2000s-in-the-united-states

"In June 2009, the United States further withdrew across Iraq, retrenching to large bases and largely staying out of day-to-day security operations except for in a few restive areas. For some months before, the United States ad likewise begun scaling back on the Sons of Iraq initiative, a move that ha not, as many predicted, resulted in a wholesale return among former insurgents to their murderous ways. There are still bombings in Iraq, sometimes very lethal ones, but they remain, for now, fairly isolated incidents. While Iraq may never become the model of Middle Eastern democracy and capitalism that the Bush administration envisioned, the current consensus among military chiefs as well as politicians and planners of every political affiliation is that the situation there is stable enough to allow the United States to withdraw completely without considering it a defeat. With the war in Afghanistan deteriorating rapidly and taking on a renewed urgency with the Obama administration, the United States remains on schedule to withdraw all American troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. For some, however, the war will never be over."

"“Our misjudgements of friend and foe alike,” McNamara concluded sadly, “reflected our profound ignorance of the history, culture, and politics of the people in the area and the personalities and habits of their leaders.” It is not a lesson the Bush White House of recent years appears to have learned. You believe in studying reality, a senior adviser said contemptuously to the journalist Ron Suskind in 2002. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “Were an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” If the White House had studied reality a bit more, the president might not have used the word crusade two days after September 11 to refer to how he intended to deal with terrorists. Muslims, even moderate ones, tend to react viscerally to being reminded of much earlier attacks from the West. If some attention had been paid to reality, the United States and the United Kingdom might not have been quite so surprised that Iraqis failed to welcome them or appreciate foreign control of their oil."

"Secretary of State Harris declared George W. Bush winner of Florida, and thereby president, by a plurality of 537 votes over Al Gore... Over 50,000 voters wrongly targeted by the purge, mostly Blacks. My BBC researchers reported that Gore lost at least 22,000 votes as a result of this smart little black-box operation. The first reports of this extraordinary discovery ran, as you’d expect, on page one of the country’s leading paper. Unfortunately, it was in the wrong country: Britain. In the USA, it ran on page zero – the story was simply not covered in American newspapers. The theft of the presidential race in Florida also grabbed big television coverage. But again, it was the wrong continent: on BBC Television, broadcasting from London worldwide – everywhere, that is, but the USA. Was this some off-the-wall story that the British press misreported? Hardly. The chief lawyer for the U.S. Civil Rights Commission called it the first hard evidence of a systematic attempt to disenfranchise Florida’s Black voters. So why was this story investigated, reported and broadcast only in Europe, for God’s sake?"

"The Florida Division of Elections announced the next day that Bush had won the state by 1,784 votes. However, this margin was so small that Florida law required a machine recount of the state, which reduced Bush’s lead to 327. The presidential choice on about 170,000 ballots could not be read by machine. Of these, 60,000 were “undervotes” — for instance, the voter had not fully punched through the ballot’s relevant perforated box. The remaining 110,000 were “overvotes,” in which the voter may have voted normally for Bush or Gore but also wrote in their name. The Gore campaign requested a recount by hand in four heavily Democratic counties. The Bush campaign sued to stop this. The Gore campaign’s efforts then disappeared for the next month into a mind-numbingly complex legal process, overflowing with ballot-design and deadline minutiae that no normal American could follow. Meanwhile, the Republican Party conducted a nationwide PR campaign with a message Americans could follow: that Gore was a pathetic sore loser who simply would not accept that he’d been defeated. Much of the national media eagerly adopted this frame."

"In the days following the presidential election (of 2000), there were so many stories of African Americans erased from voter rolls you might think they were targeted by some kind of racial computer program. They were. I have a copy of it: two silvery CD-ROM disks right out of the office computers of Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris. Once decoded and flowed into a database, they make for interesting, if chilling, reading. They tell us how our president (George W. Bush) was elected – and it wasn’t by the voters."

"Was it appropriate for the Supreme Court to intervene in a dispute that almost always was left up to the states, even over federal posts? Given that there was a specific constitutional amendment and a specific federal statute dealing with contested presidential elections—and both of those provisions dictated that Congress alone should be the arbiter—did the justices adequately justify their decision to step in? (The 12th Amendment and the Electoral Count Act of 1887 spelled out the details; in drafting the latter, Congress specif­ically decided the court should play no role.)"

"Bush v. Gore is the Supreme Court's worst example of recklessness since the Dred Scott decision in 1857 that said Congress lacked power to ban slavery in the territories. Several justices realized how bad their ruling was. Justice Antonin Scalia reportedly told a colleague that the equal protection reasoning about Florida procedures was "a piece of shit." Scalia, being Scalia, never indicated he regretted it, instead advising critics, "Get over it!" His justification for court intervention, he told an interviewer, was that "we were the laughingstock of the world—the world's greatest democracy couldn't conduct an election." Somehow Scalia—the great constitutional textualist—omitted to cite where in the Constitution he had unearthed a "laughingstock of the world" clause that allowed the court to ignore explicit text that left to Congress the resolution of electoral disputes for the presidency."

"George W. Bush spoke to the nation for the first time as president-elect tonight, declaring that the "nation must rise above a house divided" after one of the closest and most disputed presidential elections in United States history. Speaking from the podium of the Texas House of Representatives, precisely 24 hours after the United State Supreme Court ended a five- week-long dispute by halting a recount of Florida's disputed votes, and thus preserving Mr. Bush's razor-thin lead, the 54-year-old governor devoted his entire speech to themes of reconciliation. "Whether you voted for me or not, I will do my best to serve your interests," he said, "and I will work to earn your respect.""

"Consumer activist Ralph Nader scoffed Wednesday at suggestions that his presidential campaign merely drains liberal votes from Democrats, saying that shrinking either major party is "exactly what we want." He pointed to studies of the 1996 election when he was on the ballot in California, and said he drew almost as many Republican voters as Democrats. "Our two parties are basically one corporate party wearing two heads and different makeup," Nader said. "There is a difference between Tweedledum and Tweedledee, but not that much.""

"Hoping to boost Ralph Nader in states where he is threatening to hurt Al Gore, a Republican group is launching TV ads featuring Nader attacking the vice president. The ads by the Republican Leadership Council will begin airing Monday in Wisconsin, Oregon and Washington, all states that are part of Gore's base and where Nader is polling well. The group plans to spend more than $100,000 at first and hopes to raise more over the weekend. While the ads boost Nader, they are a clear attempt to help Bush. Nader was in Iowa to announce his presidential bid as a Green Party candidate. He made his name as a consumer advocate and his campaign is a hard-core liberal assault on monied interests and what he sees as corporate control of the political system."

"The Law School’s claim of a compelling interest is further bolstered by its amici, who point to the educational benefits that flow from student body diversity.… Numerous studies show that student body diversity promotes learning outcomes, and “better prepares students for an increasingly diverse workforce and society, and better prepares them as professionals.” These benefits are not theoretical but real, as major American businesses have made clear that the skills needed in today’s increasingly global marketplace can only be developed through exposure to widely diverse people, cultures, ideas, and viewpoints. What is more, high-ranking retired officers and civilian leaders of the United States military assert that, “[b]ased on [their] decades of experience,” a “highly qualified, racially diverse officer corps … is essential to the military’s ability to fulfill its principal mission to provide national security.”"

"Because the United States is still such a deeply segregated nation, universities have become an important site on which battles over the future racial formation of the country are being fought. ... The significance of this has been recognized by the right as well as by liberals, as confirmed by the timing of President George W. Bush's direct intervention in support of the white plaintiffs in the University of Michigan's affirmative action case on January 15, 2003, Martin Luther King's birthday. I would argue that this case is not really about the white students who claim that their admission to the university was unfairly rejected, but that the suit is actually about halting in its tracks any potential for imagining the radical transformation of the racial formation of the United States."

"For the court, diversity’s value lies not in its capacity to remedy past and ongoing racism and exclusion but in its ability to produce student-citizens prepared for an increasingly global workforce and for military global security service. The work of diversity, then, is not meant to transform social institutions but to insert bodies into existing structures. ... The shifting logic of affirmative action from redress to diversity has led many scholars, including Sara Ahmed and Roderick Ferguson, to imagine diversity as a kind of “non-performative” ... “benign variation” that “bypasses power as well as history to suggest a harmonious empty pluralism.”"

"Unburied bodies have unsettled matters—and they stink. The bodies of Polyneices and of Polonius and of Zarathustra’s tightrope walker and of the workers in the World Trade Centers lay stinking in the starry night. They still want to be paid, and they need retribution, vengeance, grudges, memories, teeth, the grinding of teeth, and muttering of curses. We need a legion of gravediggers, architects, and engineers with good faith to build cemeteries for these bodies in the ruins of the World Trade Center. Tony Blair and George Bush declared they would create a new world order out of the ruins of the World Trade Center. But they created chaos and anarchy because instead of burying the bodies they hold grudges of the ghost of vengeance."

"I thought the brain could rule over the legs. And I thought the brain was white and the legs were yellow or brown. And I thought I could rule with my brain—and even if I cut my legs off—I would find cheap legs in other parts of the world. But now I am a mutilated body. I lost my legs in Korea. I lost my arms in Vietnam. I lost my head in Kuwait. I lost my torso in the World Trade Center."

"September 11 was a day of de-Enlightenment. Politics stood revealed as a veritable Walpurgis Night of the irrational. And such old, old stuff. The conflicts we now face or fear involve opposed geographical arenas, but also opposed centuries or even millennia. It is a landscape of ferocious anachronisms: nuclear jihad in the Indian subcontinent; the medieval agonism of Islam; the Bronze Age blunderings of the Middle East. … The champions of militant Islam are, of course, misogynists, woman-haters; they are also misologists — haters of reason. Their armed doctrine is little more than a chaotic penal code underscored by impotent dreams of genocide. And, like all religions, it is a massive agglutination of stock response, of cliches, of inherited and unexamined formulations."

"September 11 was, and remains, above all an immense human tragedy. But September 11 also posed a momentous and deliberate challenge not just to America but to the world at large. The target of the terrorists was not only New York and Washington but the very values of freedom, tolerance and decency which underpin our way of life."

"What happened on 11 September was without parallel in the bloody history of terrorism. Within a few hours, up to 7000 people were annihilated, the commercial centre of New York was reduced to rubble and in Washington and Pennsylvania further death and horror on an unimaginable scale. Let no one say this was a blow for Islam when the blood of innocent Muslims was shed along with those of the Christian, Jewish and other faiths around the world."

"Our best destiny, as planetary cohabitants, is the development of what has been called "species consciousness" — something over and above nationalisms, blocs, religions, ethnicities. During this week of incredulous misery, I have been trying to apply such a consciousness, and such a sensibility. Thinking of the victims, the perpetrators, and the near future, I felt species grief, then species shame, then species fear."

"Like all "acts of terrorism" (easily and unsubjectively defined as organised violence against civilians), September 11 was an attack on morality: we felt a general deficit. Who, on September 10, was expecting by Christmastime to be reading unscandalised editorials in the Herald Tribune about the pros and cons of using torture on captured "enemy combatants"? Who expected Britain to renounce the doctrine of nuclear no-first-use? Terrorism undermines morality. Then, too, it undermines reason. … No, you wouldn't expect such a massive world-historical jolt, which will reverberate for centuries, to be effortlessly absorbed. But the suspicion remains that America is not behaving rationally — that America is behaving like someone still in shock."

"I can hear you! I can hear you, the rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!"

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is a difficult moment for America. I, unfortunately, will be going back to Washington after my remarks. Secretary Rod Paige and the Lt. Governor will take the podium and discuss education. I do want to thank the folks here at Booker Elementary School for their hospitality. Today we've had a national tragedy. Two airplanes have crashed into the World Trade Center in an apparent terrorist attack on our country. I have spoken to the Vice President, to the Governor of New York, to the Director of the FBI, and have ordered that the full resources of the federal government go to help the victims and their families, and to conduct a full-scale investigation to hunt down and to find those folks who committed this act. Terrorism against our nation will not stand. And now if you would join me in a moment of silence. May God bless the victims, their families, and America. Thank you very much."

"This enemy attacked not just our people, but all freedom-loving people everywhere in the world. The United States of America will use all our resources to conquer this enemy. We will rally the world. We will be patient, we will be focused, and we will be steadfast in our determination.… we will not allow this enemy to win the war by changing our way of life or restricting our freedoms."

"[9/11] was very significant, a major terrorist act, thousands of people killed...It’s the first time since the War of 1812 that U.S. territory had been attacked. The United States has had remarkable security, and therefore was, aside from the horrible atrocity, a very significant, historical event. And it changed attitudes and policies in the United States quite considerably. And in reaction to this, the government was able to ram through laws that sharply constrained civil liberties. It was able to provide pretexts for the invasion of Afghanistan, invasion of Iraq — the destruction of Iraq, with consequences that spread through the region. And it’s the basis for Obama’s massive terrorist war, the drone war, the most extreme terrorist campaign that’s underway now, maybe most extreme in history, and the justification for it is the same: the second 9/11, 9/11/2001. So, yes, it’s had enormous effects on society, on attitudes, on policies. Many victims throughout the world can testify to that."

"September 11 shocked many Americans into an awareness that they had better pay much closer attention to what the US government does in the world and how it is perceived. Many issues have been opened for discussion that were not on the agenda before. That's all to the good. It is also the merest sanity, if we hope to reduce the likelihood of future atrocities. It may be comforting to pretend that our enemies "hate our freedoms," as President Bush stated, but it is hardly wise to ignore the real world, which conveys different lessons. The president is not the first to ask: "Why do they hate us?" In a staff discussion 44 years ago, President Eisenhower described "the campaign of hatred against us [in the Arab world], not by the governments but by the people". His National Security Council outlined the basic reasons: the US supports corrupt and oppressive governments and is "opposing political or economic progress" because of its interest in controlling the oil resources of the region. ...What they hate is official policies that deny them freedoms to which they aspire."

"You see, essentially, you cannot win the war on terror by military force. It is first and foremost a battle of ideas. It is secondly a law enforcement effort and a cooperative effort among nations. And only as a last resort do you use military force. This president has distorted the capabilities of the United States Armed Forces. He’s used our men and women in uniform improperly in Guantanamo and engaged in actions that I think are totally against the Uniform Code of Military Justice and against what we stand for as the American people."

"About 10 days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon, and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the joint staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, “Sir, you’ve got to come in and talk to me a second.” I said, “Well, you’re too busy.” He said, “No, no.” He says, “We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq.” This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, “We’re going to war with Iraq? Why?” He said, “I don’t know.” He said, “I guess they don’t know what else to do.” So I said, “Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?” He said, “No, no.” He says, “There’s nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq.” He said, “I guess it’s like we don’t know what to do about terrorists, but we’ve got a good military and we can take down governments... I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail.”... he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.” I said, “Is it classified?” He said, “Yes, sir.” I said, “Well, don’t show it to me.”"

"After the World Trade Center was bombed by Islamic fundamentalists in 1993, the country quickly chalked it up to a zany one-time attack and five minutes later decided we were all safe again. We weren't. We aren't now. They will strike again. Perhaps they will wait another eight years. But perhaps not. The enemy is in this country right now. And any terrorists who are not already here are free to immigrate."

"We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing right now. We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war."

"My last vestige of "hands-off religion" respect disappeared in the smoke and choking dust of September 11, 2001, followed by the "National Day of Prayer", when prelates and pastors did their tremulous Martin Luther King impersonation and urged people of mutually incompatible faiths to hold hands, united in homage to the very force that caused the problem in the first place."

"I fear that this is only the tip of the iceberg. There were approximately 400,000 students, teachers, residents, office workers, responders and volunteers in Lower Manhattan on 9/11, and during the eight months following the attacks, when the air was thick with carcinogens. Unfortunately, only 80,000 have registered with the WTC Health Program, which provides free annual medical screenings and health care to those certified with 9/11-related illnesses. Should these screenings detect cancers or other illnesses, survivors are eligible for compensation and long-term health care."

"How do I respond when I see that in some Islamic countries there is vitriolic hatred for America? I'll tell you how I respond: I'm amazed. I'm amazed that there is such misunderstanding of what our country is about, that people would hate us. I am like most Americans. I just can't believe it, because I know how good we are, and we've got to do a better job of making our case. We've got to do a better job of explaining to the people in the Middle East, for example, that we don't fight a war against Islam or Muslims. We don't hold any religion accountable. We're fighting evil."

"Now, the American people have got to go about their business. We cannot let the terrorists achieve the objective of frightening our nation to the point where we don't conduct business, where people don't shop."

"Knowing that he was close to death at the age of 34, he asked that an autopsy be performed after his death to determine whether his pulmonary fibrosis was a result of his time at the World Trade Center site. Detective Zadroga’s autopsy revealed that his lungs were full of ground glass and noxious chemicals. The WTC dust that he breathed in contained asbestos, benzene, jet fuel and other carcinogens. Detective Zadroga’s death was the first to be officially linked to the toxins present at the World Trade Center. New York City firefighters and police officers who responded that day, and/or worked on the debris pile afterwards, lost an average of 12 year’s lung capacity. They were not the only ones breathing in that air. Residents, office workers, construction workers removing the debris, and students and teachers were all exposed to the same toxins."

"It was the advent of the second plane, sharking in low over the Statue of Liberty: that was the defining moment. Until then, America thought she was witnessing nothing more serious than the worst aviation disaster in history; now she had a sense of the fantastic vehemence ranged against her. … For those thousands in the south tower, the second plane meant the end of everything. For us, its glint was the worldflash of a coming future. Terrorism is political communication by other means. The message of September 11 ran as follows: America, it is time you learned how implacably you are hated. United Airlines Flight 175 was an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile aimed at her innocence. That innocence, it was here being claimed, was a luxurious and anachronistic delusion."

"Watching the towers fall in New York, with civilians incinerated on the planes and in the buildings, I felt something that I couldn't analyze at first and didn't fully grasp … until the day itself was nearly over. I am only slightly embarrassed to tell you that this was a feeling of exhilaration. Here we are then, I was thinking, in a war to the finish between everything I love and everything I hate. Fine. We will win and they will lose. A pity that we let them pick the time and place of the challenge, but we can and we will make up for that."

"The thing about 9/11 is that it’s basically an artwork in its own right,” he told the BBC. “It was wicked, but it was devised in this way for this kind of impact. It was devised visually. I think our visual language has been changed by what happened on September 11. An aeroplane becomes a weapon – and if they fly close to buildings, people start panicking. Our visual language is constantly changing in this way, and I think as an artist you’re constantly on the lookout for things like that."

"They hate what they see right here in this chamber: a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other."

"Isn't the use by America and some Western governments of their fire against others in the world including, or in the forefront of whom are the Arabs and the Muslims, one of the most important reasons of the lack of stability in the world at the present time? Isn't the evil inflicted on America in the act of September 11, 2001, and nothing else, a result of this and other acts? This is the main question and this is what the American administration along with of the Western governments or the Western public opinion should answer in the first place with serenity and responsibility, without emotional reaction and without the use of the same old methods that America used against the world."

"Over the last several months, the U.S. Government has learned that U.S. citizens and interests abroad may be at increased risk of a terrorist action from extremist groups. In addition, we have received unconfirmed information that terrorist actions may be taken against U.S. military facilities and/or establishments frequented by U.S. military personnel in Korea and Japan. We are also concerned about information we received in May 2001 that American citizens may be the target of a terrorist threat from extremist groups with links to Usama Bin Ladin's AI-Qaida organization. In the past, such individuals have not distinguished between official and civilian targets. As always, we take this information seriously. U.S. Government facilities worldwide remain at a heightened state of alert. U.S. citizens planning to travel abroad should consult the Department of State's Public Announcements, Travel Warnings, Consular Information Sheets, and regional travel brochures, all of which are available at the Consular Affairs Internet website at http://travel.state.gov"

"Every Muslim, from the moment they realize the distinction in their hearts, hates Americans, hates Jews and hates Christians. For as long as I can remember, I have felt tormented and at war, and have felt hatred and animosity for Americans."

"If inciting people to do that is terrorism, and if killing those who kill our sons is terrorism, then let history be witness that we are terrorists."

"I'm fighting so I can die a martyr and go to heaven to meet God. Our fight now is against the Americans."

"We strongly condemn the events that happened in the United States at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. We share the grief of all those who have lost their nearest and dearest in these incidents. All those responsible must be brought to justice. We want them to be brought to justice, and we want America to be patient and careful in their actions."

"I can't even think about this movie. I don't WANT to think about it because if I think about it I will have to face an ugly truth that has been gnawing through my head... This started out as a documentary on gun violence in America, but the largest mass murder in our history was just committed — without the use of a single gun! Not a single bullet fired! No bomb was set off, no missile was fired, no weapon (i.e., a device that was solely and specifically manufactured to kill humans) was used. A boxcutter! — I can't stop thinking about this. A thousand gun control laws would not have prevented this massacre. What am I doing?"

"How about that McDonalds two blocks from Ground Zero? That's killed more people than the nineteen hijackers."

"This 'zeal for secrecy' I am talking about – and I have barely touched the surface – adds up to a victory for the terrorists. When they plunged those hijacked planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon three years ago this morning, they were out to hijack our Gross National Psychology. If they could fill our psyche with fear – as if the imagination of each one of us were Afghanistan and they were the Taliban – they could deprive us of the trust and confidence required for a free society to work. They could prevent us from ever again believing in a safe, decent or just world and from working to bring it about. By pillaging and plundering our peace of mind they could panic us into abandoning those unique freedoms – freedom of speech, freedom of the press – that constitute the ability of democracy to self-correct and turn the ship of state before it hits the iceberg."

"They were recruiting, organizing schools which also use Islamic ideology as a way of creating a very efficient guerilla army with a very clear anti-communist ideology [...] We're dealing with the sort of unintended consequences of that, and particularly because the United States didn't really properly clean up after it left Afghanistan."

"Should terrorists launch new attacks, we believe their preferred targets will be U.S. Government facilities and national symbols, financial and transportation infrastructure nodes, or public gathering places. Civil aviation remains a particularly attractive target in light of the fear and publicity that the downing on an airline would evoke."

""Not one big success of the Mossad has ever been made public,” he says. The war on terror, Halevy says, is the equivalent of World War Three. Osama bin laden? Halevy believes he is alive and well and living in northwest Pakistan. And there is an irony here. You may believe that bin Laden was behind Sept. 11, but millions of people in the Islamic world believe the man responsible was Halevy. Such is the reputation of the Mossad in the Middle East. Many Arabs believe it was a Mossad plot to give the Arabs a dirty name."