American intervention has been one disaster after another

When Americans get together, they sometimes focus on historic memories and ask one another questions such as: "Where were you when the World Trade towers were bombed?"

Me? I'm embarrassed to say that I saw the attack on TV and then went thoughtlessly about my housework.

No, I wasn't unfeeling. I just had the sound turned off on the TV and duly noted the horrible pictures in passing, but, in fact, I thought it was only some typical, terrible old disaster movie. Actually, it wasn't until later, when I left my home, that I found out about the tragedy.

On Sunday, it will be 15 years since 9/11. A neat kind of measurement for what happened then - but also about what has happened since.

And so, my duty today is to say one thing and then to ask another. Yes, it is fine - and it is respectful - to honor those who have fallen and so many other brave Americans. But is it not strange that virtually not a word has been spoken in this presidential campaign season about how our America today has handled this devastating blow to the future of our national spirit, mentality and patriotism?

For it was not so much the attack itself that has weakened our country's defenses or devastated our national identity, but how we have handled this miserable (but immeasurably Machiavellian) attack.

First, there was no dictate from above that our response must be to go to war with two of the most barbarous countries on Earth, Iraq and Afghanistan. This was the very deliberate choice of George W. Bush (he wanted to look macho for, so to speak, his Bush roots), Dick Cheney (he wanted a "democratic" Iraq as a protection for Israel) and Donald Rumsfeld (he always had an itchy trigger finger for "his" war).

Other ways? Father Bush - President George H.W. - and his sophisticated and capable advisers, like Jim Baker and Brent Scowcroft, wanted to deal with the 9/11 attackers one by one, working with Interpol, as well as the unlimited power and capacities of national intelligence units and political leaders across the globe, to eliminate them. At the same time, this would make the response internationally respectful and avoid the danger of foreigners on the ground in post-colonial states evoking yet more anti-American bile.

But our three "warketeers" (my moniker) wanted WAR. Since none of them had ever seen war, having been enthusiastic naysayers when the draft board came 'round, this was easy. (And, indeed, one can only imagine what would have happened if they were the types who had seen war and yet still wanted more of it.)

Barack Obama, filled with the love ballads of Oahu and Maui, once president, simply inherited these wars, along with all the impossible complications of them.

Not only were the two original wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, not being won, but the fact is that wars spawn, like fish going upriver, and create new, initially insignificant wars that soon grow into huge, angry ones. Then, to add to it, when foreign powers intrude, the conflicts become more complicated - and bloodier; when one power enters the drama, others immediately take other positions.

You will not hear it in the campaign, but we are being blamed in faraway Yemen for the Saudis' by-all-accounts deliberate bombing of hospitals, like those of Doctors Without Borders - after all, we are heavily arming the Sunni Saudis in their wholly discretionary fight against the Yemeni Shiites; and then, don't forget that the Saudis constituted the majority of the 9/11 attackers.

The United States has recently opened another front in its wars in the Middle East: We are now bombing and fighting in Libya, a large desert dreaming of being a country on the map of North Africa. Our "war" in Syria? We support Turkey because it's a NATO member, but now we're supporting Kurdish rebels in Syria, the YPG, except that the Turks are fighting them - and, thus, us! We're also militarily in South Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Pakistan, etc., etc.

Meanwhile - and how could this be? - President Obama goes to China and is insulted up and down by those "poor" Chinese; while only recently the Pew Research Center surveys showed that American public support for the idea that the U.S. "stands above all other countries" has dropped about a quarter since 2011 and is now a minority view.

Don't mistake me. I am your most perfervid American exceptionalist. But what a country we would be were we to see our role primarily as an example for the world and intervene elsewhere only when it was absolutely in our most serious interests. It would take really irresponsible men and women to sacrifice the geographical safety that our two oceans provide us and set out across them looking for trouble - and yet, that is what we have done!

Really since Vietnam, we have been throwing it all away with the driven need of some of our male elites to lecture, intervene, invade, kill masses of innocent people plus a few terrorists, and then hang around destructively while we build up hatred for ourselves and for all that we stand for.

This tendency is not written in stone. I couldn't even find it on Mount Rushmore. But why are our presidential candidates not even discussing it? Please, I beg of you: Talk some common sense!

Email Georgie Anne Geyer at gigi_geyer@juno.com.

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