Nine Eleven

A week before the 20th anniversary of the events of 9/11, we’ve been flooded with reminders, remembrances, information, testimonies of all kinds and analysis linking that period of time in our recent history to what’s happening today in America. 

Beyond the tragedy itself and that suffering of the victims and their close ones, my conclusion of these past 20 years are pretty cut and dry. 

I was working in Vail Colorado when the planes smashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. I immediately said to myself, “That’s the payoff for what we’ve let happen in Palestine.” 

I thought Bush, who before looked like a deer caught in some car headlights, was really dumb, but found a cause to anchor his presidency. The evil Cheney jumped on the opportunity to return and fight near Oil-Country and, as the master puppeteer, made Bush embark on some really stupid moves. 

First, we should have bombed the shit out of the Talibans, made sure to catch Osama bin Laden right here in there and moved out. End of discussion. We would have saved 170, 000 lives and trillions of Dollars. 

Then we embarked into Iraq, without a clue, without plans and a valid reason plus a big lie, which also killed more than 500,000 people and cost another few trillion dollars on top of Afghanistan, all financed on credit. 

Today, as I am sending my quarterly tax payment, I am not at all happy with the use that’s made of my money. Bush, Cheney, the late Rumsfeld, Rice, and Powell are a bunch of reckless war criminals that should still be in jail. 

Obama lacked the personal and political courage to get out of Afghanistan while Trump didn’t understand that he needed to include the Afghan government in his negotiations with the Taliban. 

Another big takeaway from the Afghan-Iraqi wars is that world powers should no longer attempt to turn a medieval country culture and customs on their heads. It just doesn’t work, or if it seems that it “stuck” for a while, it soon return to what is was before. At least Biden, as demonized as he’s been lately, had the balls to get us out of there. 

Then there’s our military that kept on announcing that things would turn around the following week for 20 full years! Well, if we take the recent Taliban victory as an example, their budget was $1.5 billion a year compared to about $500 to 750 billion for the US military machine. 

Without a question, the ragged and bearded guys beat us. They were much, much more efficient, and we should contract our national defense to these guys on their Toyota pick up trucks. They might successfully rid us of the Proud Boys and McConnell while they’re at it.