9/11 Five Years After: "For me, a world collapsed"

The most sobering and chilling comment I've seen on the five-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks came from Udo van Kampen, who on 9/11 was the New York correspondent for the German TV network ZDF, in "Für mich ist eine Welt eingestürzt" Kleine Zeitung 03.09.06 (print edition):

Von meinem Bürofenster aus sah ich die Türme niederkrachen. Es war grauenvoll. Was ich allerdings auch nach diesem Horrortag nicht fur möglich gehalten hatte: Amerika ist danach so unfrei wie nie zuvor geworden. Der 11. September wurde von der Regienmg des George W. Bush missbraucht, um die bürgerlichen Freiheitsrechte einzuschränken. In New York ist das Gefühl der Freiheit damit vollig verloren gegangen. Ich kam 1997 voller Enthusiasmus und voller Freiheitsgedanken nach New York. 2003 kehrte ich tief enttäuscht wieder nach Europa zurück.

[From my office window I saw the towers break apart.  It was gruesome.  Something I in any case held to be impossible even after this day of horror:  America afterwards has become so unfree as never before. September 11 was misused by the government of George W. Bush to restrict civil and democratic rights.  In New York, the feeling of freedom has thereby been completely lost.  I came to New York in 1997 full of enthusiasm and full of thoughts of freedom.  In 2003, I returned to Europe deeply disappointed.]

Now I know that many New Yorkers would deny that the feeling of freedom there has been completely lost.  Still, Van Kampen's description of his own feelings as a result of that experience and the aftermath is a moving and disturbing comment on where the Cheney-Bush policies have taken us since then.

It's important for Americans to recognize that these are not our enemies saying things like this, but our friends.  The people who actually in the very recent past looked at the United States as a real bulwark of freedom and democracy in this world.

The torture and kidnapping policies implemented and defended by the Cheney-Bush administration are particular sources of disgust to European democratic publics and governments.  Der Spiegel Online reports in Bundesregierung ruft Präsident Bush zur Kurskorrektur auf 09.09.06:

Die Bundesregierung stellte derweil klar, dass sie die von der US-Administration in Europa eingerichteten Geheimgefängnisse ablehnt. "Der Einsatz solcher Gefängnisse ist nicht vereinbar mit meinem Verständnis von Rechtsstaatlichkeit", sagte Angela Merkel. "Hier müssen wir angemessene Antworten finden, wie wir den Terroristen begegnen, ohne unsere fundamentalen Prinzipien und Grundwerte infrage zu stellen", sagte die Kanzlerin.

[The [German] federal government has made it clear meanwhile that it rejects the secret prisons that the US administration has set up in Europe.  "The establishment of such prison in not compatable with my understanding of the rule of law," said [German Chancellor] Angela Merkel.  "Here we must find appropriate answers as we combat the terrorists without bringing into question our fundamental principals and basic values," said the Chancellor.]

I don't usually like to make these kinds of comparisons.  But Germany's Chancellor is fully justified in trying to distance her government from the kidnapping and torture practices of the Cheney-Bush administration.  Those Americans who still see Germany and Europe throught the lenses of movies about the Second World War and superficial analogies to the Munich Agreement need to wake up and look at what's happening.  Most of the democratic nations of the world are not only not looking to American practices as a model.  On the contrary, most of them are trying to make sure they are contaminated with the most odious practices of the Cheney-Bush regime.

For Americans, it's not a matter of being embarassed or ashamed about the kidnapping and torture policies.  If the public and especially the Republican Congress were capable of the appropriate amount of embarassment or shame over those things, Dick Cheney and George Bush and Rummy would have been impeached and removed from office long ago.

It's a matter first of all of preserving democracy and the rule of law in America.  I don't care how much people may be ashamed of that stuff as long as it gets permanently stopped.

I hate to be melodramatic.  But we Americans in our nationalistic self-love like to hear high-minded quotes from our past praising our own greatness.  Like Abraham Lincoln's famous statement that America is the last, best hope of freedom in the world.

In the day of the Cheney-Bush administration, that statement is no longer true.  Maybe it stopped being true long before the Scalia Five handed the 2000 election to Dick Cheney and George Bush.  But if we want to move back in that direction, it will mean among other things putting an end to the torture policy and to the Unilateral Executive doctrine that says the President can disregard the laws and the Constitution at his own discretion and with no review from anyone else.