THE COSTLY DECADE AFTER 9/11

In the aftermath of the 9/11 commemorations people in America and elsewhere in the world may forget the sequence of events that followed and which in hindsight could be viewed as a disaster at least of similar magnitude. I was reminded of this when some young friends asked me to watch Michael Moore’s documentary Fahrenheit 911. It has been a while since I last saw it. “Will we get opinions only, or facts?” they asked beforehand. As far as I knew it largely offered facts, images, but obviously construed in such a way to see the events from a specific angle. And this is what I told them.

My young friends are adolescents now, but at the time they still were kids. So this was the first opportunity for them to observe and evaluate for themselves the successive actions of the Bush Administration after September 2001, ultimately leading up to the military intervention in Iraq. They ware truly horrified. Of course, in this documentary Michael Moore leads us to see the pre- and post-9/11 events as one huge conspiracy in which President George W. Bush served as nothing more than as a dumb witted pawn in the hand of corporate interests out to get as much profit our of Middle East oil as they could get their hands on. The dramatic onslaught of 9/11, in their eyes, served as a blessing, not as a tragedy. The Republican-Corporate elite concocted the case for democracy and freedom in the Middle-East to the benefit of their own pocket books and in the process sacrificed the lives of many more American people – young men in particular – than the number of people who lost their lives in the initial terrorist attack. And even though this is a very subjective, highly cynical interpretation, it is very difficult to escape the notion that the American people were misled in believing that in toppling the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein, something effective was done to avert a substantive and immediate threat to their own security. It was by no means a response to an actual, immediate threat of terror but rather a pre-emptive action to safeguard America’s economic interests.


The great sacrifice after 9/11

I have been highly critical of the Bush Administration throughout its tenure and even though I would not readily concede to conspiracy theories or to US presidents serving their own interests only I can not help but see the entire history of the years between 2000 and 2005 as a tragic mishap for which taxpayers and citizens world wide are paying a colossal price. What strikes me most of all is how we tend to forget this and blame the current economic slump and lack of new progress on the present-day administration.

Massive military spending, hundreds of billions of dollars, went into a war that as been questionable from the onset and it has drained the American – and world - economy to such extent that it wasn’t able to sufficiently counter the burst of the financial bubble that ensued in parallel. We got stuck, in America and elsewhere, and much of it is to blame on the expensive illusions that have been kept alive, indeed by very self-centered interests – not merely of politicians and corporations - throughout the past decade.


The president is who is largely blamed for the consequences of the past

It will take the western economies at least another decade to recapture sufficient financial strength and inspiration to get on with the job of making the world a better place. The implication is that a great many urgent innovations in energy, ecology and market efficiency will take much longer to materialize and that they will only come about if governments accept sustained austere budget policies for a considerable period. All of this will keep people across the world – including people in areas of conflict – on a tight string and this may again trigger new outbreaks of violence.


When will new stability and growth return?

Seen from this angle, I much regret that I can not tell my young friends that any time soon the outlook of our world will substantially improve. Many uncertainties remain and thus they too will pay part of the bill of the wasteful previous years. At the same time it is important that they grasp the historic context in which they make their own decisions, from every possible viewpoint. The conundrums of their world are not an act of God but the result of willful actions of people, both for better and for worse. They too can dream of their own contributions and learn from the judgments of people in the past.