Notes from Evil Bender

As others have pointed out, one of the great tragedies of this anniversary is that the man responsible for the 2001 attacks remains free, and Dubya doesn’t give a shit. Him and his Republican war-monger buddies couldn’t care less about actually stopping terrorists. They’re too busy pushing their Imperialist project in Iraq.

Which brings me to the real subject of this post: the other September 11th attack: September 11th, 1973. For those of you who don’t know, in 1973 the US, through the CIA, covertly sponsored a coup which resulted in the death of democractically elected Chilean President Allende. As the US has done repeatedly in left-leaning democracies, we ensured the destruction of the democracy and brought to power a vicious dictator who was more sympathetic to our militaristic agenda.

The facts aren’t in doubt, but you’ll rarely hear anyone talk about it, any more than you’ll hear about how the US trained and armed the Taliban or how we backed Saddam Hussein against Iran.

None of these actions make sense as actions to support Democracy, and they can only be understood as Imperialist actions, where the US forcibly attempted to protect its economic and military interests abroad even–perhaps especially–at the expence of democracy.

Simply put, US foreign policy since at least the advent of the cold war has been aimed at increasing US influence, often at the direct expense of liberty.

We should mourn the deaths of those who died on 9/11/2001, but we must also remember to mourn the many who have died as a result of the US’s misguided and evil foreign policy which propped up religious extremists, dictators and murderers and tore down genuine democracies.

Remember 9/11/1973. If we hope to truly defeat the terrorists and make the world a better place, we could start by supporting true democratic values abroad. If we choose to live up to the values we profess, rather than enforce what seems most politically advantageous, we will not train any more bin Ladens, will not prop up any more Husseins, will not murder any more democratically elected leaders–in short, we might truly be a force for good in the world, rather than a perpetuator of evil.