While most of us who have practiced our patriotism by actually thinking (not that this fact takes much), the media is falling all over themselves with the realization that 15 of the 19 September 11th hijackers hailed from Saudi Arabia, not Iraq. I've seen this story and its responses (shouts of "well, duh!") mentioned elsewhere today and I just shook my head and sighed. But flipping through the channels this evening and seeing it for myself in big white letters over video loops of the admittedly tragic scene in Saudi Arabia, the string of obscenities that flew from my mouth were something to behold indeed. It's no wonder that the news networks have lost me as a viewer.
So with terrorism showing its face again in Saudi Arabia, does that mean we can attack Zimbabwe now? Mugabe's a bad bad bad man. It would make as much sense as what the United States has recently put the world through.
President Bush has already said they will "learn the meaning of American Justice" because we are the law.
This was a terrible event. But the war on terrorism is falling behind even the war on drugs record. What will continue to happen is that Americans will live in government prescribed fear and bear the brunt of unwarranted search and seizure policies and other fun surprises related to the PATRIOT acts, while the worldwide terrorist organizations will continue to recruit new members internationally and strike when and where we don't expect.
If we had a generally unified international community and respected international law bodies and even worked to strengthen those bodies, the situation could very well be less severe. There would be more resources available to deal with the worldwide problem that terrorism poses, with more local support that knows languages and customs where needed. But now we stand more alone than ever with a large army, larger ego, and a plethora of economic and foreign policies and attitudes that will continue to put the lives of our citizens at risk, worldwide.