London Daily Mirror--Tony Parsons
For those of you who aren't familiar with the LONDON DAILY MIRROR, it is a notoriously left-wing, anti-American daily publication writing in the United Kingdom. Tony Parsons, the author of the following article written one year after 9/11, has been a steady critic of US policy on many political and economic issues over the years. The following is a sharp departure from his normal writings... "Shame On You American Hating Liberals" Tony Parsons DAILY MIRROR September
11, 2002
One year ago, the world witnessed a unique kind of broadcasting - the mass murder of thousands- live on television. As a lesson in the pitiless cruelty of the human race, September 11 was up there with Pol Pot's mountain of skulls in Cambodia, or the skeletal bodies stacked like garbage in the Nazi concentration camps. An unspeakable act so cruel, so calculated and so utterly merciless that surely the world could agree on one thing - nobody deserves this fate. Surely there could be consensus the victims were truly innocent, the perpetrators truly evil.
But to the world's eternal shame, 9/11 is increasingly seen as America's comeuppance. Incredibly, anti-Americanism has increased over the last year.
There has always been a simmering resentment to the USA in this country - too loud, too rich, too full of themselves and so much happier than Europeans - but it has become an epidemic. And it seems incredible to me. More than that, it turns my stomach.
America is this country's greatest friend and our staunchest ally. We are bonded to the US by culture, language and blood. A little over half a century ago, around half a million Americans died for our freedoms, as well as their own. Have we forgotten so soon?
And exactly a year ago, thousands of ordinary men, women and children - not just Americans, but from dozens of countries, were butchered by a small group of religious fanatics. Are we so quick to betray our allies?
What touched the heart about those who died in the Twin Towers and on the planes was that we recognized them. Young fathers and mothers, somebody's son and somebody's daughter, husbands and wives, and children, some unborn. And these people brought it on themselves? And their nation is to blame for their meticulously planned slaughter?
These days you don't have to be some dust-encrusted nut job in Kabul or Karachi or Finsbury Park to see America as the Great Satan.
The anti-American alliance is made up of self-loathing liberals who blame the Americans for every ill in the Third World, and conservatives suffering from power-envy, bitter that the world's only superpower can do what it likes without having to ask permission.
The truth is that America has behaved with ENORMOUS restraint since September 11th.
Remember, remember, remember the gut-wrenching tapes of weeping men phoning their wives to say, "I love you," before they were burned alive. Remember those people leaping to their deaths from the top of burning skyscrapers and those who knew the plane they were on was going to crash.
Remember the hundreds of firemen buried alive. Remember the smiling face of that beautiful little girl who was on one of the planes with her mum. Remember, remember - and realize that America has never retaliated for 9/11 in anything like the way it could have.
So a few al-Qaeda tourists got locked without a trial in Camp X-ray? Oh, please pass the Kleenex.
So some Afghan wedding receptions were shot up after they merrily fired their semi-automatics in a sky full of American planes? A shame, but maybe next time they should stick to confetti.
AMERICA could have turned a large chunk of the world into a parking lot. That it didn't is a sign of strength.
American voices are already being raised against attacking Iraq - that's what a democracy is for. How many in the Islamic wo
