Mumia speaks about 9/11: 5 years later...
This is an excerpt from a recent radio essay by death row prison inmate, Mumia Abu-Jamal.
“5 years later, Feel safer yet? It has been 5 years since the disaster of September 11th, and the question that not only must be posed but be answered looms large before us. Do you feel safer yet?
Some may quibble about the short length of time, “Yo, Mu it’s only been 5 years, what do you expect so soon?” others will look at the direction that the U.S. has taken in the last 5 years; try to peer into the ominous future and despair for wrong roads can only lead to wrong destinations.
As the smoke was still rising from the rubble of the hole in the ground in Manhattan. President George W. Bush would go before the congress and lifted on a cloud of evanescent political applause announce his intention saying, apparently, with an aside to the military. The hour is coming when America will act and you will make us proud. Two years later, he would make another announcement, this time described by writer Michael Parenti, in his book, Super Patriotism.
On June 27th, 2003 President Bush announced, God told me to strike at Al Qaeda and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam which I did. And now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. God told me? He instructed me? Does it become a cause for concern, that the U.S. president, sounding like an Old Testament prophet, is justifying his war policy, by claiming to be in direct communication with the almighty? The images arising from the ravaged Middle East may make you think of many things, but I doubt God is one of them.
The U.S. revolution made its mark in the world by forcefully rejecting the notion of divine right of kings. It had resonance in Europe, precisely because it was an anti-royal war, which sought to elevate reason as the highest authority in the state, now we are back to the divine right of precedence.
Iraq by any measure has been an unmitigated disaster. Voices from the right now admit this as they hawk books promoting the splitting of Iraq into 3 separate states or predict unbridled civil war.
Meanwhile, if Iraq was fought to protect the homeland, a lie at any rate, it has served as a live training ground for insurgency. With graduation being, the successful slaying of U.S. soldiers. Iraq prior to September 11th 2001 was many things, but a terrorist training camp it wasn’t. It is now, and it is tying both the Americans and their Iraqi puppets into knots, the question remains, “Do you feel safer yet?”
The U.S. government from the top to the bottom has been a parade of incompetence. Former homeland security chief Tom Ridge was in over his head from day one. If emergency response is any measure that the mega-agency is supposed to divest, we saw its utter lack when the flood struck New Orleans and the gulf coast. The silence was deafening. Across the nation there have been scandals about the theft, misuse, and misappropriation of billions with money flowing to areas clearly unrelated to their stated purpose, its like pigs slurping at the trough.
Has Iraq with all of its blunders, its cruelties, and its hypocrisies made America safer or the reverse? It’s easy to be Poly Ann-ish about this and speak of illusive successes since 9/11, easy and deceitful, wrong roads lead to wrong ends.
And the Iraq adventure driven less by fate then by greed and imperial arrogance has led to repetitive disasters, America may indeed remake the world but it won’t be a world that it finds to its liking.
From Death row, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.”
“5 years later, Feel safer yet? It has been 5 years since the disaster of September 11th, and the question that not only must be posed but be answered looms large before us. Do you feel safer yet?
Some may quibble about the short length of time, “Yo, Mu it’s only been 5 years, what do you expect so soon?” others will look at the direction that the U.S. has taken in the last 5 years; try to peer into the ominous future and despair for wrong roads can only lead to wrong destinations.
As the smoke was still rising from the rubble of the hole in the ground in Manhattan. President George W. Bush would go before the congress and lifted on a cloud of evanescent political applause announce his intention saying, apparently, with an aside to the military. The hour is coming when America will act and you will make us proud. Two years later, he would make another announcement, this time described by writer Michael Parenti, in his book, Super Patriotism.
On June 27th, 2003 President Bush announced, God told me to strike at Al Qaeda and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam which I did. And now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. God told me? He instructed me? Does it become a cause for concern, that the U.S. president, sounding like an Old Testament prophet, is justifying his war policy, by claiming to be in direct communication with the almighty? The images arising from the ravaged Middle East may make you think of many things, but I doubt God is one of them.
The U.S. revolution made its mark in the world by forcefully rejecting the notion of divine right of kings. It had resonance in Europe, precisely because it was an anti-royal war, which sought to elevate reason as the highest authority in the state, now we are back to the divine right of precedence.
Iraq by any measure has been an unmitigated disaster. Voices from the right now admit this as they hawk books promoting the splitting of Iraq into 3 separate states or predict unbridled civil war.
Meanwhile, if Iraq was fought to protect the homeland, a lie at any rate, it has served as a live training ground for insurgency. With graduation being, the successful slaying of U.S. soldiers. Iraq prior to September 11th 2001 was many things, but a terrorist training camp it wasn’t. It is now, and it is tying both the Americans and their Iraqi puppets into knots, the question remains, “Do you feel safer yet?”
The U.S. government from the top to the bottom has been a parade of incompetence. Former homeland security chief Tom Ridge was in over his head from day one. If emergency response is any measure that the mega-agency is supposed to divest, we saw its utter lack when the flood struck New Orleans and the gulf coast. The silence was deafening. Across the nation there have been scandals about the theft, misuse, and misappropriation of billions with money flowing to areas clearly unrelated to their stated purpose, its like pigs slurping at the trough.
Has Iraq with all of its blunders, its cruelties, and its hypocrisies made America safer or the reverse? It’s easy to be Poly Ann-ish about this and speak of illusive successes since 9/11, easy and deceitful, wrong roads lead to wrong ends.
And the Iraq adventure driven less by fate then by greed and imperial arrogance has led to repetitive disasters, America may indeed remake the world but it won’t be a world that it finds to its liking.
From Death row, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.”
posted by Alphaprimer at
9/17/2006 08:07:00 PM
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