Remembrance and Reflections

9-11 has become a significant part of our vocabulary in the last decade. As such, I think it's important to remember why we were attacked, and by whom. We were attacked by a relatively small group of radicals who get their funding primarily from Saudi Arabia. They were angry with us because of a number of things that we do, in point of fact, do... supporting dictators, overthrowing governments, meddling in affairs that are none of our business, and more. Their goal, if I may speak from what I've heard in the last several years, seems to have been to firstly make us stop doing these things, and secondly to bring is down somewhat ( that is, if not topple our government, at least reduce our influence over other countries), and thirdly to eliminate our way of life.

Well, as they say, two out of three ain't bad.

The thing is, our political leadership has managed to change our views on a host of questions like privacy, security and the economy to the detriment of the majority of us. We accept invasive searches of our homes and even our selves (witness TSA searches at any airport) with almost no complaint. We have accepted "free speech zones" well out of view of politicians, and being arrested for challenging our "leadership" at a public meeting is commonplace. I can remember this country before 9/11/2001, and cannot believe that any of these and hundreds of other attacks on our constitutionally protected rights would have been tolerated then.

We also have managed to sabotage our standing in the world in the view of our peer nations. Many people from our NATO allies view us as little better than loud-mouthed bullies. Countries that should be our friends see us as dangerously unpredictable, and world leaders see our own leaders as fools and buffoons with no grasp of how our actions impact the world and international economies and trade. We are little better than the village idiot in the view of many, when we used to be perceived as the final arbiter of truth and fairness. Not a good motion for us to continue, and yet we seem to be determined to continue our slide.

The one area that we haven't pulled back in is meddling in the internal affairs of other, weaker countries. In fact, we have started meddling in even more countries and in a more blatant fashion than ever before. From Libya to Syria to Pakistan and beyond, we tamper, corrupt, prop up "friendly" grimes, topple regimes that don't follow our dictates and generally cause havoc and mayhem wherever we tread. In truth, it's no wonder people hate and fear us.

The final thing we've started doing is we've increased our military spending until it has surpassed ludicrous. We spend more than the next 14 highest spending countries combined, and pretty consistently seek increases over even that amount. Even in a time when austerity rules the day in all other areas we manage to find a significant additional amount to add to the Pentagon's budget. Pretty insane amounts of that are lost, wasted or pissed away on weapons systems that are unwanted by the branches of the military they are supposed to be for. In fact, we spend so much on military operations, weapons systems, and R&D that we are risking the economic collapse of the world and every country that uses the dollar as a reserve currency, and our "leadership" is busy trying to rip us off for the money we've put into a couple insurance programs to "reduce the deficit" when what's breaking the bank both figuratively and literally goes unremarked.

No, my friends and other readers, they do NOT "hate us for our freedoms," they hate us because we're dangerous, insane and stupid.

New Blogger for iPhone

Well, Blogger has decided to join the connected world and release an app for iPhone. This post is in part a test of that app, and partly to reaffirm that I am still alive and kicking. Since I haven't posted in the last year, I'm pretty certain that I lost any followers I might have had. No biggie from my end, as this was really always a place for me to air concerns and feelings, but apologies to anyone who wondered if I was still amongst the living or not (I most assuredly am).

Anywhoo, thanks for reading. Maybe I'll be a bit more inclined to post occasionally now that I don't have to be at my PC to do so.