General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Were you swept up in "fear! fear! fear!" because of September 11, 2001? [View all]RFKHumphreyObama
(15,164 posts)Even though I'm not American and do not live in America (indeed, at that time, I had not even been to the US -although that has changed), I've always felt a deep kinship and affinity with America and its culture, history and people and it really hit me like a death in the family. It haunted me for days and nights and indeed years on end. I remember just looking through the photos of the victims that were up on the news websites at the time and just feeling heartbroken, sad and angry beyond words. Indeed, that day had a deep emotional impact on me and has changed the course of my life and the way I viewed the world immensely and not for the better.
And I was really, really, really enraged at the hijackers and those who had organized the terrorist attacks and my thirst and my appetite for violence and revenge on those responsible and their families knew no bounds. That didn't mean, however, that it translated into a wider prejudice against Muslims or the innocent civilians from those countries from which the hijackers came. I was born in a predominantly Muslim country, grew up knowing Muslim people from childhood and certainly was exposed to quite a bit of the Islamic faith -which I did and I still do immensely respect. So my anger was directed at those directly responsible, not a wider faith or people from those countries involved or the like
I was distrustful of Bush and his agenda, more or less from the start after the tragic, senseless and horrific events of 9/11. I was hoping that Bush would rise to the occasion and transform into the statesman and international leader that the tragedy demanded and would respond to it in an appropriate way. But I remember watching him just a few days after the tragedy making some comments about Osama Bin Laden and thinking that it was alarming that, during some of the darkest days that the world had seen since the end of the second world war, it was alarming that we had such an inadequate buffoon in charge of the most powerful nation on earth.
I supported the war in Afghanistan enthusiastically at the start but got increasingly irritated as the Bush Administration started pussyfooting around and not going after the real culprit while trying to milk faux patriotism to push its own political agenda and electoral prospects. Although previously somewhat hawkish about Saddam Hussein and Iraq, I never believed that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11 and saw through the charade of false lies about WMDs and the rest that the administration spread. I marched against the war in Iraq and was vehemently opposed to it
I also became dismayed at how swept up in hysteria and how irrational some sections of American society seemed to become. How some previously sane, rational people became right-wing shills and most never changed back. How blindly docile so many Americans seemed to become in unquestioningly swallowing up the lies and propaganda of the Bush Administration. I'm so glad I found DU in 2002 -I was beginning to think there was no place of rational sanity in terms of political discourse anymore