Long Term Effects

Parker Donham talks about how September 11 changed the U.S.:

The vastly greater compound disaster now convulsing Japan lacks the dastardly element of human agency that made 9/11 so reprehensible, but in magnitude of destruction, death toll, and potential for permanent damage, it dwarfs the September 11 attacks. What's happening is not merely awful, but Biblical in scope. In yesterday's Times, Norimitsu Onishi wondered how it will change Japan:

Will it... be a final marker of an irreversible decline? Or will it be an opportunity to draw on the resilience of a people repeatedly tested by calamity to reshape Japan -- in the mold of either the left or the right? This disaster, like the 1923 Tokyo earthquake and the 1995 Kobe earthquake, could well signal a new era.

I'm no Japan hand, but like all Canadians, proximity makes me something of an expert on the United States. (As Pierre Trudeau memorably told Washington's National Press Club in 1969, "Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.") From this vantage point, America's response to the atrocities it suffered on September 11 has been a dismaying combination of self-indulgence, official bullying, and evisceration of the freedoms that make the US a beacon for the world.

If Osama Bin Laden had a checklist of dumb things he hoped the U.S. would do in response his attack, the boxes have all been ticked. From the trivial (the seventh inning stretch song switch) and the merely obnoxious (the prison guard approach to airport security ably chronicled by our sponsor) to the reckless (three foreign wars launched on borrowed money without considering what comes next.) and the totalitarian (Abu Ghraib, Maher Arar,* Omar Khadr,* and now, Bradley Manning), America has done itself far greater damage than  Al-Qaeda could have dared hope.

I am glad that he mentioned playing "God Bless America" at the seventh inning stretch (done on Sunday's in Cincinnati).  I don't care if they continue to do that at Yankees games, but it is stupid to continue to do it in Cincinnati.  But seriously, the torture and stupid wars and loss of civil liberties are unnecessary, as terrorism is such a small threat to this country.  We need to move on, and the 10th anniversary of September 11 would be a good time for it.  Bring back September 10.