9/11 and other stuff

I can remember where I was at the time I heard of the first plane at 6:45 Mountain Time. I was homeless and living in a recreational vehicle loaned to me by a friend. I had woken up about 6:30 and was just listening to the news. Amanda Blake reported it first at roughly 6:50am. Details were not known at the time. I did not see any of it. I do remember being at a friend's house and seeing the devastation to the twin towers either later that day or the next. When I heard confirmed reports about the perpetrators of this horror, I remember exclaiming, "We have been attacked on our own soil by a foreign power for the first time. This is an act of war." I was not remembering Pearl Harbor then. It is technically the first time it's happened on the Continental United States.

I said that I was homeless at the time. My mind was geared more toward just survival at that time, so the shock did not set in until later. What America has done since then is a response to this act. I thought about how this was different from a country attacking us. It was al-queda, a terrorist group who considers the US an enemy to the Muslim religion. It is not like a country in a specific location on the world map.  A terrorist could be someone walking down the street looking very normal. Yet he could be a part of this extremist group with a bomb attached to his body ready to blow up himself plus anyone within a certain perimeter.

Unlike a country, we did not know who to attack. We could not attack a country by just invading it. There was no country. Who were these extremists? Where were they? It was like trying to fight the war on terrorism against a ghost.

Those were my thoughts ten years ago. Since then, we have fought a war in the Middle East that I felt, initially, was wrong. It did not seem logical to fight Saddam Husein in Iraq. The Al-Queda network did not really exist there. Its leader, Osama Bin-Laden, was from Saudi Arabia. So why not search for him there? He required dialysis for his kidneys, so the logical choice would be to search for him where there is source of electricty. The claim of Weapons of Mass Destruction existing in Iraq and so we start the war there type of thinking has never proven to be valid, as WMD's were never found there.

I said that I initally did not support the war in Iraq. But I changed my mind only because I am a veteran, and I know that the President and his advisors have access to information I do not have. My biggest complaint was, "Where are we going to get the money to fund the war?" It turns out that the war in Iraq was funded by interest-bearing loans from foreign governments. So now much of our national debt is not just from the financial crises of 2008, but from war.

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One of my favorite classic TV shows is Star Trek: TNG. Many episodes encounter a situation where the crew is required to follow Starfleet's Prime Directive. It revolves around the idea that Starfleet can not impose their values, culture, weapons, and technology upon any other living species in the galaxy. The idea behind this is that introduction of modern thought, culture, weapons, etc would interupt the natural evolution of the species.

Now while human beings here are one species, there are many different countries. These entities have different types of government from ours; their cultures have evolved over many generations far older than our own country; their perspective of the world is far different from ours; their histories diverge in many directions. We know that history forms what type of government they have. It forms their cultures, their traditions, and ways of thinking as well.

Our way of life is different from most of the world. We have a multitude of choices ranging from how we live our life, what values we espouse, what kind of car we will drive, etc. Our Constitution protects all of our choices and rights. It is a way of life envied by much of the world. After having served my country in 3 foreign countries, I still say that we are the best around.

However, that does not give us the right to be the policemen of the world. We do not have the right to impose our way of government, our cultural practices upon another simply in the name of freedom. We should protect weaker countries from stronger ones who would take over their country, thus destroying not only that country's government, but also all those things that make them the unique country they have become. We should also help countries regardless of whether they can offer us much or little in return in terms of natural resources. That is what is meant by protecting countries in the name of freedom.