One point that the author of Come September makes about control is Saddam Hussein and how he was a puppet under control of the United States. Saddam Hussein before the first gulf war in the 90’s received weapons and traded with the U.S. Saddam constructed towns and small villages to test out machine guns and biological weapons thus slaughtering thousands of people meanwhile the U.S was funding him. According to the essay Sadaam Hussein took it upon himself to act independently from the United States and invaded Kuwait thus the first gulf war resulted. The point is that the U.S knew about the slaughtering and ignored it until Sadaam Hussein decided to invade Kuwait. Thus the U.S. went to war with Iraq to remove Sadaam from power.
Another example the Author brings up is that there are three institutions that run the world today. That’s The International Monetary Fund, The World Bank, and The World Trade Organization. The author describes them as secretive and are primarily dominated be the U.S. The point I believe the author is trying to make is that the current Governing system is going to break because there are too many poor people that have nothing to lose. These people will strap bombs to them and blow up civilians’ just too combat democracy and capitalization. There are many people in this world that feel bullied by the United States. According to the essay the U.S. funds Israelites with weapons and money. The Israelites in return exterminate the Palestine’s from their land so the U.S. can use the Gaza Strip for strategic purposes. They are treated as second class citizens and live in fear every day. Not a good way to treat humans. Is the United States being looked at in a good way by the world?
Many Americans are oblivious to what is going on in the world. America is sheltered and the government and its secret organizations are making power moves in the world that may have long-term negative effects not only for America but for everybody. The problem is the status quo of our current governing system is a distorted democracy. It is an illusion to blind people from seeing the truth. The United States Government which is considered to be a democracy “for the people, of the people, by the people” is more or a dictatorship with capitalism, control, and power as the primary objective, not the welfare of people. Our government t is set up to repress citizens with the burden of debt, credit cards, mortgage loans, and outrageously high interest rates. Credit card companies prey on our vulnerable youth. What a genius plan. Don’t educate people, apply a heavy financial burden and make them work their entire lives supporting the madness. The point here is that not everybody in America can focus on what is happening with the world and the government wants to keep it that way. The government has to maintain control somehow and not educating people is a good way to control them.
The Author says “It’s hard for me to say this, but ‘the American Way of life’ is simply not sustainable. Because it doesn’t acknowledge that there is a world beyond America. Fortunately, power has a shelf life.” I believe this to be true.
I hope one day the world will be a paradise where greed, money, and power are not the objectives and peace, love and happiness are. Always remember the golden rule “treat others as you would want to be treated.”
By: Jason Siska
6 comments:
As the anniversary of September 11 passes we remember the events of that dreadful day. But as Arundhati Roy states in Come September, “…but to those in other parts of the worlds to whom that date has long held significance.” To the rest of the world the meaning of 911 has little or no significance to the attacks on the World Trade Center.
The video clip I included is the beginning of Postal, a controversial film by Uwe Boll, a German filmmaker. The video shows the lack of respect other countries have given to the attacks on September 11. But the filmmaker and the rest of the world’s defense the attacks didn’t affect them like it affected us and as Roy states there were so many more events that took place during that month.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt_tv7t79WY
Jason, your post was very interesting. It is sometimes ignored by the mass media that capitalism and the world economic organizations which claim to lend help to developing nations allow these same nations to fall further into debt and come to depend on the core nations of the world. The attack on September 11th, 2001 was truly an attack on the ideals which have allowed the United States to succeed in relation to other countries- capitalism, a strong military, and democracy. A thought that occurred to me after class is that while there were four planes which crashed that day after being hijacked, we always seem to ignore the one that crash-landed in Pennsylvania. While it is impossible to determine, it was believed that the plane was going to be used to attack the White House or the Capitol- true symbols of democracy at work in our country. But yet, the passengers on this plane are immortalized in films like Flight 93 as people were interested in seeing the heroic actions of the passengers as they tried to overtake the hijackers. Americans were interested in finding more heroes on such a tragic day in history to show how a few were able to change the outcome of this terrorist plan.
To respond to John’s comment- Thanks for posting a link to this film. I was not familiar with the film at all and was certainly surprised by the perspective which was being taken. The clip was truly eye-opening as the “terrorists” negotiated their reward in order to justify their actions. The filmmaker’s version of the events of the day, in this short clip alone, is not only insulting to Americans but also to Muslims and their religious beliefs.
After reading Come September the one statement "If you're not a Bushie you're a Taliban.If you don't love us, you hate us.If you're not Good you're Evil.If you're not with us,you're with the terrorists". This statement best describes the way America thinks. If you have one doubt about the war, or you question the war or simply the government, you are looked at like your Anti-American. You are the bad guy in this scenario.You mind as well be throwing the bombs here in their eyes. You have to be 100% with them. Alot of people think that we needed to go into war for retaliation, which I do agree. But our society needs to sit back and look at all the soliders that are dying overseas. Total deaths in Iraq since war started 4155 people (which was updated on September 5th 2008, I will include the link to the total numbers). Including military deaths and deaths from the attack we are at roughly maybe 8,000 American souls that were taken. How many more lives need to be taken to end the war? When we run out of soilders?
This is link I forgot to add of the number of soilders/Americans that were wounded and or died in Iraq
http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/
You all bring up some good points. When Roy brings up how power has a shelf life, I couln't help ponder what was meant. Will there be some sort of great revolutionary change? Will the government be overthrown? How will it all, hypothetically, play out? I guess there's only two ways to determine this - wait and see and be a catalyst for change.
I also love how the author addressed 9-11 in the eyes of Americans by saying, "Welcome to the world." The rest of the world has been dealing with a lot worse for a much longer period of time. It really is shameful how self absorbed we are. But as Jason touches upon, it's all part of the plan.
kiowa -
I'm glad you mentioned the "welcome to the world" post. I encountered a lot of people withholding bitterness about the attention, media, and interest surrounding 9/11. even among my own circles of friends (particularly among those who are very aware of happenings outside of the U.S./those who check come from a country that is suffering their own share of tragedies) there is a lot of scoffing at how 9/11 is "nothing" compared to the kinds of ugliness happening in the world without half the media coverage or attention given to it.
I admit, even I, at a certain point felt a morbid kind of cynicism at the level of seriousness Americans seem to regard 9/11 with (for example, considering satiric material pertaining to it taboo/uncouth) while they are quick to write off/ignore "worse" things happening elsewhere in the world.
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