They hate us because we're assholes
Americans -- at least the ones who voted for George W. Bush in November -- don't care if you lie. The Bush regime lies continuously with impunity.
Tell the awful truth, however, and Americans -- at least the ones who voted for Bush in November -- will be up in arms.
Case in point: Actress Maggie Gyllenhaal is the latest to be pilloried for having had the audacity to actually exercise her rights under the First Amendment -- you know, free speech, for which Americans died and so which we should never exercise, the right-wing nutjobs' "argument" goes.
According to WorldNetDaily, in a television interview Friday, Gyllenhaal said this about the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001: "…I think America has done reprehensible things and is responsible in some way, and so I think the delicacy with which it's dealt [in the film] allows that to sort of creep in."
Gyllenhaal was talking about her new film, "The Great New Wonderful," which, according to WorldNetDaily, "features five stories about people living in the aftermath of the Twin Towers attack."
After an outcry -- no doubt fueled by anti-First-Amendment wingnuts -- Gyllenhaal said in a statement issued yesterday by her publicist:
9/11 was a terrible tragedy and of course it goes without saying that I grieve along with every American for everyone who suffered and everyone who died in the catastrophe. But for those of us who were spared, it was also an occasion to be brave enough to ask some serious questions about America's role in the world. Because it is always useful, as individuals or nations, to ask how we may have knowingly or unknowingly contributed to this conflict. Not to have the courage to ask these questions of ourselves is to betray the victims of 9/11.
I wholeheartedly agree.
The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, gave us Americans an opportunity to ask and to honestly answer the question, "Why do they hate us so much?"
We stupidly and dishonestly collectively responded to that question with bullshit "answers" like "They hate us because of our freedom," "They hate us because of our democracy," blah blah blah. We refused to take any collective responsibility for any collective wrongdoing whatsoever, but instead placed the blame squarely on those around the world who hate us (and they number in the hundreds of millions, if not in the billions).
We value democracy? Hmmm. While we're spending billions and billions of dollars to bring "freedom" and "democracy" to Iraq (wink wink), here's how we regard democracy at home (this is from The Associated Press):
WASHINGTON -- The first chairman of a federal voting agency created after the 2000 election dispute is resigning, saying the government has not shown enough commitment to reform.
DeForest Soaries said in an interview Friday that his resignation would take effect [this] week.
Though Soaries, 53, said he wanted to spend more time with his family in New Jersey, he added that his decision was prompted in part by what he called a lack of support.
"All four of us [of the Election Assistance Commission] had to work without staff, without offices, without resources. I don't think our sense of personal obligation has been matched by a corresponding sense of commitment to real reform from the federal government," he said.
Soaries, a Republican former New Jersey secretary of state, was the White House's pick to join the Election Assistance Commission, created by the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to help states enact voting reforms.
A Baptist minister, Soaries was confirmed by the Senate in December 2003 and elected the independent agency's first chairman by his three fellow commissioners. His term as chairman ended in January 2005 and since then he has stayed on as a commission member.
Soaries and the other commissioners complained from the beginning that the group was underfunded and neglected by the lawmakers who created it.
"It's bad enough to be working under extremely adverse circumstances, but what throws your thinking into an abyss, as it were, is why you would be doing that when, for instance, you have to beg Congress for money as if the commission was your idea," Soaries said.
White House spokesman Allen Abney said only, "We appreciate his service and we are working to fill the vacancy promptly."
Envisioned as a clearinghouse for election information that would make recommendations about technology and other issues and distribute $2.3 billion to states for voting improvements, the commission initially couldn't afford its own office space. The commissioners were appointed nine months later than envisioned by the Help America Vote Act, and of a $10 million budget authorized for 2004, the panel received just $1.2 million.
..."There is so much more work to do to bring federal elections to the standard I think that the citizens expect, and there doesn't seem to be a corresponding sense of urgency among the policy-makers in Washington," Soaries said....
Soaries said election reform was on the front burner after the 2000 presidential recount, but it moved to the back burner -- and stayed there -- after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001....
No, I don't think that they hate us because of our commitment to democracy.
They hate us because the only human life we value is American life, especially the lives of white-skinned Americans, and because we refuse to admit our mistakes, such as our March 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, which was predicated upon the Bush regime's bold-faced lie that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that made Iraq an imminent threat.
George W. Bush and the members of his cabal are war criminals if ever there was a war criminal, yet because Americans collectively refuse to admit any national mistakes, George W. Bush and his cabal of war criminals roam freely, able to commit more war crimes.
Have you ever known someone who would never admit a mistake? You despised him or her, didn't you?
Why, then, should the rest of the world be crazy about us Americans when we collectively refuse to admit a national mistake?
Americans seem to think that refusing to admit our nation's mistakes somehow makes us strong. But refusing to admit our nation's mistakes only makes us even more hated around the globe, and that makes us less safe -- and thus weaker. (Duh.)
Gyllenhaal's remarks about the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, mirror what Ward Churchill, the now-infamous professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, wrote in his now-infamous essay, "The Ghosts of 9-1-1." (The essay was written no later than 2003, as it appears in a book of Churchill's, On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: Reflections on the Consequences of U.S. Imperial Arrogance and Criminality, which is copyrighted 2003. Why the essay caused a commotion so long after it was written escapes me. And all you ever hear about the essay, which in On the Justice of Roosting Chickens is 25 pages long, is that Churchill referred to World Trade Center technocrats as "little Eichmanns." The substance of his essay is ignored for a reason -- because Churchill nails it dead-on. Better discredit him! Ignore the message and kill the messenger!)
In his essay, Churchill catalogs the many, many deaths that Americans have unjustly, imperialistically perpetrated upon others around the world throughout U.S. history and points out that 9-1-1 was not payback, because many, many more Americans would had to have died on Sept. 11, 2001, for it to have been anywhere near even-Steven. (I would excerpt the essay, but you should read the whole thing.)
According to wikipedia.org, after the brouhaha over his essay began, Churchill issued this statement to clarify his stance on 9-1-1:
I am not a "defender" of the September 11 attacks, but simply pointing out that if U.S. foreign policy results in massive death and destruction abroad, we cannot feign innocence when some of that destruction is returned. I have never said that people "should" engage in armed attacks on the United States, but that such attacks are a natural and unavoidable consequence of unlawful U.S. policy. As Martin Luther King, quoting Robert F. Kennedy, said, "Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable."
I concur.
Right-wing nutjobs label Churchill's and Gyllenhaal's messages as "treason," "blame America first" rhetoric, blah blah blah.
But it's patriotic to want your nation to be safer, and honestly, self-critically examining why so many around the globe hate our guts is the first step towards making us safer. Illegally, immorally, unprovokedly and imperialistically invading and occupying Iraq has not made us safer, and we're not winning the "war on terror." Reports Reuters today:
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. count of major world terrorist attacks more than tripled in 2004, a rise that may revive debate on whether the Bush administration is winning the war on terrorism, congressional aides said [today].
The number of "significant" international terrorist attacks rose to about 650 last year from about 175 in 2003, according to congressional aides briefed on the numbers by State Department and intelligence officials [yesterday].
The aides were told the surge partly reflected an increased tally of violence in India and Pakistan related to the Himalayan region of Kashmir, which both countries claim, and the devotion of more manpower to the U.S. monitoring effort, which resulted in more attacks being counted overall.
The State Department last year initially released erroneous figures that understated the attacks and casualties in 2003 and used the figures to argue that the Bush administration was prevailing in the war on terrorism.
It later said the number of people killed and injured in 2003 was more than double its original count and said "significant" terrorist attacks -- those that kill or seriously injure someone, cause more than $10,000 in damage or attempt to do either of those things -- rose to a 20-year high of 175.
The State Department last week unleashed a new debate about the numbers by saying it would no longer release them in its annual terrorism report but that the newly created National Counterterrorism Center that compiles the data would do so.
We should thank people like Churchill and Gyllenhaal, who care enough about their nation to voice their concerns about our collective refusal to honestly and intelligently answer the question, "Why do they hate us so much?"
Instead, we scapegoat them because assholes scapegoat and we're a nation of assholes. And because we're a nation of assholes, we are ripe for more terrorist attacks.
8:55:51 PM 
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