Like most
Americans, September 11 shook my perception of the
world. When the twin towers collapsed to the ground,
I was overcome with feelings of fear and
vulnerability and a strong desire for revenge. I was
frustrated that those who committed the terrorist
acts had already happily accepted the same fate as
their victims, but felt comfort that the U.S.
government quickly fingered Osama Bin Laden as the
mastermind of the attacks. This gave me a villain on
whom to focus my anger and vengeance. I couldn't wait
for the United States to go after him and I was irked
that it took even a few weeks to get things started
in Afghanistan. I fully supported George W. Bush's
decision for military action against the Taliban.
It didn't matter to me that the alleged hijackers
were largely from Saudi Arabia and Egypt - two of the
U.S's strongest Middle Eastern allies. Osama Bin
Laden was supposedly in Afghanistan and that's where
we needed to go to get him and end the terrorist
threat. It didn't matter that our outrageous foreign
policy in the Middle East is probably what got us
into this mess. My thinking was that once we got
Osama and company, we could work on improving our
foreign policy. Since this was a crisis situation, it
required an immediate response, or else new terrorist
actions could occur at any moment as long as Osama
was on the loose. In short, I was buying what George
W. Bush was selling.
My wife did not share my enthusiasm. She is a
pacifist (a term that lately is used as an insult in
this country) and was against military action from
the beginning. I discounted her position as
naïve and told her so. "There are times
when war is a necessary evil," I informed her,
"and this is one of those times." She would
counter with various articles and essays, foreign
press and alternative news sources found on the
internet, since it was the only place to find
dissenting opinions about the war. These pieces
elaborated on foreign policy, oil, military and
corporate interests that might be contributing to the
government's eagerness to jump into a war. I refused
to read any of it.
All this information didn't matter as far as I was
concerned. My wife tried another tactic and reminded
me that I had hated George W. Bush before September
11 and thought that he was a scoundrel. This struck a
chord, but I felt that I needed to stay behind the
President at least until the crisis was over. She
pointed out that the evidence against Osama Bin Laden
was weak. I didn't care. I could look into his eyes
on those grainy videotapes and I knew he was guilty.
After several tumultuous arguments, my wife and I
stopped talking much about the war (or anything
else). We had planned a trip to Europe at the end of
September and we decided it would be best to call a
truce, put our terrorism fears and differing opinions
aside and make the trip. In spite of travel warnings,
it was an interesting time to be an American abroad.
Newspapers and television in Europe offered a much
greater scope of coverage, with a variety of opinions
offered. When we could, we engaged in discussions
with Europeans to see what their take was on
September 11. Most seemed sympathetic, but it was
evident that they thought we had it coming.
As one older gentleman said to us in a
café in Amsterdam, "It's about time
something happened to the United States. Welcome to
the human race!" He pointed to a park across
from the café. "Look there," he
said, "21 people were killed right there by the
Nazis - and seventeen more over there - you don't
know Nazis unless you've seen them up close."
His voice quivered and it was obvious that was the
tip of the iceberg in terms of the suffering his
country had experienced. I realized that that is the
reason Americans have never bothered themselves with
foreign affairs. It always happened "over
there." The media could make up any story they
wanted and we were all happily complicit, filtering
out any bad news.
We returned to the U.S. as the bombs began to drop on
Afghanistan, and the patriotic fervor had crescendoed
to a fever pitch. American flags dangled with irony
from gas guzzling vehicles, people sang "God
Bless America" at sporting events that required
scoreboard lyric prompts. It seemed surreal. I felt
obligated to educate myself about U.S. foreign policy
in the Middle East. Although it wasn't difficult to
find information, I did have to make an extra effort
to search for things not reported on CNN or our other
corporate-controlled media. I didn't like what I
learned. Any attempts at democratic rule had been
squashed by the U.S. for 50 years. Most of our
interventions could be directly tied to U.S. oil
company interests, and the consequences of these
interventions were usually brutal. We set up puppet
goverments with murderous leaders whom we supported
until it was no longer convenient, then demonized
those same leaders. I was not even aware that the
U.S. and Britain have continued bombing Iraq for the
past 10 years which, coupled with the sanctions
placed on the country, were responsible for the
deaths of over a million people during that time.
Yet I had been more concerned with O.J. Simpson,
Monica Lewinsy and Gary Condit. I felt ashamed.
Nevertheless, I still held out hope that our
"surgical strikes" in Afghanistan would
somehow eliminate the immediate threat of terrorism
that the news regularly reported. That hope began to
fade as we bombed Red Cross buildings and
"inadvertantly" hit civilian targets - news
that went largely unreported here at home. U.S.
government officials unabashedly pointed out that we
needed to improve our "propaganda," and no
one even questioned that point. The media praised our
absurdly inadequate "humanitarian" food
drops. We were again using cluster bombs despite
criticizing other nations for doing the same. When
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was asked by one
of the few reporters brave enough to bring up the
question of "collateral damage," he
bristled and said any civilian casualties were
"the fault of the Taliban." I was disgusted
by his arrogance and almost -criminal lack of
compassion.
That was the point at which I ended my support for
this war. The spell of patriotism had been broken,
and I realized that I cared more about people than
military strategy. It became sadly clear to me that
our government did not care about people, whether
they be from Afghanistan or our own country. I
suppose I knew that all along. Of course there will
be no real change in foreign policy once the dust
settles in Afghanistan. The U.S. will go on pursuing
its oil interests and pushing impoverished Middle
Eastern civilians into further resentment of the
U.S., thus breeding more terrorists who we will fight
with larger and larger wars that will benefit fewer
and fewer people. In truth, there is nothing surgical
about war. It is a blunt and rusty instrument that
invariably leads to very bad consequences. Sometimes
these consequences are immediate in terms of death
and destruction, and other times quiescent wounds
fester for years, before desperate and angry people
find ways to exact revenge. Maybe it isn't fair to
say that there is never a reason for a war. It just
seems that the track record for war is dismal.
Dr. Pittelli
is a psychiatrist and post-September 11 convert to
political activism from San Luis Obispo, CA. He can
be reached at pitteli@aol.com.
