Sept. 11, 11 years later ...

Láurence Raulino (*)

The 1990s, after the "fall of the Berlin Wall" and the end of SOREX - Really Existing Socialism, then, is constituted in the decade and more cosmopolista promise of a world with fewer wars, as seldom seen in the history of mankind . The "globalization", still very uneven and with all its contradictions, was the watchword and the horizon of a world increasingly without borders because steadied himself as a new age, in which people of all backgrounds and nationalities began to travel and exchange information, physically and virtually, as never before in history had been given, a dazzled, or malicious, vaticinara be over.

On that auspicious decade, until the serious and sensitive issue in the Middle East, mainly involving Palestinians and Israelis, promised a solution satisfactory to both parties, with the mediation of then U.S. president, Bill Clinton, who very nearly did not succeed in his determination to promote peace between two peoples coming in endless ways, and almost brothers, under those same aspects - historical, cultural, recipients ...

But Clinton, a statesman who also had been involved in minor matters and controversial, even scandalous and destructive in a relationship with a White House intern - Monica Lewinsky - has reached the end of his second term in the presidency of the United States and did his successor, behold, his candidate - Democrat Al Gore - was defeated by a right-wing conspiracy estadosunidense, hydrophobic and warmongering, I wanted because I wanted to put in its place George W. Bush, the son of former President Bush, graduated in two of the country's top universities - Harvard and Yale - but known by a controversial past, including for being outspoken user of drugs and alcohol - alcoolotra out, even - in youth and, worst of all, still committed to the petroleum and war.

After eight months of Bush starting his first term as president, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 occurred. In response, Bush announced a global war against terrorism, when he ordered the invasion of Afghanistan that same year, and in 2003, the invasion of Iraq. In addition to national security issues, Bush promoted policies to reform the economy, health, education, and social security. He signed laws cutting taxes overall, the No Child Left Behind Act, and Medicare, for the elderly this. His tenure was followed by a national debate about immigration and national security.

In the conduct of international politics of his country, President Bush promoted a vigorous and radical revision in the pursuit of understanding between Israelis and Palestinians, and in particular the diplomatic management of the previous government, directed to that quest for peace, especially in Middle East, thence sharpening the minds between "Arabs" and Israelis, of course, which probably would have contributed to the attacks of September 11, 2001, carried out by extremist factions of Islam, under the leadership of radical Osama bin Laden.

Immediately after the attacks of 11 September, there was a real change of positions on U.S. foreign policy, which became dominated by a vision unilaterlaista and paranoid, unprecedented in a world that, in the previous decade, glimpsed a globalization without borders and without hegemonies political, military ... In continuation of debates and discussions desfechados within a newly created War Cabinet, during a weekend in the sequence shown to 11 September, foreign policy (and also internal, though, this, to a lesser degree) Bush was defined, above all, the War on Terrorism. This position was described at first hand a "Communication to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People" special on September 20, 2001, in which Bush announced that the United States was at war against terrorism.

We know well that what followed, when the world left to live and dream about the prospects for effective multilateralism and cosmopolitan, despite all its paradoxes and contradictions, to move to the field of paranoia oportuníssimo international terrorism, with the return of war diffuse and constant between the West and the "Islamic World", almost a reproduction of the Crusades, in the middle 3rd millennium, the full taste of the Republican right and its hawks. Even with all that, this environment has made possible the emergence of Barack Hussein Obama, the Democrat who would be the first black president in U.S. history.

Obama hunted and killed bin Laden, something that Bush tried but not very consegiu, even with militarily occupied Afghanistan and Iraq, this having hanged Saddam Hussein. Not just the United States - and the world, per table - live in peace because the economic crisis that hit the country and the world, in 2008, still does damage, along with the cursed legacy - that yes, indeed cursed, unlike rhetoric, here - the war on terror, designed and initiated by his predecessor 11 years ago.

(*) - Lawyer, writer and columnist.