This Salon article I found expresses well what I’ve been trying to figure out how to put into words over the last week. I don’t believe the terrorist attacks are something we brought on ourselves because of our foreign policy over the last three decades.
I think they’re an attack on modernity. They’re an attack on our contemporary way of life, and on our secular, consumer behavior. Furthermore, (this is going beyond what the article says) I don’t believe that Osama bin Laden is himself a devout or fanatical Muslim, or that he really wants to attack us because we’re decadent and irreligious. That may be true of his followers, but not of him. I think, for him personally, it’s about power. It’s about gaining control, and fanatical religion is just a tool that he’s using successfully, ala Machiavelli or Sun Tzu. If he were really as devout as he claims to be, he’d have flown the plane himself. And because of these things, we have no choice but to kill him.
I’ve been saying for years that the only legitimate reason to have nuclear weapons would be to defend against a direct attack on the US, and that I the only reason to have a military would be to protect against invasion or attack on our country, and if that every happened, I’d buy a gun and be ready to defend the country myself. I haven’t changed my mind. Frankly, I think we should drop a nuclear bomb on Afghanistan. We have every right to do so; they killed Americans on American soil. There’s no better reason than that to drop the bomb. In fact, it’s the only legitimate reason to do so, and if we don’t do it for this situation, why bother having them at all?
All this bullshit about not killing “innocent civilians”. Um, THEY killed OURS. If we can’t do so in turn, what’s the point? What’s the point of the “war on terrorism” at all? Why not just open the damned borders and let them in?