How dare you say anything honest about the origins of 9/11!

This isn’t in my usual style to write a serious rant where my ‘truthiness’ isn’t slathered with a thick layer of disdain and sarcasm. But here goes:

I am really fed up with the idea that if you discuss the origins of 9/11, you are somehow a coward, not a patriot, not an American, a terrorist sympathizer, or somewhere else between bottom feeding scum and social pariah who thinks too much for one’s own good. I’ll be honest, I’ve never been the biggest fan of the Ron Paul Phenomena and I didn’t watch the majority of the Republican debate. In fact, I only was able to watch the part of the debate with the most significance — where Ron Paul and Rudy Giuliani exchange words over the origins of (Watch the exchange and read a more extensive briefing of the exchange at the Nation).

Now, the basis of the argument that occurred is the following: Ron Paul had the fucking audacity to say that September 11th and the rising Islamic/Jihadist movement may have some origins in America’s less than stellar record in the Middle East. Never mind that the 9/11 Commission reported on the blowback from American involvement in the Middle East as a contributing factor and that anyone with a functioning frontal lobe could connect the dots between September 11th, and say, a couple century’s worth of outside interference by the West. After Paul stated the case between these connections, Giuliani quickly stepped in and said in so many words, you are one anti-American fuck and twisted Ron Paul’s words around to make it seem like he insinuated we deserved the attack. And with that, a crowd of overweight arm-chair bullies started hooting and hollering at the South Carolina Republican Debate.

All I could think about when I watched this was these are the people were interested enough in politics to attend a debate and this is their appropriate level of discourse. All that has to be done or said is September 11th and suddenly everyone feels very coy and shy about their beliefs. The sacred cow is also the most profitable one: I never thought Rudy “September 1tth” Giuliani could win the nomination simply by talking about September 11th until my mind explodes, but it’s seemingly working. Despite being a social liberal, Rudy is pretty much coasting through the polls as the Republican front runner because his speeches are jingo games of ‘terrorism’, ‘9/11?, ‘jihadists’, and ‘Islamo-Fascists’. And sadly enough, people eat this shit up. Well, not quite people, but Republicans, but my sense is this would play out in a similar method in the general election as well.

Anyway, I’ve digressed. My point being is that September 11th was not an event in which upon reflection should cause us to curl into a ball and cry for Rudy Giuliani or George Bush to save us. I’m not saying that America deserved to be attacked by a bunch of crazed religious zealots or that we brought this upon ourselves. I am saying that September 11th should have woken us up to the fact that America’s foreign policy has been seriously misguided since the start of the Cold War. We’d do a tremendous favor to ourselves if we realized the cost of an invasive, military-dependent foreign policy bent on serving our short term interests.