9/11 - the day we committed national suicide?

Chris Hedges has an article up at truthdig.com where he discusses the aftermath, what 9/11 meant - a tragic loss of life and a horrible event - and what it was turned into later, how the powers that be used the images of towers falling and planes crashing into them to justify wars and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents.

It didn't have to happen like this. We had the support and sympathy of the world after 9/11. But we squandered it out of rage, and out of wanting to get quick (unthinking) revenge. He states: "The attacks turned us into monsters, grotesque ghouls, sadists and killers who drop bombs on village children and waterboard those we kidnap, strip of their rights and hold for years without due process."

After the article, there is a long comments section that is worth reading. I think a commenter summed up the US's reaction to 9/11 better than anything I've seen anywhere else. Prisnersdilema writes:

Chris Hedges correctly understands that our response to 911 was to commit national suicide. Suddenly faced with a situation in which the delusions we live by could not be used adapt, we simply chose oblivion. Yes, the elite would like to nationalize our feelings. To keep us looking outwardly instead of within. Using, that pretext to destroy, this country by turning it into a flag waving police state. While advancing the corporate destruction of the lives of every American citizen. They do not have the ability to fix this country, because it cannot be fixed as long as their evil selves are in charge, they are the problem. We are ruled by madness, and madmen. Look what they have done to us. There can be only one result as long as they remain in control.

Is there a way to put an end to the madness? Or are we going to steamroll ahead, diving into oblivion and ignorance happily so that we don't have to look at reality, don't have to see that the horrors of suicide bombings in the Middle East, Bali, London and elsewhere, while not perpetrated by our personal actions, came to fruition in part because of actions we condone with our silence?

Click here to read Hedges' full article.