This may be a good spot for this
I don't know if it was posted before, and if it was, sorry.....
No matter what your views on Bush this, from an English journalist, is
very interesting.
For those of you not familiar with the UK's Daily Mirror, this is a
notoriously left-wing daily that is normally not supportive of the
Colonials across the Atlantic.
Tony Parsons Daily Mirror
One year ago, the world witnessed a unique kind of broadcasting -- the
mass murder of thousands, live on television. As a lesson in the pitiless
cruelty of the human race, September 11 was up there, with Pol Pot's
mountain of skulls in Cambodia, or the skeletal bodies stacked like
garbage in the Nazi concentration camps. An unspeakable act so cruel, so
calculated and so utterly merciless that surely the world could agree on
one thing- nobody deserves this fate. Surely there could be consensus:
the victims were truly innocent, the perpetrators truly evil.
But to the world's eternal shame, 9/11 is increasingly seen as America's
comeuppance. Incredibly, anti-Americanism has increased over the last year.
There has always been a simmering resentment to the USA in this country
too loud, too rich, too full of themselves and so much happier than
Europeans - but it has become an epidemic. And it seems incredible to me.
More than that, it turns my stomach.
America is this country's greatest friend and our staunchest ally. We are
bonded to the US by culture, language and blood. A little over half a
century ago, around half a million Americans died for our freedoms, as well
as their own. Have we forgotten so soon? And exactly a year ago, thousands
of ordinary men, women and children - not just Americans, but from dozens
of countries - were butchered by a small group of religious fanatics.
Are we so quick to betray them?
What touched the heart about those who died in the twin towers and on the
planes was that we recognized them. Young fathers and mothers, somebody's
son and somebody's daughter, husbands and wives, and children, some
unborn.
And these people brought it on themselves?
And their nation is to blame for their meticulously planned slaughter?
These days you don't have to be some dust-encrusted nut job in Kabul or
Karachi or Finsbury Park to see America as the Great Satan. The
anti-American alliance is made up of self-loathing liberals who blame
the Americans for every ill in the Third World, and conservatives
suffering from power-envy, bitter that the world's only superpower can do
what it likes without having to ask permission.
The truth is that America has behaved with enormous restraint since
September 11.
Remember, remember. Remember the gut-wrenching tapes of weeping men
phoning their wives to say, "I love you," before they were burned alive.
Remember those people leaping to their deaths from the top of burning
skyscrapers.
Remember the hundreds of firemen buried alive.
Remember the smiling face of that beautiful little girl who was on one
of the planes with her mum.
Remember, remember - and realize that America has never retaliated for
9/11 in anything like the way it could have. So a few al-Qaeda tourists got
locked without a trial in Camp X-ray? Pass the Kleenex...
So some Afghan wedding receptions were shot up after they merrily fired
their semi-automatics in a sky full of American planes? A shame, but maybe
next time they should stick to confetti.
AMERICA could have turned a large chunk of the world into a parking lot.
That it didn't is a sign of strength. American voices are already being
raised against attacking Iraq - that's what a democracy is for.
How many in the Islamic world will have a minute's silence for the
slaughtered innocents of 9/11?
How many Islamic leaders will have the guts to say that the mass murder
of 9/11 was an abomination?
When the news of 9/11 broke on the West Bank, those freedom-loving
Palestinians were dancing in the street. America watched all of that and
didn't push the button.
We should thank the stars that America is the most powerful nation in
the world. I still find it incredible that 9/11 did not provoke all-out war.
Not a "war on terrorism." A real war.
The fundamentalist dudes are talking about "opening the gates of hell,"
if America attacks Iraq. Well, America could have opened the gates of hell
like you wouldn't believe. The US is the most militarily powerful nation
that ever strode the face of the earth. The campaign in Afghanistan may
have been less than perfect and the planned war on Iraq may be
misconceived.
But don't blame America for not bringing peace and light to these
wretched countries.
How many democracies are there in the Middle East, or in the Muslim world?
You can count them on the fingers of one hand assuming you haven't had
any chopped off for minor shoplifting.
I love America, yet America is hated. I guess that makes me Bush's
poodle.
But I would rather be a dog in New York City than a Prince in Riyadh.
Above all, America is hated because it is what every country wants to be
- rich, free, strong, open, optimistic. Not ground down by the past, or
religion, or some caste system. America is the best friend this country
ever had and we should start remembering that.
Or do you really think the USA is the root of all evil? Tell it to the loved
ones of the men and women who leaped to their death from the burning
towers.
Tell it to the nursing mothers whose husbands died on one of the
hijacked planes, or were ripped apart in a collapsing skyscraper.
And tell it to the hundreds of young widows whose husbands worked
for the New York Fire Department.
To our shame, George Bush gets a worse press than Saddam Hussein.
Once we were told that Saddam gassed the Kurds, tortured his own people
and set up rape-camps in Kuwait. Now we are told he likes Quality Street.
Remember, remember, September 11.
One of the greatest atrocities in human history was committed against
America.
No, do more than remember.
Never forget.
