Think back on what was done to our country AFTER 9-11. The privatization of military functions...

[Hekate]

Last edited Sun Aug 15, 2021, 09:22 PM - Edit history (1)

Does anyone even remember that support functions like cooking were done by actual enlisted personnel? The list is enormous. The suppliers of privatized goods and services — we’ll call them privateers — made out like bandits. Soldiers who died in electrified showers, not so much.

The militarization of our American police and sheriffs departments by giving them military equipment.

The propagandistic drumbeat to war by all the networks not named FOX. Non-effing-stop.

My own mother-in-law was getting flashbacks to Vienna before the Anschluss. When I got involved in the anti-war protests, I met several more of her generation likewise — some who’d been living in the Dutch East Indies; and one who’d been interned in Shanghai, where the Chinese had decided it would be convenient to keep all the Europeans (in her case, her family had been on a ship to nowhere, filled with Jews). They all knew what war propaganda was and they all had reactivated cases of PTSD.

Depleted Uranium.

The Kabuki Theater of TSA — which has never gone away, and never will.

Yeah, we invaded Afghanistan 20 damn years ago and OUR country will never be the same. Those of us who were in DU at the time fought like hell to prevent not only the Invasion of Iraq, but what BushCheney were doing to the American government and the American people. Every time I hear “The Homeland” I just want to gag, because it’s an old blood-and-soil moniker that never should have landed on our nation.

Please contribute memories of your own. We need to remember.

I stole part of Mineral Man’s title. Thx, MM. https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=15740635

[Hekate]

1. There've been a slew of old-timer posts lately, but keeping it light & sentimental. Which is okay...

I’ve really enjoyed them, as they’ve been about friendships sparked and the good old days.

But as of today, with the lightning speed Fall of Afghanistan / Liberation from the Infidels (POV depending on whether you live here or are a Taliban there) we are taking a grimmer turn, and predictably are all over the place on whether we should ever leave.

So I am asking that we think back, and not solely about that benighted country, may God have mercy on their women and girls.

Let’s recall what happened to this country, our people, our government, our ability to move freely. There is a straight line from BushCheney to Donald Trump. Let’s explore that dark territory a bit.

[Hekate]

2. Opium production was suppressed by the Taliban...

IIRC back before we invaded, the Taliban rigorously suppressed growing poppies for opium…

Yes, they did. It was on religious grounds. And being the Taliban, yes it was a rigorous suppression. I forget where opium production shifted to, but it shifted away from Afghanistan. Heroin addiction went down, as opium was less abundant.

Funny thing about that though, poor farmers are thrifty folk, and the farmers of that dry soil planned ahead: they buried sacks of seed beneath their floors.

When the US invaded, poor farmers were still poor. Their annual incomes were so low that an intelligent invader who didn’t want opium production to resume on economic grounds could have easily subsidized each and every farmer to produce something else, or even just stay home. But no, who even thinks like that?

So out came the seeds. It is a cash crop where there are few other cash crops and it grows readily where other crops struggle. (As far as I know, heroin was and is produced elsewhere.)

At the time of the rather comprehensive article I read (WaPo or NY Times, probably 2003) opium had started to trickle out of the country. Addiction was starting to rise in the neighboring countries, and some addicts were making their way to border cities for easier access. Heroin production resumed and shipments to Europe and the US were on their way.

We are the consumer countries, after all.

[leftstreet]

7. one distinction

The Taliban didn't stop poppy farming for religious reasons

In the late 90s they were given assurance of international acceptance if they got on the anti-drug campaign. In Sept 2000 they sent a delegation to the UN hoping to trade on that compliance. It failed.

[Hekate]

8. Could well be; I haven't made a deep study of it. What I did do after making it to DU was read...

…everything available, and that article blew me away. That’s why I can guess at the source and approximate year, as I got here in 2002.

The poverty of the farmers really stuck with me. While we were patting ourselves on the back because women got to vote, farmers who might have been persuaded to change their cash crop by an international program designed around dry-land farming and well-drilling were left to their own devices.

Bush and the Neocons.

[CoopersDad]

3. K/R nt

[Hekate]

4. Thanks

[betsuni]

5. Thank you! Those were terrifying times.

"The Homeland"

[Hekate]

6. Yes, they were. 8 years of Obama were a huge relief. And then we got 4 years of Trump Terror...

I think at this moment we need to remember how it all started — and yes, Reagan’s a good place to look, but in a more immediate sense, with 9-11 and how Americans acquiesced so easily to the loss of liberty in the name of safety and revenge.

Trump came in with a fascist agenda and it took place so fast, I never could have imagined it could happen so fast, I never could have imagined the rot that made it possible.

So I hope a few other people will chime in with their memories, as DU was awake and very lively at that time.

[betsuni]

11. I'll never forget the Bush administration person who was quoted as saying:

"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. ... We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

[niyad]

9. LIHOP and MIHOP. knowing we were being fed BS, trying to warn everyone. The

Facetiously-named PATRIOT Act. All the horrors that we could see coming.

On the afternoon of 9/11, I had been i'ming with a friend, but finally said that I had to go out. My friend was shocked. "You aren't actually going out, are you?" "Of course I am. I have this to do." "Aren't you afraid?" "No. Whoever did this, whoever "they" are, want us to live in fear, and I will be damned if I will give them that satisfaction."

So I went about my business on the very quiet, empty streets. Later, I went to a friend's house, where a number of us gathered. We were extremely unimpressed by chimpy's speech. We had no idea that, 20 years later, we would still be dealing with the fallout.

[Hekate]

10. Yes. My daughter woke me from a late sleep, ordering me to turn on CNN. In those days...

…I was urgently trying to finish a PhD and spent many all-nighters working at it. There was obviously a TV in the office where my daughter worked. So what with me groggily turning on my TV at about 9:00 am California time, and watching the endless loop of film and commentary from New York, it was literally years before I sorted out the 9-11 timeline in relation to my own time zone, and what I may have seen in real time versus the film loop. I was in shock, like everyone else.

As days and weeks went by, I could not allow myself to take the time away from writing my dissertation to get involved in protests. I knew for a fact that if I did that, I would never finish, and that while Bush et al would never know or care, it would matter to me very much.

So I went to memorial services and the like, collected articles from the LA Times, emailed friends and relatives trying to understand what the hell had happened, and was not on social media at all. I finally delivered my dissertation and had my orals in February 2002.

Then came the fork in the road. There was a life I had imagined for myself in my post-doc world — which to my mother’s great disappointment had nothing to do with trying to break into academia at the university. Ironic isn’t it — I managed to disappoint my mother my whole life regarding my uneven report cards, and I was still a disappointment when I got a Doctoral degree. A therapist said it gave her brain cramp to hear about it.

Moving on. I was a political person by nature, and there was no way I could stay out of current events. That was the fork in the road: I knew there was a good chance I would not be able to travel back. And so that remains an imagined, unrealized life.

What I did do was oppose Bush and the Neocons by protesting in the streets, writing, joining local peace groups, serving as a liaison among various groups, organizing town halls, and was invited to join the local chapter of Veterans for Peace despite being a lifelong civilian. In the middle of 2002 a friend steered me toward Democratic Underground, and in it I found a home and a tremendous resource.

Thank you for responding, niyad.