"9/11 changed everything, and we have to think beyond the old cold war nostrums." Posted by “Juan” on The Agonist.

How very U.S.-centric. Dozens of countries had been subjected to terrorist attacks before 9/11 and if they decided to start mounting pre-emptive attacks upon other countries they'd have been rightly denounced. Not to mention the fact that we weren't attacked by a COUNTRY, but by a group of terrorists. And they didn't even come from Iraq.

We shouldn't be attacking a country in response to 9/11, and in fact I don't believe we are. You only have to read any one of a number of good articles out now, to know that 9/11 only greased the way for this policy of pre-emptive attacks which the hawks (Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, etc) have been circulating through the conservative circles for over a decade. They floated this idea in the early ‘90s after we pulled out of the Gulf War and left Hussein in power, understandably frustrated that we’d left him there. Problem is now, a decade later, they effectively want to continue the war as if it had ended a decade ago. (I’m speaking figuratively.) In the early ‘90s when word of the plan was leaked in the Washington Post, it caused such an uproar that it was revised and reword to omit mention of pre-emptive attacks and to maintain the current (at that time) policy of containment. So the hawks had to convince Powell and even Bush that this new foreign policy (coupled with the naïve notion of “exporting democracy”) was appropriate. Bush was probably easier to convince than Powell, as he needed plenty of training when he came to the White House and was ripe for programming by the pre-emptive evangelists.

This is common knowledge and I’m sure many folks who take the “9/11 changed everything” tack know this stuff. So all I ask is that we stop kidding ourselves. 9/11 changed a lot, yes – changed the way we live, caused us to live in fear, certainly means we should be more vigilant – but 9/11 doesn’t *excuse* everything.