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Guns Guns Guns
Guest
The US today is a weaker country than it was when the first United Airlines plane flew into the World Trade Centre on the bright clear morning of September 11, 2001, and not because al-Qa'ida's actions delivered a lasting body blow to US power.
The US didn't have its eyes on the bigger game. Though it was not the only reason, 9/11 played a role in diverting America's attention from challenges that will probably have a more profound impact on the country's future than terrorism. That is the tragic irony of the 9/11 decade.
How and why did the 9/11 decade divert America's attention from other, probably bigger, challenges? And what are the prospects that the US will rise again to meet them?
By the time Bush entered the White House, the US was a global power the likes of which the world has rarely if seen, the values it stood for were sweeping the globe, and Americans at home were better off than before.
But it was the rise and rise of the US from the 70s to the new millennium peak that magnified the impact of 9/11 on the collective American psyche. The attacks were on the financial and political centres of the US, not a far-flung military base such as Pearl Harbor.
The attackers weren't wearing uniforms and they swore allegiance to no flags. The anguish of "why do they hate us?", the fear of another attack and the anger for retribution were all the greater because Americans thought their country could do no wrong and that the world was so thankful.
What then happened was that, led very much by Bush himself, the US went on a mission to use its power to change the world again: not only to ensure there were no more 9/11s but to bring democracy and markets to the only part of the globe untouched by the liberal wave of the 80s and 90s, the Middle East.
Bush and America thought the rest of the world would join him, and initially they did. But when countries such as France and Germany baulked over Iraq, Bush marched on without them. Americans initially supported him in the long shadow of the terrorist attacks.
But across time they grew disenchanted.
Bush's early intoxication with American power, and his ability to take his country with him and change the world, reached its zenith when the US toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.
For the best part of five years after the invasion, the US was preoccupied with and torn apart by the Iraq war, and everything else that should have been on America's plate was pushed to the back burner.
Today economic issues are completely dominating the political agenda, a far cry from just five years ago.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts-arc/winter-of-us-discontent/story-e6frg8nf-1226126453301
The US didn't have its eyes on the bigger game. Though it was not the only reason, 9/11 played a role in diverting America's attention from challenges that will probably have a more profound impact on the country's future than terrorism. That is the tragic irony of the 9/11 decade.
How and why did the 9/11 decade divert America's attention from other, probably bigger, challenges? And what are the prospects that the US will rise again to meet them?
By the time Bush entered the White House, the US was a global power the likes of which the world has rarely if seen, the values it stood for were sweeping the globe, and Americans at home were better off than before.
But it was the rise and rise of the US from the 70s to the new millennium peak that magnified the impact of 9/11 on the collective American psyche. The attacks were on the financial and political centres of the US, not a far-flung military base such as Pearl Harbor.
The attackers weren't wearing uniforms and they swore allegiance to no flags. The anguish of "why do they hate us?", the fear of another attack and the anger for retribution were all the greater because Americans thought their country could do no wrong and that the world was so thankful.
What then happened was that, led very much by Bush himself, the US went on a mission to use its power to change the world again: not only to ensure there were no more 9/11s but to bring democracy and markets to the only part of the globe untouched by the liberal wave of the 80s and 90s, the Middle East.
Bush and America thought the rest of the world would join him, and initially they did. But when countries such as France and Germany baulked over Iraq, Bush marched on without them. Americans initially supported him in the long shadow of the terrorist attacks.
But across time they grew disenchanted.
Bush's early intoxication with American power, and his ability to take his country with him and change the world, reached its zenith when the US toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.
For the best part of five years after the invasion, the US was preoccupied with and torn apart by the Iraq war, and everything else that should have been on America's plate was pushed to the back burner.
Today economic issues are completely dominating the political agenda, a far cry from just five years ago.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts-arc/winter-of-us-discontent/story-e6frg8nf-1226126453301