On the morning of September 11, 2001, two hijacked American airliners crashed into the twin towers of New York City’s World Trade Center and our entire earth, as we perceive it, seems to have stopped dead in its orbit and stood still. That tragic moment in time that has been immortalized as 9/11 in America’s lexicon, is destined to become as much of a milestone as “A Day of Infamy,” as FDR dubbed December 7, 1941, after the Japanese’s sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.

Surely, reliving the horror and shock of that invocative day has become somewhat of a mania and was certainly fresh in the minds and/or psyches of denizens of the land of the free, as the U.S. prepared to observe the first anniversary of 9/11. It was suggested that the nation (as much as possible), has cause to pause and ponder an uncertain future during a moment of silence. Ironically, the thought of an entire nation standing still evoked memories of the 1951 science fiction movie classic, “The Day The Earth Stood Still.” In hindsight, it was essentially a message movie that had yet to become a popular genre.

Inasmuch as African-American News&Issues communicates to an audited estimated 2 million people that have access to over 300,000 free copies of our uncompromised Black Perspective newspapers distributed in five major Texas cities weekly and a web page www.Aframnews.com, we would be remiss not to take you back to the future. The movie (starring the late Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, Hugh Marlowe, Sam Jaffe and a seven foot waiter named Lock Martin (as the Robot Gort), based on the Harry Bates short story “Farewell to the Master,” became as much of a human-interest story as it was a Sci-fi B-movie classic.

Rennie was cast as an alien dignitary, Klaatu, who traveled 250,000 miles from an uncharted planet to warn the nation’s leaders that they had to get along or an army of indestructible Gort robots, that police the universe, would be sent to, “Reduce earth to a burned out cinder.” The movie was made at the height of the cold war—when Americans were obsessed with the destructive capabilities of the atomic bomb—thus, it became a timeless message movie for war mongering nations. Need we suggest that America has become a war-mongering nation, inasmuch as Bush’s “war on terrorists,” has turned into an obsession?

An obsession that seems to have blinded him to everything but finding and eliminating Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda cells,” that has now evolved into “Desert Storm II” or a vendetta against Saddam Hussein. According to USA Today, Bush in his August 21, 2002 speech from his Crawford, Texas retreat, reiterated that, “Saddam Hussein is a threat,” and that the removal of the leader of Iraq would serve the world’s interests. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had just emerged from a meeting on missile defense, new weapons and a plan to modernize the military. Vice President Cheney and national security advisor Condoleezza Rice were also at the meeting.

In the interim, Iraq has warned that the U.S. would be dragging itself into a “new Vietnam” if it tried to topple President Hussein. “We fear neither America, nor Britain, nor anyone else. Even if America comes with all of its forces, Iraq will confront this army and turn the region into a new Vietnam,” Trade Minister Mohammed Mehdi Saleh promised. “Iraq is in a better position than it has been in recent years as far as preparation and readiness to assume victory. God willing, against any attack. We hope it will not happen, but Iraq will thwart any U.S. attack on our country.”

An article (“Iraqi: The GOP War With Itself”), on the August 21st edition of Time.com revealed: “GOP elders call for the party hawks to back down from their plans to go after Saddam Hussein.” Bush, however, seems to have allowed the horrendous events that occurred on 9/11 to make him a blind leader, leading the blind allies ergo, the entire free world is in danger of falling into a disastrous ditch of warfare that could be much more difficult to crawl out of than western powers dare imagine. History records that the fall of the Roman Empire began much like the United States of America’s impending showdown with a Moslem nation.

Perhaps, it would be wise for Bush’s advisors to remember the history of the rise and fall of great nations, so that America won’t be doomed to make the same mistake that they did. Nevertheless, even a 16-year-old student-- appearing on Lisa Berry’s Saturday (August 24) morning version of Person-to-Person, aired on KCOH (1430 AM), weekly with Michael Harris as host—had the wherewithal to surmise, “It seems that Bush is trying to finish what his father started with Desert Storm.” Unfortunately, there are no Gort robots to intimidate world leaders, but God knows that a war with Iraq (that very possibly could become nuclear), would “Reduce the earth to a burned out cinder.”

Meanwhile, history records that the haberdasher Harry Truman, who became the nation’s 33rd president by default, was the least educated and/or sophisticated chief executive in America’s history, nevertheless his maxim, “The Buck Stops Here,” has become every succeeding president’s credo. War on terrorists notwithstanding, inasmuch as America is the most powerful nation on earth and leader of the free world, it should be incumbent upon President Bush, who is blindly calling for a “preemptive strike” on Saddam Hussein, to be fully aware that the buck stops at his desk.

“We fear neither America, nor Britain, nor anyone else. Even if America comes with all of its forces, Iraq will confront this army and turn the region into a new Vietnam.”