9/11 was horrific. Nobody disputes that. America did not "deserve" to be attacked - for the simple reason that there is no action that ever justifies the murder of roughly 3000 innocent civilians.
That said...we set ourselves up, and we should learn from that mistake. The continued interference of the US in foreign policy (particularly in the Middle East, but we've done just as bad or worse in South America and I;m sure elsewhere) has consequences. That doesn't mean we should become isolationist - far from it. It simply means that we need to reevaluate the heavy-handed tactics of sponsoring dictators and training resistance movements. America seems to have forgotten the "walk softly" part of Teddy Roosevelt's Big Sick policy. Instead, we tend to throw our weight around with money, weapons, and training for whoever supports our interests, without a care as to the opinions of those we're indirectly harming.
We wouldn't appreciate China financing a domestic terrorist group in the US with the goal of overthrowing our current government. It's absurd to believe that we can interfere in those sorts of ways in other countries without breeding resentment ourselves.
Again, we didn't
deserve 9/11. There's no way to justify intentionally flying airplanes into populated buildings, regardless of what we could have done. The people in those buildings weren't responsible for any of the wrongs, real or perceived, done in the Middle East.
But we gave those responsible weapons, money, and training. We set ourselves up. We gave a shitty human being a bunch of guns and training, and we were surprised when we found those things turned against us.
Worse than all of that, however, and far beyond silly nonsense about blaming the victim vs. accepting responsibility for one's actions, is the
aftermath of 9/11. Where we showed that we didn't learn a damned thing.
Current conservative estimates place the Afghan civilian death toll at between 8500 and 11500, for those directly caused by the war. Indirect death estimates are higher, and extreme antiwar sources estimate the death toll at significantly higher than either of those numbers.
The Associated Press places the civilian violent death toll in Iraq at over 100,000 since the start of the war.
Those are civilian numbers. They don't include combatants. These are the innocent bystanders caught in crossfires, families abused (read: raped and murdered) by mercenaries, blown up by IEDs intended for American troops, and "collateral damage" in US airstrikes.
By any rational estimate, we've committed worse atrocities than the 9/11 attacks in seeking retribution. To find justice for 3000 innocent lives, we've claimed
orders of magnitude more, and completely destabilized two countries.
For some, 3000 American lives count for a lot more than 100,000 Iraqis and 10,000 Afghanis. Those people are sociopaths.
We didn't deserve 9/11. Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan deserved
us. A
reasonable response would have involved targeting only Al Qaeda training camps and their leadership, not a full-scale invasion of Afghanistan. Iraq, which had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11 (and we
knew that, absolutely; we just didn't care) should never have even been part of the equation.
Is it
good that the Taliban is no longer in power? Sure...but was it worth 10,000 innocent lives and the complete destabilization of an already-on-the-brink nation? Only the Afghanis themselves can answer that one.
Is it
good that Saddam Hussein is dead? Sure - the man was a war criminal for the gassing of the Kurds alone, let alone everything else he was responsible for. But was it worth 100,000 Iraqi civilian lives and the destabilization of a nation that was actually prepared to ally with the US for common defense against Iran? Ask an Iraqi.
To avenge 3000 lives, we reacted out of fear. We changed our way of life, cracked down on civil liberties at home, and disregarded international law. We have actually had to debate the legality and justification of
torture. Al Qaeda succeeded in exactly what they set out to do - they terrorized us into eroding the very things that made America great. There was no way guerrilla warfare could topple the US...but we have sacrificed our international goodwill and become monsters ourselves as a direct result of the 9/11 attacks. We are now more afraid, less civilized, less empathetic, and more divided than we were on 9/10/01. Our actions have served as propaganda for new terrorist recruitment, and the lives we've destroyed have bred resentment that will continue the cycle.
If we're lucky, we'll learn our lesson this time. I won't hold my breath.
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