has been tricked into playing a role.
...
Gov. Pataki wasn't about to get into all this at an emotional ceremony that, in part, commemorated the lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. But when will it be addressed, and by whom? What major American public figure will stand up and say that the United States and its values are not really under attack, that the country and its troops are actually just being used as pawns in somebody else's strategy? Many senior American politicians and military officers understand what is going on, but they would jeopardize their careers if they said so out loud.

[teryang]

1. The devil made us do it.

Those muslim militants tricked us into invading Iraq.