Our government responded in a primitive, unthinking way and unearthed an enduring weakness in our national character that continues to haunt us to this day. We should have known that when Dick Cheney, the vice president at the time, appeared on television just days after the attacks and announced that the country would have to go to «the dark side» and «use any means at our disposal» that we were going down an immoral path that would lead us to an ignominious end.
As it turned out, this left Trump with a conundrum as president. He actually saw himself as a great warrior leader but he couldn't pull the trigger on a big military adventure. « I have plans on Afghanistan that, if I wanted to win that war, Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the Earth. » He constantly fought with his military advisers, seeing them as «losers» who didn't know how to win wars, but never really had the nerve to do what he always threatened to do which was unleash the full might of the U. military.
In April, he said, «Getting out of Afghanistan is a wonderful and positive thing to do. » He said that the situation was not acceptable and demanded that President Biden «resign in disgrace for what he has allowed to happen to Afghanistan.» Babbling incessantly about the mostly defunct military equipment left behind, he declared that if the Taliban didn't return it, «we should either go in with unequivocal Military force and get it, or at least bomb the hell out of it». Now, during this week of commemoration of 9/11 and the beginning of that misbegotten war from which we have finally, painfully, withdrawn military troops, Trump has outdone himself. On the occasion of the removal of the statue of Robert E. «Robert E. President Lincoln wanted him to command the North, in which case the war would have been over in one day.
Robert E. Lee instead chose the other side because of his great love of Virginia, and except for Gettysburg, would have won the war ... If only we had Robert E. Lee to command our troops in Afghanistan, that disaster would have ended in a complete and total victory many years ago. What an embarrassment we are suffering because we don't have the genius of a Robert E. » I don't know if Spencer Ackerman is correct to say that the War on Terror «produced» Donald Trump. But it certainly did rouse some of the violent, lizard brain racism and ignorance that's never very far from the surface of our culture. And nobody in this country better personifies that violent, lizard brain racism and ignorance than Donald Trump.
