America: September 12, 2011

Yesterday marked the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America. For most of those ten years, I have had strongly suspected that the terrorist won. Although, like most of the sports teams I root for, we have lost the game as much as they have won it.

One of bin Laden's goals was war between America and Muslim countries. He certainly achieved this goal. And America's military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, and drone attacks in Pakistan, have bolstered anti-American sentiment across the Muslim world, and beyond, breeding more zealots willing to sacrifice themselves against our unIslamic might.

Another goal was to bankrupt the U.S.. According to Brown University's Cost of War project, the total cost of the wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq is estimated at over $3.2 trillion (not including the over 225,000 lives lost and another 7,800,000 people displaced). Note that this is the equivalent of the US's budget deficit for the last three years combined. And while the country certainly has felt bankrupt, both monetarily and spiritually, it is our own economic policies, poor regulation, and greed that did most of the damage there.

Whether or not it was a goal of bin Laden or the terrorist attacks, where we have lost the most is the lessening of the very way of life we Americans claim to have been so proud of. To quote Benjamin Franklin:

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

But that is exactly what America has done over and over again during the last ten years.

The attacks of 9/11 were horrible. We lost 2,977 innocent people, not all of whom were American. We saw the Twin Towers, symbols as well as realities of our global economy, come crashing down. It was scary.

But I am still more scared of how the country has changed since then. We have lost sight of our belief in human rights and justice for all.

Our country once lead the way in punishing those who tortured, but now we hold detainees for years without charges, have used waterboarding and other torture and humiliation to gather information (despite studies that show that torture doesn't work), we return suspects to countries where they will be tortured, and when we do any of this to someone innocent of terror we refuse to make amends for what we have done.

Americans have had their rights removed for some alleged greater good. The government has been allowed to spy upon us without any basis or legal warrant. For these last ten years, we have had to submit to all sorts of absurd rules, regulations, and searches just to board an airplane, despite allowing all sorts of exceptions for children and medial conditions, or more importantly catching any of the people who have boarded with bombs. Here is somewhere a simple cost-benefit analysis would show we are getting no bang for our buck (although folks try to tell me that it makes people feel safer, to which I reply, "Not me.")

American belief in religious freedom seems to have died a tragic death, given the reports of opposition to building mosques around the country. I cannot see what is to be feared from a place of worship, or how any American can justify this religious intolerance. All of this only adds fuel to the fire burning around the world that American is anti-Islamic.

Then there is the short-sightedness of Twenty-First century Americans who do not know or think of the earlier wars between the West and Islam, when the Pope called for European kings to sent forces off to Jerusalem to crusade against the occupying Muslims, attacking them to preserve the Christian faith and recapture the Holy Land. And now here we are with radical Islamic leaders urging forces to go attack Western countries to preserve their Islamic faith and way of life.