[Vision2020] 9/11 - what should our reaction have been?

[Paul Rumelhart]

I'd like to chime in here a bit.

 From my perspective, I see the Christian religion being hijacked for 
political purposes.  While I'm sure that this is not the first or 1000th 
time that has happened, it still saddens me.  I remember that early on 
Bush was being criticized for using the word "Crusade" when describing 
his plans for Iraq.  This conflict early on got framed as an Islam vs. 
Christianity fight, and not us pursuing a bunch of criminals like it 
should have been, in my opinion.

I wish we had had a true leader in charge at that time, someone who 
could have chosen one of a great many number of options that did not 
involve invading a sovereign nation over trumped-up evidence.  People 
from how many countries died in these attacks?  This could have been a 
chance to strengthen our ties overseas instead of making us into a 
pariah on the world stage.  If we had made it clear early on that this 
was a search for the perpetrators of this event and not a fight with an 
entire religion, then we might have actually gotten some help from 
Muslim countries in tracking these people down.  Especially if the world 
was uniting behind us.

I agree with the following that Garrett posted earlier:

 > Maybe the hawks really want to have democracy there,
 > but considering their treatment of democracy here, I
 > doubt it. They are fascists, intent on enriching
 > themselves, while exploiting the rest, squashing our
 > rights in the meantime.
 >
 > The terrorists defeated America that day, at least in
 > terms of living up to the intent our Forefathers laid
 > out for us in our founding documents.
 >
 > There will be other tests for us, more than likely.
 > Will we have learned from the response to 911 and take
 > a different approach?
 >

I hope that we have learned wisdom here and that we will be better 
prepared, but I fear that another attack will just be twisted by those 
in the spotlight to further their agendas again.  The solution?  Don't 
watch TV.  That's a good start.  Get your news from the BBC, or read a 
bunch of articles from different sites.

Paul

keely emerinemix wrote:
> Sorry, Garrett -- Somehow I missed in the flurry of other Vision posts 
> over the last day or so.  But I'm very interested in the topic, and 
> since I have some fairly strong social and religious views --
>
> -- she said as an understatement --
>
> -- I'll say that I agree with much of your analysis.  I don't think 
> that Bush was "pandering" in his reply that Jesus Christ is his 
> favorite philosopher.  I think it shows two things:  One, that W loves 
> Jesus; two, that he is unaware of the work of any other philosopher, 
> thinker, sage, or even pundit.  I applaud the first point and lament 
> the second.  I wish that "Jesus Christ" would be disallowed as an 
> answer -- God in the flesh, as we Christians believe him to be, kind 
> of makes it hard for other thinkers to compete -- and that 
> evangelicals would actually say something like "Augustine," or "Alvin 
> Plantiga," or "Walter Brueggeman," or "Stanley Hauerwas," or 
> "Catherine of Sienna," or even ostentatious TV evangelist and 
> moneymaker extraordinaire Creflo Dollar, just to stimulate 
> discussion.  But that's just me, and I'm a little cranky on that point.
>
> It's your primary argument that 0/11 presented an opportunity for 
> individual Christians and a "Christian" nation to respond to 
> aggression in a manner that would represent the full teachings of 
> Christ.  In order to consider what that might have looked like -- 
> because we certainly didn't see it, aren't now seeing it, and likely 
> never will -- it's important to point out that the United States, 
> whatever Judeo-Christian underpinnings it might have had in its 
> formation, is not a "Christian" nation.  (And yes, I understand that 
> the founding fathers were much more deists than Spirit-converted, 
> Christ-embracing, Bible-believing sheep of the fold).  Knowing that 
> this is a fundamental disagreement I have with the Kirk, I'll 
> nonetheless state that until Christ comes again and history from that 
> point on unfolds -- amillennially, pre-milennially, or 
> post-millennially, pre-Trib, post-Trib, or no-Trib -- there will be no 
> "Christian nation."  There may well be a nation with a citizen 
> majority made up of committed believers in Christ Jesus, and there may 
> be a government somewhere -- I'm not aware of it -- that exists solely 
> to attempt to live out the principles he taught, but nations are not 
> souls, and while it is incorrect to say that Christianity is primarily 
> a religion of individuals, it nonetheless has at its core the 
> individual's reconciliation with God through Christ. 
>
> All of us raised in the Cold War know what an officially atheistic 
> state looks like, and we know that the most committed believers the 
> world has ever seen might spring up from it like daisies in the cracks 
> of asphalt-paved streets in a slum.  We also know what theocracies 
> look like, and they scare us.  They should.  The Taliban, for example, 
> represents an interpretation of Islamic fascism.  It has very little 
> to say about a fundamental change in the individual heart, and it 
> clearly misses the liberation that that the genuinely radical 
> teachings of Christ bring to oppressed groups.  I am not arguing that 
> other religions are devoid of peace-and-love teachings; I'm arguing 
> only that any group wishing to overpower others in the name of faith 
> finds those teachings oppressive and incoherent to their mission, 
> while the "gentle religions" generally shun power and cultural 
> engagement.  Declarations of "a Christian society" say much about the 
> intentions of the governmental structure and have little or nothing to 
> do with the reality of a changed human heart -- or 300 million of 
> them.  I believe this is a constant in a fallen world, and my point is 
> that every theology, every "new society," every "city on a hill" such 
> as the Puritans sought to build in New England, is destined for 
> compromise as long as the world remains locked in sin.  Governments 
> may genuinely seek to do the right thing, based on understanding of a 
> particular text or tenet, but they cannot force sincere devotion to 
> any god.  Individuals may sincerely devote themselves to their god, 
> but governments are not individuals; the nations stand or fall based 
> on righteousness, but that righteousness is practiced by its citizens, 
> who struggle to influence their governments in the same way they seek 
> to influence their neighbors with the teachings of their faith.
>
> That said, no individuals can reasonably, much less rightly, engage in 
> response to the aggression of one nation against their own.  I might 
> sincerely wish to avoid retaliation, violence, hostile rhetoric and 
> land-based weapons systems, and good for me.  But I have no power 
> beyond my own engagement with other people, and I can only do what I 
> am accountable for -- what my own record of my own actions 
> demonstrates.  On the other hand, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and 
> Condoleezza Rice have enormously greater power than I do, and one 
> would hope their religious views would influence them to act on behalf 
> of our nation in a way that not only honors the true teachings of the 
> faith, but also prevents those who serve under them (the armed forces, 
> for example) from violating those teachings by violating their own 
> consciences.   Given the public Christianity of both Rice and Bush, 
> I'm absolutely dismayed.  War should never be an easy choice, a quick 
> choice, or a careless choice.  This one, in violation of simple 
> decency, much less Christianity, is all of those.
>
> I don't buy the "enemies on earth,  brothers in Heaven" argument -- 
> not even a little bit.  If I'm to not slay my brother in Christ Jesus, 
> or even my brother in a common God, I'm not allowed to find the 
> exclusion paragraph that becomes obvious only in war -- in this case, 
> an unjust, civilian-slaughtering, filthy-premised war that spreads its 
> bloodshed throughout entire families who did nothing to provoke it.  
> Again, the Iraqi civilians who die are not and have never been my 
> enemies.   In war, however, they become the ancillary slaughter that 
> our response has wrought, just as innocent of provoking us as the 
> 3,000 in the World Trade Center/Pentagon attacks were of provoking 
> those terrorists who murdered them.  We cloak our response in 
> righteousness and hope for the cover of being a "Judeo-Christian 
> nation,"  and I pray God's mercy on us, but the difference between us 
> and the terrorists makes little difference, I think, to the grieving 
> mothers in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001, and in Fallujah on 
> September 11, 2007.
>
> I would both affirm and lament the necessity of engaging in war to 
> defend, say, the Jews in the late 30s and early 40s, and I'm angered 
> that the systematic murder of women under the Taliban and in Darfur 
> hasn't stoked the fires of righteous American indignation (we 
> considered the soul-crushing oppression of women under the Taliban 
> acceptable until it appeared that they were hiding those who attacked 
> us; nothing about the women's suffering beforehand affected us on a 
> national policy level).  I am not a pacifist; I'd defend to the death 
> another person being attacked in my presence, although I'm not at all 
> sure I'd use violence-unto-death to defend myself.  (That's a decision 
> I get to make; I won't, however, make it for you if you're attacked 
> while we're walking down the street.  I'll kick and scream, I promise, 
> and yes -- I believe that a man defended by a woman is nonetheless 
> worthy of being defended).  We responded with war when the terrorists 
> attacked us as a result of their view of our "national guilt," and yet 
> we allow for -- actually encourage -- the killing of other people as a 
> perhaps unfortunate, unavoidable aspect of their country's "national 
> guilt," with virtually no evidence for it in the case of Iraq.   How 
> dare we say we're a Christian nation.  How dare we seek the freedom of 
> a righteousness we don't demonstrate as a nation, and how dare we seek 
> cover under the cloak of Christ's mercy, stained as it is in the blood 
> of our own sins.
>
> Garrett, if you're still awake right now, you're an amazing guy.  
> Thanks for wading through all of this, and I'd love to hear your 
> response.  Everyone else, please note that I have not weighed in on 
> aquifer levels, the science of economics, or even the Vandals.  And as 
> this likely counts as 14 posts, I'll shut up until tomorrow.
>
> keely
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 17:00:25 -0700
> > From: garrettmc at verizon.net
> > To: vision2020 at moscow.com
> > Subject: [Vision2020] 9/11 - what should our reaction have been?
> >
> > Does anybody else see the irony in George W. Bush's
> > "innocent", pandering reply of Jesus Christ being his
> > favorite philosopher, and Bush's actions following
> > 911?
> >
> > Though wanting revenge is normal, and perhaps wise in
> > some situations, didn't Jesus preach forgiveness? One
> > would have thought to be scared not of Bush using the
> > full force of our country to take revenge on people
> > who already died commiting their crime, but that Bush
> > would have turned his other cheek, asking strength
> > from Jesus to withstand the onslaught from the hawks
> > to seeking vengeance. Instead, Bush gave the world
> > his middle finder, and all the blood and pain that
> > reigned after pushing the button with that finger to
> > wage war.
> >
> > 911 should have been a test on our strength, not our
> > violent tendencies. 911 should have tested a follower
> > of Jesus to refrain from doing the work of the devil.
> > Instead, 911 was used to justify what they already
> > wanted to do, what they have been doing all along:
> > establish a military presence in the middle of a huge
> > oil field and the enemy of certain Christians, the
> > infidel Muslims, who are waiting, encouraging the
> > Second Coming of Jesus, who I imagined is not too
> > impressed with either Bush, or the people who have
> > enabled his reign.
> >
> > Maybe the hawks really want to have democracy there,
> > but considering their treatment of democracy here, I
> > doubt it. They are fascists, intent on enriching
> > themselves, while exploiting the rest, squashing our
> > rights in the meantime.
> >
> > The terrorists defeated America that day, at least in
> > terms of living up to the intent our Forefathers laid
> > out for us in our founding documents.
> >
> > There will be other tests for us, more than likely.
> > Will we have learned from the response to 911 and take
> > a different approach?
> >
> > The solution: vote for Bubble Smith for President!
> > More on that later...
> >
> > gclev
> >
> >
> >
> > [Vision2020] 9/11 - what should our reaction have
> > been?
> >
> > Paul Rumelhart godshatter at yahoo.com
> > Sun Oct 28 19:57:08 PDT 2007
> > Previous message: [Vision2020] One last post from "Mr.
> > Campbell"
> > Next message: [Vision2020] What a Wonderful World
> > Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [
> > author ]
> > I've been wanting to ask this question for a while,
> > now. Maybe it's time.
> >
> > Think back to your personal reaction to 9/11. From
> > how you felt when
> > you heard about it on the news, to how you felt in the
> > days and weeks
> > afterwards. Think about how our country as a whole
> > handled it,
> > including the different branches of government, the
> > military, our large
> > corporations, our entertainment industry, and the
> > general population.
> >
> > I did not lose anyone in 9/11, yet few national events
> > have reached me
> > so profoundly. I remember going in to work that day,
> > and feeling mostly
> > dazed and shocked. Maybe overwhelmed is a better
> > description.
> >
> > I will start off by saying that I rate almost all
> > responses to this
> > tragedy at about a D, at best. Including my own
> > response to it. We, as
> > a country and as a set of individuals, mostly handled
> > this tragedy with
> > fear-induced responses. Why weren't we boldly telling
> > the terrorists
> > that they can kill us one-by-one or in groups, but
> > they will never take
> > our liberties from us? That they will never force us
> > to give up what we
> > hold most dear simply because they can hurt us one
> > time. Why didn't we
> > stand up as a country and give them the finger instead
> > of cowering in
> > fear and allowing our government to pummel anybody at
> > all just to show
> > we were taking action? Why did we react in terror,
> > falling into the
> > reaction the terrorists wanted the most?
> >
> > How should we prepare for the next one? I don't just
> > mean installing
> > x-ray machines at sporting events or whatever, but how
> > do we prepare our
> > reactions to these events? How do we learn as a
> > country to come
> > together as a bunch of defiant people rather than as a
> > bunch of
> > cowards? I'd like to think I'm not a coward, but 9/11
> > has made me doubt
> > myself. I really was fearing what they would do next,
> > instead of
> > telling them loudly to go screw themselves. How did
> > we get this way
> > (assuming I'm not the only one)? How do we change it?
> >
> > Paul
> >
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