Dubya remembers that as he sat reading My Pet Goat and being friendly and feeling bored to death a staff-person came to him, stooped over to whisper a message as if it was very important and secret. And it was very important and secret and so very big that Dubya sat very still and floated into a private world. And the more he thought about the news that the man had whispered, the more he felt amazed.

He remembers the feeling that things were going to change. That they had changed already. There was a glow. He was in the middle of it. The world was shining, the world was new already and more his. It was more Dubya’s world, it had a place for him, a place made for him. He saw the world turning and himself at the center. Now he was the big man, bigger than anyone ever. He saw himself as like the eye of the hurricane, that turns everything around, sweeps everything away all around, controls it all, touches everything and is never touched. It is awesome, inviolate, and perfect.

He remembers: it was the happiest moment of his life.

Now, ten years later, shivering in his dank cell, he picks nervously at his scabs and wonders whether back in 2001 he had perhaps miscalculated.

American foreign policy would better serve the domestic needs of peace and security if it were used to cultivate friends instead of enemies and create trading partners instead of areas to pillage. One of the first positive steps in this direction would be to withdraw all military forces from Iraq and Afghanistan and to close every U.S. base in every foreign country. U.S. troops should be on U.S. soil unless they are fighting a declared war that someone else started.

– Monsters, Inc. by Samuel Bostaph, 11 September 2006

To get a better idea of what ails the world, let’s use our imagination to transport ourselves into outer space. From there, we can look down on Earth not as an American or as a European, but as a disinterested alien.

We see a collection of sovereign nations – some large, some small, some powerful and some weak. We also see that some of the powerful nations do not respect the sovereignty of some of the others.

For example, by what right do the United States and the Europeans tell Iran it cannot enrich uranium? Other nations enrich uranium. Iran is a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and it grants the right to enrich uranium. Where does the United States get off telling the Iranians they can’t do it?

Oh, the U.S. claims Iran wants to build nuclear weapons. Well, first and foremost, Iran denies that, and there is no proof to the contrary. But suppose Iran does want to build nuclear weapons. Why shouldn’t it? We have nukes. The British, the French, the Russians, the Chinese, the Indians, the Pakistanis and the Israelis all have nuclear weapons. Why shouldn’t Iran? For that matter, what right does anyone have to tell the North Koreans they can’t have nukes and can’t even test their missiles? Everybody else tests the missiles.

What you see is that the United States and some of the European states are still trying to run the world to suit them, even though formal colonialism has been a long time dead. President Bush seems to think that he has the right to engineer regime change in any country he chooses. The U.S. record on regime change is poor. One reason so many Iranians hate us is because we engineered a regime change in the 1950s that threw out their elected nationalist leader and replaced him with the Shah. A lot of Iranians were executed, tortured and imprisoned before the Iranian people could finally get rid of him.

What right do we have to tell Syria and Iran that they can’t supply arms to Hezbollah? We supply arms to Israel. In fact, we are about the world’s largest arms peddler. Mr. Bush calls Hezbollah a terrorist organization. The government of Lebanon and the European Union do not. Just because an American politician sticks a label on a group of people doesn’t mean those people lose all of their rights.

I don’t think the world will know peace until all the nations of the world agree to respect each other’s sovereignty. That means no sanctions, no externally arranged coups, no invasions, no refusal to talk. We would do much better if we talked to the Iranians and North Koreans and, while acknowledging their right to nuclear technology, offered incentives – including a security guarantee – not to develop it. You know, of course, that the U.S. refuses to talk to the Iranians and the North Koreans and has refused their requests for security guarantees. Countries don’t like to be “dissed” any more than individuals do.

I’ve been accused by some right-wingers of not liking America. As usual, they have it wrong. I love America, but I don’t like this present administration one bit. I think the Bushies are a dangerous combination of ignorance and arrogance, and that they act in a reckless manner. They ignore what they should pay attention to and pay attention to what they should ignore.

Bush seems intent on pursuing regime change in Syria and Iran. If he persists, he will likely unleash a regional war, the consequences of which will be catastrophic.

What have you gotten for your $300 billion, your 2,600 dead, your 8,000 seriously maimed in Bush’s ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Stability? Don’t make me laugh. Security? America is hated in more parts of the world today than at any time in its history. What has Bush done right?

Before you resurrect the slogan “Stay the course,” remember that one of the definitions of insanity is to keep doing the wrong thing. Let’s face it, folks. We elected ourselves a disaster. Bush didn’t understand the world when he was elected; he doesn’t now; and when he goes home to Crawford, Texas, he will still be puzzled by it all.

– Charley Reese, August 27, 2006

Five years ago an actual terrorist organization executed an actual terrorist attack inside the United States. They sent hijacked airliners crashing into two colossal office towers in downtown Manhattan. Another plane hit the Pentagon building; a fourth, possibly on its way to Washington, D.C., crashed in Pennsylvania. Everyone on all four planes died (including, of course, the hijackers). The World Trade Center towers were utterly destroyed. The Pentagon was damaged. About three thousand people died.

The contemptible men who planned this attack wanted to be seen as having injured, not “just” thousands of people, not “just” several extremely expensive buildings, but the United States of America, or even Western civilization. Of course such megalomania is ludicrous. Oh it was a tragedy. Absolutely. But you cannot bring down the United States with such a feeble gesture. This is a country of 300 million people. We have by a huge margin the world’s most robust economy and the world’s most powerful military. Considered as an act of war, 9/11 was hardly decisive.

We could have said to those self-styled revolutionaries: Fuck you. You could do a thing like that every month and we would still survive it. You cannot hurt us. Even so, we will find you, and we will utterly wipe you out. A few years from now, no one will even remember your names.

That’s what we should have said. It would have been proud and brave. And it would have limited the hurt. It would have made 9/11 a small wound, painful but small, like the welt from a rubber bullet, that stings like a motherfucker but will certainly heal by itself.

That did not happen. Luckily for the terrorists, the 9/11 attacks became an excuse for our elected leaders to impose their private agenda on this country. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rove moved quickly to turn our fear to their advantage. And thus the 9/11 attacks became, at the hands of those despicable traitors, a devastating attack on the United States of America.

The terrorists wanted to hurt us deeply and permanently. Their plan should not have worked, would not have harmed us terribly, except that 9/11 was just what Bush needed for his own plans. He wants many of the same things the terrorists do. Though nominally opposed, each side has benefited from the other, and both have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.