MLK and 9.11

For some reason, you can get in a lot of trouble in this country by suggesting that the normal laws of cause and effect may have been in play when Islamic terrorists attacked this country on Sept. 11, 2001.

Or, to put it another way, that United States policy may have helped lead to that terrible day.

So let me go ahead and admit that, when I read this quote last night from Martin Luther King Jr.'s book "Where do we go from here":

Cries of black power and riots are not the causes of white resistance, they are the consequences of it.

I wrote "9/11?" as a note to myself in the margin. Please, no one tell Rudy Giuliani. A buddy of mine and I were drinking and talking a couple of months ago, and he said something that I thought was so well-put and simple that I wrote it down:

Let's just maybe stop and think for a second. ... Maybe something that we've done in the past is encouraging this behavior. ... The CIA knows about blowback.... If you piss somebody off, it's gonna cause a hatred. Doesn't mean it's your fault but tell me that doesn't mean s#@$. ... And of course if we leave (Iraq) that's another @#$% you.

Well put. And while I'm sounding like an unAmerican pinko coward of a commie anyway, let me share this quote, from the same King book, which King attributed to former federal Office of Economic Opportunity director Hyman Bookbinder:

The poor can stop being poor if the rich are willing to become even richer at a slower rate.

I'm not sure that's true. But if it is, we should get on that.