Tuesday, September 20, 2005

A nation divided

How can this be? How can 5 years rip this nation apart? We have always had politicians therefore we have always had liars, so what is it about this administration that has caused such turmoil? Maybe it̢۪s not the administrations fault maybe there was a growing rift in this country and they just happen to be on top when it really started to show. The country was quite split during the Clinton impeachment, which makes since because we were having a trial of our president. Although even at his worst he was still at a 43% approval (which actually was NOT during the trial), which is still better than bush̢۪s current 36% approval rating. So maybe the Clinton trial deepened the groove between the progressives and the conservatives, this war, the economy, the growing gap between rich and poor, and now the Katrina debacle, has simply torn this country apart. We have three more years of this and then even when we get a new leader they had better do some great things if they want to succeed in unifying this nation. Bush had his moment to bring us together. After a national disaster most of the country immediately stood behind him. In times of need we want to believe in our leaders we want to help them. The rest of the world felt our pain with us, particularly all the nations than have had to deal with terrorism themselves. The world cried out with support. Unfortunately instead of using all of this internal and external support to try to capture the man responsible, we bombed a war torn nation that might have been harboring the criminal. This ruined much of our credibility, then we attacked a soveirgn nation that had nothing to do with this attack. At this point the world no longer supported us and much of the nation started having serious second thoughts. How could we let this happen? The nation was strong and proud while mourning. There were many angry people who immediately felt than we needed to bomb someone. But how can you want to inflict that kind of pain and suffering that we had just endured onto other people? How can you feel good about killing innocent people simply because our own innocent people were killed?
Think of the rage and hatred we felt here after the attack then think about living in Afghanistan. You have lived through a war with the soviets that lasted from 1979-1989 you finally have a little bit of peace. Of course you may not be to happy with the US because they trained a whole bunch of guerrilla fighters to fight off the Russians but at least they kept you from becoming a part of the soviet union so you may be on the fence about the US. Then after 12 year of rebuilding with the US helping to support your fundamentalist leaders, if you are a fundamentalist this may please you or it may anger you that your leaders would accept help from infidels. Then one of those American trained guerilla fighters who have been very well trained at how to inflict maximum damage with a minimal of cost decides that he wants to attack the US. He develops this plan for 5 years while training dozens of men. He then strikes with well-known consequences. And now for the crime of living in the same nation as a terrorist you are going to be killed, or maybe your child or parents. So where do you turn when the most powerful nation on earth decides that it hates you and starts bombing your neighborhood? You may be angry with the terrorists and go try to kill them, or you may be angry with the people who killed your family. Can we not understand why they would be filled with rage after having their cities leveled? We have two buildings destroyed and we were out for blood. They have their cities destroyed along with the entire infrastructure and their leaders taken or killed. Imagine how you would feel if you were in there shoes. If you lived here and you immediately wanted to bomb Afghanistan after 9/11 then think if you were in Afghanistan, would you not have those same feelings towards the US? If you are an American that supports the war, then imagine you lived in Afghanistan or Iraq, would you be a terrorist?
Of course this all started asking why this nation is so divided, I may have answered my own question by writing something that would clearly anger a lot of conservatives. So it goes.

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