Bin Ladin didn’t win.
Why would he care if America oppresses its citizens and residents? Bin Ladin wanted the US to stay out of the Middle East. I can’t think of any way of interpreting that he achieved those goals.
Bin Ladin is an excuse for our oligarchs to do what they want. Look at the pattern. There’s always a bad-guy of the week. Castro, Kim Il Sung, Ho Chi Minh, Kohmeni, Sadam, Bin Ladin, Sadam, Kim Jong Il…
Bin Ladin didn’t win.
We’re going to war and fighting for the right to control who taps Iraq’s oil fields. We’re hated by folks in the Middle East for many reasons, some are even not our fault. However, one could hardly claim that we’ve acted in a responsible fashion there over the past 50 years.
In Kuwait, less that 50% of the residents are citizens, and of those, less than 10% can vote. In Saudi Arabia, women are beaten, the Saud family props up radical Islamic clerics (who are anti-US) in order to maintain their own legitimacy.
Sure, Sadam should be deposed. But why do we care about Iraq and turn a blind eye to King Fahd of Saudi Arabia and the Saad family of Kuwait? What about genocide in Rwanda. Oh, no immediate profit in changing those regimes.
At my company, we made it clear that our mission was to enhance long term shareholder value. When you look at the big picture, you aren’t tempted to play smoke and mirror games to inflate profit reports, you don’t screw customers, you don’t screw suppliers, you invest for the future and build a healthy franchise.
How many people remember that Ho and Castro were both originally pro-US and came to the US for help? Ditto the democratic factions in Iran who opposed the Shah. What would have happened if we had supported them in their bid to replace their corrupt governments with ones more like the ideal we aspire towards ourselves?
Bin Ladin didn’t win.
Do you think we are making progress towards our own democratic ideals with totalitarianism at home and abroad? Why shouldn’t we have foreign and domestic policies that invest in long-term shareholder value?
Pilots talk about civil rights all the time. We’re mostly a bunch of conservative, libertarian, old white men.
Let’s talk about civic duty instead.
“Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
That paragraph was written by a group of anti-British terrorists in 1776.
Whether through dissent, civil disobedience, elections, infiltration, public embarassment, or armed insurgency, we have a right to choose our government and alter it as necessary.
Bin Ladin didn’t win.
Lockheed won.
Haliburton won.
Chevron won.
British Petroleum won.
We lost.
Get involved. Be an instrument of change.
Paul