The following rant was written about a week after the events of 9/11. It has languished on my PC for all these years. Firstly, there wasn't an unobnoxious place to put it the way I had the GEPR organized in those days. But mostly, given the attitudes of the people in my country after 9/11, I was actually afraid to upload it. Nobody seemed to see things the way I did. But, given the "regime change" that happened in the U.S. last week (the Democrats gaining control of the House and Senate), it seems that there are at least enough people who are sick of a war that isn't meeting the stated goals of making us safer from terrorism that perhaps now is the time to make this rant public. Anyone who thinks I'm "Un-American" for such a view will at least have to call the majority of people who live here "Un-American" in the same breath now. I still believe I was right in the days that followed 9/11, even though the focus has now moved from Afghanistan to Iraq. And we still haven't got Osama ... -- Fred Trafton, GEPR Editor, 11/13/06

The first question you'd better ask, especially if you don't live in the U.S. is "why are those U.S. flags flying up there?" You'd better ask because they mean different things to different people. What flying the flag means to some Americans, including me, is that they are proud of the way American citizens have given their time, money, effort and blood to help the victims of the terrorist attacks and their families. It means I'm proud of the way hundreds of New York firefighters and police officers tried to help the people in those burning towers at the risk of their own lives. And, last I heard, about 300 of them paid that price. I'm proud of the way Americans are banding together in spite of their usual petty differences to condemn this terrible action.

But don't think this is what the flag waving means to all Americans ... what it means to many at this moment in time is "LET'S KICK US SOME ARAB BUTT!" This is an opinion given voice by many people in the U.S. right now. This is the "cowboy" mentality, and I'm appalled to have seen it voiced by so many important and influential people in the U.S., not the least being our President. We're hearing this line even from our clergymen, who I thought were supposed to be supporting peace, love and understanding. I guess I was mistaken. So we're appropriating funds in our Congress to crank up military spending to build a bunch of bombs and war planes and heaven knows what else. For what reason unless we're planning on military actions somewhere?

No, I'm not a pacifist. I do believe there are times when it's right to go to war, even if it's deplorable to do so. But the fact of the matter is that in this case, we have no idea whose butt we think we want to kick. We're just thrashing around looking in vain for an enemy who seems to evaporate whenever you look in their direction. I believe that if we think of retribution in terms of military actions, we'll end up being as bad as the terrorists. We'll kill innocent people, old ladies and children in hopes that Osama bin Laden will get caught in range of one of the blasts. And even if we did kill that one man, does anybody really think there wouldn't be a dozen more to step up to take his place? There are plenty more that hate Americans now, and killing one of their own would only make them hate us more. What we'll have is the equivalent of a gang war where each side feels justified in killing because of the last time the rival gang killed one of theirs. It's just doomed to failure. Even most of our gangs have figured it out and tried to stop the killing.

It is a long standing law in our country that we do not engage in government-sanctioned assassinations. I'm sickened by the fact that our lawmakers "will not rule out" the possibility of changing this law. It seems that the only thing we can think of is getting revenge and finding some way of killing this guy we assume is responsible for this terrorist attack [Note: at the time this was written, Bin Laden had not yet admitted responsibility. The fact that he later did really didn't affect my views of the bigger picture at all]. To hell with anyone else in our way, we can rationalize anything. We can claim that if innocent Afghanis are killed in our attack, it's because they are harboring this criminal, that makes it all OK to start the massacres. I will tell our government the same as I would tell the terrorists ... there is never any excuse for killing innocent people. NEVER!

On our radios and TV's here in the States, all we have seen for the past week is heartbreaking stories of people's last cell phone calls from planes about to crash or pleading for help buried in the rubble, of wives being told that their husband's body has been found and seeing them break down in tears, of burned toys from a day care center in the World Trade Center tower. You want to bet that if we start slagging large areas of Afghanistan, we'll never see the stories of those people's grief and hatred, of their broken bodies and burned children? We'll only have become the Great Satan that Osama bin Laden claims us to be. This is not my vision of what I want for my country, and given time to think it through rationally, I don't think it's what most people here want. But we're all afraid, and we ask ourselves "What would John Wayne do?", and we tell ourselves he would go and kill the bad guy. If only things were as simple as they are in the movies ... where killing one bad guy would wipe out the entire organization under him. If I thought it was that easy, I might even advocate a surgical strike to kill that one bad guy. But I think we all know it's nowhere near that simple.

I would like to call on the whole of the Progressive Rock community worldwide to keep us in your thoughts as we try to figure out what kind of people we really are in this country. Light a candle, pray, chant, meditate or have a ritual. Do whatever you do, implore whatever or whoever your vision of divine Spirit is to grant wisdom to our leaders and not let them go down the path that fear and hatred always lead to. To our own destruction. If not our physical destruction, at least our spiritual one ... to become what we most hate.

Regards,
Fred Trafton
9/19/01