Five Years Later, continued

Let's review what our country has done in the five years since 9-11.

1. We toppled the Afghanistani regime that had sheltered and supported the terrorists. The story there is not over by any means, but so far so good.
   


2. We launched an international attempt to roll back Al-Qaeda throughout the world. We haven’t shut them down, but there have been no repeats with the damage of 9-11.
   


3. We beefed up domestic security. Unclear how effective our measures are, but so far, so good.
   


4. Our main response, where we’ve sunk most of our effort and resources, was to invade Iraq, a country which had nothing to do with the 9-11 attacks. Three years later, it’s still unclear how this will play out, but the fruits of our efforts so far have been:
   
   
   
   • A vicious dictator was deposed.
   
   
   • Thousands of Americans dead, many more significantly wounded.
   
   
   • Many more Iraqis dead; the country on the verge of tearing itself apart.
   
   
   • The entire region destabilized; an important bulwark against Iran removed.
   
   
   • By torturing prisoners and running secret prisons, we’ve trashed much of our moral prestige.
   
   
   • We’ve lost goodwill by belittling our allies for refusing to help us with this disastrous undertaking.
   
   
   • Our government has undermined the peoples’ confidence by playing games with pre-war intelligence.
   
   
   • The war has cost us hundreds of billions of dollars, to be paid off in the future.
   
   
   • All that effort has gained us no measurable effect on terrorism

Whoa, didn’t mean to go off like that. Getting back on track: the events of 9-11 left me with a heavy heart, but I did think we had a real shot at redemption. I hoped that Bush, or anybody in power, would say, “Let’s deny these guys their funding. We’ll cut them off at the knees. Cut off their breathing supply. It will take a while, and it won’t be easy, but let’s do what we can to make oil worthless.” And we would have followed him. It was a shining opportunity – actually there were many opportunities we could have taken – and instead we chose a shameful and wasteful course.

When you hear someone go off against alternative energy for being expensive, consider that we have already dropped 300 billion dollars on our Iraq adventure. Think about what else we could have done with that money and manpower.

I thought another opportunity was lost in the days after 9-11. Not sure about the best way to describe it, so bear with me. It seems that in some ways our society is becoming less cohesive; we as Americans are getting more wrapped up in our individual lives, and are feeling less and less like we have a shared and/or higher purpose in this life. (See the book Bowling Alone for a good discussion of this.) With 9-11, and the reminder of mortality and the cruelty of the world, we felt this more keenly. I think there was an opportunity for someone to make a call to arms, for a way for us to become more connected as Americans. I’m not sure what form that could have taken, but I know that many people would have been receptive. But our leaders did not take that opportunity; in fact, quite the opposite. Bush’s recommendation was to carry on if nothing had happened; to continue shopping. And so we did, and so we are in the same place five years later.