Validating bin Laden
In yet another miserable Joe Klein essay validating the morally depraved, inside-the-beltway establishment consensus that on government torture and war crimes, we should all just move along people nothing to see here, one of the regular right-wing commenters, in the usual right-wing-total-lack-of-awareness-of-anything-style, asks the question:
“…if you believe that al-Qaeda and Bin Laden didn’t attack us on 9/11 for their perverted opinions of our Country and ideals. Then please tell me why did they attack us in the first place?”
Leaving aside for the moment bin Laden’s quite legitimate desire to see the United States stop occupying and supporting the occupation of Muslim countries and the oppression and massacre of Muslims, bin Laden made his opinion of our ideals pretty clear. His “perverted opinions” of our ideals were that they were mostly convenient rhetorical standards that we held others to but seldom applied to ourselves.
It took only bin Laden’s diabolical provocation, neoconservative control of government, the subsequent cover-up by a new Democratic administration committed to “transparency and the rule of law” and the defense of government criminality by establishment media elites like Joe Klein (not to mention a tragically misled public at large) to prove that he knew more about us than we are willing to face about ourselves.
