Six years since the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon, and the field in Pennsylvania, and the President of the United States holding the book about the goat upside down while "reading" with schoolchildren and trying to figure out what to do with himself.
Six years since box cutters made way for plastic knives and forks which made way for no lipstick and no water and perfume sealed in plastic bags and having to drink breast milk at security checks to prove you just want to feed your baby. Shoes off and questionnaires and fingerprints and four-year-olds with common Muslim names denied flights. Library book screening, illegally obtained personal information, rainbow-colour-coded alert systems.
Six years since conscience and honour unravelled and led to Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and then, the realisation that any assumption of standing on higher moral ground was naive at best and plain stupid at worst.
A blind patriotism fuelled by fear fuelled by lies fuelled by greed and ignorance. An initial global unification eroded by an imperial arrogance and all the while, death. Death in combat, death at home, death on the Tube, death on the train, death at a disco. Death, despair, desperation, destruction.
What the hell for?
What has Al Qaeda achieved? What goals have they reached? Are things going according to Al Qaeda's Master Plan? Is there a Master Plan? Is the entire world adhering to a brand of Islam that banishes music, dancing, and shaving? Are women peeping out of meshed visors and floor lengths blue tents? Has fear paralysed every single person on this Earth beyond the capacity to trust? To love?
Has America ensured its resource future? Has it made its citizens safer? Has it made the world safer? Has America become a binding force of unification and secured a communal global strategy to understand why terrorists do what they do and what can be done to make sure they stop doing it?
No. None of these goals have been reached-on either side.
All that's been accomplished is death, despair, desperation, and destruction.
Which leads me to conclude that I have the dubious honour of having witnessed, since 9/11, the possibly least intelligent six years in human history.
Is it me? Am I the dumbest person on the planet or is it right to read the above and think, "How incredibly stupid!"
I honestly don't get it. One of a healthy, new-born baby's very first instincts is to latch on to a nipple of some sort in order to get nourishment, in order to survive. Self-preservation is an instinct and self-destruction an illness. What's so hard about understanding the fact that self equals humanity?
Österreich | 11.9.2007 | 15:53 
