Friday, March 10, 2006

Consequence of the Bush 9/11 Agenda

DPW pulled out of the deal to manage a terminal at six U.S ports after it became apparent that Congress had the votes to block the business transaction. Protectionism and racism are slowly becoming melded together in U.S. policy just like domestic economics and foreign investment are being blurred through globalization. Ironically, President Bush and his Administration found themselves on the rational side of a debate that deals with fear-mongering in post-9/11 America.. This is the same administration that has used the events of September 11th, 2001 to their political advantage at every opportunity that presented itself. Fear has been the centerpiece of the President’s foreign policy and domestic security agenda.

First, immediately following 9/11, the far reaching PATRIOT Act was enacted and justified out of fears of terrorists infiltrating our borders, despite the fact that none of the new provisions would have prevented the attacks had they been in place. Then, we were told that Iraq was an imminent threat because Saddam had reconstituted WMD programs, and had connections to al-Qaeda to justify the invasion without U.N. support thereby creating the doctrine of preemptive war. Further, in conducting the war on terrorism, prisoner abuse scandals surfaced at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. Later, we learned torture conducted by the CIA and other agencies around the world was deemed necessary in order to extract critical information, no matter how unreliable that info turned out to be, the Geneva Convention be damned. Recently, it was revealed that the NSA was conducting domestic wiretapping of telephone calls with foreign origin authorized by President Bush that bypassed the FISA courts and the need for warrants, with no attempts to update the FISA program to make the wiretapping legal.

Now, when the security of our sea ports are apparently at stake, the President only learns of the deal between P&O and DPW through the media, and expresses support because of the advice of his administration who conducted the review of the business transaction deemed there was little national security risk in allowing the UAE owned company to manage a terminal at six ports. In fact, anybody connected with the actual operations of our sea ports universally agree that the transaction is of little consequence to security, because little would actually change. Nevertheless, the fear mongering continued, exacerbated by the media, swallowed up by the American people, and finally Congress, with the 2006 elections looming and the President’s approval rating floundering. In essence, President Bush got caught in his own fear based backlash which could have dire consequences to our future economic stability, because it will scare away foreign investment and further alienate the modernized Arab world, allies we badly need to fight the global war on terrorism. Bush successfully alienated many of our western allies with the invasion of Iraq, yet has maintained the importance of having moderate Muslim allies in Pakistan, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately, a majority of Americans have already fallen under the spell of isolationism, protectionism, anti-globalization, fear-mongering, and the quasi-legal tactics used to superficially give them a sense of security while sacrificing a little of their forgotten values and freedoms that are uniquely American. The moral of this story: Do not fear the facts!

Quotes to ponder:
“What luck for the rulers that men do not think.” – Adolph Hitler

“They that can give up essentially liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” – Benjamin Franklin

1 comment:

  1. This article is a great read. This article makes us to ponder over the strategy followed by Bush to punish 9/11 perpetrators.
    My name is Mark Johnson, and I've been visiting MediaBias for past few months
    I’m a recent UC Berkeley Political science grad and I along with some fellow Princeton alums have been working hard to launch our own internet startup called Rizzleweb.com.
    Rizzleweb is basically an online political community where people can log on and write performance reviews\comments for congressmen, senators, the president, and various other local and state officials across the country. I was hoping that if it would not be too much trouble you could place a link of our site on your blog. If this is not possible (which we completely understand), we still hope you will check out our site, and post some reviews.
    Your contribution will encourage us to put more effort in improving our website.
    Mark Johnson
    www.Rizzleweb.com
    markjohnson2020@hotmail.com

    ReplyDelete