Terrorizing Ourselves September 11
Seven years ago I was in my office near San Francisco. The sun was bright. It was warm, one of those “just right” days we get in early fall. My phone rang and my wife said my father had called from back east. An airplane had flown into the World Trade Center. My first reaction was that it was some horrible mistake. After all, a B-25 bomber once crashed into the Empire State Building. Surely, that was the case again. Several minutes later my father called to say he had just watched a second plane viciously rip into the other tower. A third call carried the news that the Pentagon - where my step-brother worked - had also been hit, the Towers were collapsing, and there were rumors of yet another rogue plane still in the air.
Clearly this was no horrible mistake. It was a monstrous, intentional act.
Over the coming weeks, America went from stunned silence to righteous indignation. Nearly every pundit in the land ruminated on how things would never be the same again. I’m old enough to remember the Kennedy assassination. Old enough to remember the same predictions then. I’m old enough to remember that, after an appropriately shocked mourning period, the changes came mostly in the form of renamed streets, bridges, roads, elementary schools, and, most famously, Cape Canaveral. We’d remember Kennedy for years, but life didn’t change much.
Arrogant and Slightly Dim
I’d never liked Bush. I disagreed with almost every stand during his first year. I saw him as an arrogant, slightly dim, and inept man who was relatively harmless if not encouraged. After the attacks, he’d made the appropriate speeches at the appropriate times. He managed to sound in-control and competent enough, which is exactly what the country needed. We pulled together in a way not seen since WWII. Flags of solidarity flew from every house. Foreign leaders, including some normally antagonistic to us, offered seemingly sincere condolences. People were still trusting enough to believe their government would catch the cowardly bastards and return them for a fair American-style trial. Then, the country would turn its attention back to the other problems we faced and move on. There was no reason to think this situation would be any more world-changing than Kennedy’s death.
I was wrong.
Those horrific explosions and images of people leaping to their deaths were the first shots in the War on Terror. They were the first indications that things truly never would be the same again. Over the next seven years America entered two wars in the name of avenging the people killed that day. The seeds of terror sown by a handful of extremists grew into an ugly, scrabby tree of hate and fear. The War on Terror slipped slowly into the War of ErrorTM. Each move the administration made was more inept and less truthful than the last. George Bush harvested the rotten apples from the tree of terror and passed them around, encouraging everyone to eat heartily, to swallow them, and accept a piece by piece dismantling of our Constitution and freedoms. He seized and spread the terrorist-bred fear with ample helpings of his own as he bludgeoned his countrymen and ramrodded illegal and stupid changes to the fabric of American life.
No Justice…For Anyone
It wasn’t until his second term, when he crappie fished while people in New Orleans drowned, that the public finally began to see his ineptitude and hubris. We all watched as the President of our nation stopped working for us and started working for himself. The promise of our becoming a more United States became a cruel joke. Through legal and possibly illegal means our President set himself up as THE government. Congress and the judiciary stood timidly by as he ransacked our national principles and proved to the world were were weak, fearful sheep. There would be no fearsome justice meted out to the terrorists. In fact, there would be no justice at all. For any of us. Especially for us.
Today, Mr. Bush is the most unpopular President in history. The attacks on America’s spirit launched that September day continue. After the deaths of hundreds of thousands around the world George Bush finds himself hopelessly trying to defend the most inept and useless wars ever conducted by this country. While we’re distracted by lipstick and barnyard animals, the President continues to sow fear and pass the legacy along to his acolyte - a man committed to the same worm-eaten principles of fighting terror with fear. It seems the world has changed. At best, it’ll take decades to undo the damage this President has wrought. At worst, the damage may never be completely fixed. The world has changed, and not for the better. President George W. Bush has led this country to do precisely what the terrorists wanted.
Our democracy, once the envy of the world, has been voluntarily reduced to a quivering shell of fear. The terrorists have won and every sunny September 11th I’m reminded of that fact.
I suppose the pundits were right after all. Things really will never be the same again.
The Poobah is a featured contributor at Bring It On!
This work, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
daveawayfromhome Sep 11
Lord Chimp didnt do it all on his own. There was a heapin’ helpin’ of complicity from the press, and outright willful naivitß by the general public.
None of which absolves the Bush Administration. On days like this, when we seem poised for yet another four years of the same crap (because if the race is anything like close, McCain will “be elected”), I feel a great deal of dispair. I have children, and best parenting path that I seem to have for them is to raise them to have globally valuable jobs and then get the hell out of the country. That’s a hell of a legacy for the GOP and George Walker Bush.
daveawayfromhome’s last blog post..nothing
daveawayfromhome Sep 11
that should be “naivité”
daveawayfromhome’s last blog post..nothing
Omnipotent Poobah Sep 11
I agree, there’s plenty of blame to go around. I also see your point about the kids. My daughter is heading to college next week and I worry about what will become of her.
It’s a sad, fucked up place we find ourselves.
Freida Bee Sep 11
On this day, not really thinking of the date, in a conversation with my 9 year-old son, I stated that I would like to consider myself a pacifist, that I do not think that war or fighting is the answer to anything, and that when faced with the choice to be violent, I would hope I would not choose as such (hopefully, that’s actually what it means. Wait, gotta look it up…. Alright.) He considered things for a minute and said, “I’m a pacifist too. I mean I like to play video games and stuff, but in real life I think fighting is stupid.” (I’ll have to remind him of that the next time his little brother wallops him because he won’t give him the thing he wants.)
I have a friend who feels sorry for W, says he’s a scapegoat, which is true to a certain extent, but I’d rather see him go to jail for crimes against humanity, personally. I can only hope that W has inspired an entire generation which knows very well that war is not the answer to any dilemma. I think the greatest tragedy of all of this is not that we have waged a war, but that we have waged a war that is removed from our daily lives enough that we function in the face of it. I am sure Iraq wishes it had had such privilege. Perhaps, with all that newfound “democracy”…. Crap.
Freida Bee’s last blog post..The World According to (a) Garb(led) (Mind)
distributorcap Sep 14
that was a terrific and dead on post. bush got a lot of help along the way to continue down his path of destruction. when the press rolled over on iraq - and rolled over and over and over again — that was it
i do disagree with one thing
After the attacks, he’d made the appropriate speeches at the appropriate times. He managed to sound in-control and competent enough, which is exactly what the country needed.
he didnt — he sound scripted, nervous and lost — he only sounded the way you describe becasue people were in shock. anyone would have sounded good. if you look back - he didnt. he wasnt leading, he was sowing the seeds for his agenda
just my 2 cents
great great post
distributorcap’s last blog post..Brilliance
Omnipotent Poobah Sep 14
FB,
I see what you mean, but I can’t say I’m a pacifist in the truest sense of the word. I respect those who do feel that way, but I also think there are shitbirds in the world who understand nothing other than the mailed fist and that’s the only way anyone will releave the suffering they cause.
Having said that, war should be a last resort, even if it means tolerating some things that should be corrected. If you don’t, you end up with wars like Iraq where a despot was in charge and it was tough on the Iraqis, but not nearly as tough as being bombed into the stone age. Prudent politicians and generals understand this, but prudence, it seems, is going the way of the buggy whip.
Smart kid you have there BTW!
DC,
Thanks and I see what you mean about his speeches. I think you’re exactly right about what he said and did in the immediate aftermath. He looked like Cheny had threatened to kick his ass orsomething. But I was think more about a few days after.
Once he had time to compose himself he did make some speeches that roused people, but at the time I don’t think many people saw them for what they were. Had he used the power he had at that time wisely, not only the war, but many other problems we have could have been corrected or avoided.
I think his father did the same thing in the first Iraqi war.
He fell asleep at the switch and didn’t see the inivasion coming, but then he did a masterful job at putting together an actually coalition (that also included Polad as i recall) and fought the war in the way wars are supposed to be fought.
But once we won, he dropped the ball. He made plenty of political capital and squandered it on nothing, not to mention screwing the innocent Iraqis and setting the stage for his boob of a son. Had he took the support he had at the time and channeled it into energy independence we’d be a long way to having fixed the problem now.
I guess to my mind they’re both assbuckets, but at least Bush the eldeer had the brains to do something, he just didn’t. His idiot son was doomed almost from the start.
Omnipotent Poobah’s last blog post..Terrorizing Ourselves