A New Perspective         Why do so many people hate Americans?

A New Perspective         Why do so many people hate Americans? If you believe some of our politicians, they hate us because we are free or they are jealous of our freedom. I’m not even sure what that means. Countries such as Canada, Great Britain, and France are just as free as we are and no one displays such hatred toward them. They hate us because, as a nation, we are wealthy and abuse our power to suit our own ends. In regards to the September 11th attacks, I keep hearing our president talk about “justice” and “retribution”. There are so many injustices in the world that, as a nation, we ignore. If the U. S. spent less time and money on policing the world and more time and money on healing the world, we would not have these problems.

Although I believe that those who died in the September 11th attacks deserve justice, we need to have a different perspective on the allocation of justice.

In what could have been our finest hour we stood up, pointed our collective finger and said, “It was YOU. YOU did this.” We were asking the wrong question. We should have been asking “Why?” instead of “Who?” Although the media and our government tried to downplay it, our little war in Afghanistan did kill innocent people who, had in no way, contributed to our tragedy. It would have been impossible not too. After the September 11th, attacks I was sickened by the retailers whose ads printed across waving flags told us that it was our duty and right to buy expensive cars, shoes, or other items. These blatant abuses of “patriotism” (and our vulnerability) tried to distract us from the fact that night after night we were bombing innocent people who could not even...