“…For strategic, military and economic reasons, it is vital for the US government to persuade its public that their commitment to freedom and democracy and the American Way of Life is under attack.
In the current atmosphere of grief, outrage and anger, it’s an easy notion to peddle.
However, if that were true, it’s reasonable to wonder why the symbols of America’s economic and military dominance – the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon – were chosen as the targets of the attacks.
Why not the Statue of Liberty?
Could it be that the stygian anger that led to the attacks has its taproot not in American freedom and democracy – but in the US government’s record of commitment and support to exactly the opposite things -
- to military and economic terrorism, insurgency, military dictatorship, religious bigotry – and unimaginable genocide (outside America)?
It must be hard for ordinary Americans, so recently bereaved, to look up at the world with their eyes full of tears – and encounter what might appear to them to be indifference.
It isn’t indifference.
It’s just augury.
An absence of surprise.
The tired wisdom of knowing that what goes around eventually comes around.
American people ought to know that it is not them but their government’s policies that are so hated.
They can’t possibly doubt that they themselves, their extraordinary musicians, their writers, their actors, their spectacular sportsmen and their cinema, are universally welcomed.
All of us have been moved by the courage and grace shown by firefighters, rescue workers and ordinary office staff in the days since the attacks…”
(cont..)
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