Hunter S. Thompson 9/12/01-FEAR & LOATHING IN AMERICA (Amazingly smart and prescient article)

[kpete]

By Hunter S. Thompson
Page 2 columnist

...........................

Nothing -- even George Bush's $350 billion "Star Wars" missile defense system -- could have prevented Tuesday's attack, and it cost next to nothing to pull off. Fewer than 20 unarmed Suicide soldiers from some apparently primitive country somewhere on the other side of the world took out the World Trade Center and half the Pentagon with three quick and costless strikes on one day. The efficiency of it was terrifying.

We are going to punish somebody for this attack, but just who or what will be blown to smithereens for it is hard to say. Maybe Afghanistan, maybe Pakistan or Iraq, or possibly all three at once. Who knows? Not even the Generals in what remains of the Pentagon or the New York papers calling for WAR seem to know who did it or where to look for them.

This is going to be a very expensive war, and Victory is not guaranteed -- for anyone, and certainly not for anyone as baffled as George W. Bush. All he knows is that his father started the war a long time ago, and that he, the goofy child-President, has been chosen by Fate and the global Oil industry to finish it Now. He will declare a National Security Emergency and clamp down Hard on Everybody, no matter where they live or why. If the guilty won't hold up their hands and confess, he and the Generals will ferret them out by force.

Good luck. He is in for a profoundly difficult job -- armed as he is with no credible Military Intelligence, no witnesses and only the ghost of Bin Laden to blame for the tragedy.

more:
http://proxy.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?id=1250751
http://www.salon.com/news/torture/index.html?story=/opinion/greenwald/2010/09/11/exceptionalism

[zeemike]

1. He had it pegged right.

But we never listen to people like him.

[fishwax]

2. pretty great column -- I remember reading that at the time

especially this paragraph:

"The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now -- with somebody -- and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives."

[BrklynLiberal]

3. Incredibly prescient and insightful..

But all those who agreed and echoed these beliefs were like Cassandra...doomed to be doubted or ridiculed.

[lunatica]

4. I was invited to leave the country by a a person I worked with

Because on 9/12 I started worrying out loud that Bush was going to respond by going to war with a country rather than get together with international law enforcement organizations in the world and go after the people who were involved in the crime. Another staff member suggested I would probably be happier if I lived in another country since I 'hated this one so much'.

I asked her if she was willing to give up her Constitutional rights and everyone else's and she categorically proclaimed that she would be glad to give them up to be safe as if her beliefs made her a better American than mine made me.

Funny thing happened though. A few years later I heard her saying she wished someone would assassinate Bush so the country could be rid of him. Funnier still I said, "hell no! That would turn him into a martyr!"

She started to say no one could have foreseen how bad it got when I reminded her of our conversation years earlier. She responded by saying, "Well, no one but you could have seen it coming."

Fucking idiot.

[BrklynLiberal]

6. Isn't it amazing how what seems/seemed so obvious to us took forever

to dawn on some folks...and others..STILL DO NOT SEE IT!!!

[Snarkoleptic]

5. Some classic late Thompson work on the Bewsh era here...