George W. Bush pulled off some serious political jujitsu when he turned 9/11 into a political advantage for himself. Even Joe Scarborough was talking this morning about how Bush had looked like a frightened rabbit that day. After shrugging off the warnings by telling his CIA briefer, “Okay, you’ve covered your ass,” Bush should have resigned in shame. Instead, he turned every anniversary into a chance to bully Democrats. I didn’t like it then and I don’t like it now when Democrats use the day to blast Republicans for not catching and killing bin-Laden. The president deserves full credit for tracking down bin-Laden, but today should be about the victims. I was living and working in the New York suburbs at the time, and no one I knew was more than two degrees separated from someone who died. My mail center was targeted with anthrax and closed for more than two years. I had to wave my mail around in the wind before taking it inside. My secretary lost a friend, and a co-worker lost his brother. One of the pilots went to my parent’s church. The “Let’s Roll” guy lived about four miles from me. The 9/11 and anthrax attacks were attacks on me, my community, and my people. And I still take those attacks very, very seriously. It’s personal.
Unfortunately, the worst part of 9/11 came after the attacks. The worst part was how we reacted. We had terrible leadership. We had really terrible leadership. Our elites totally failed us. In both parties. If Barack Obama had not been more level-headed than average, he would not be president today. But he still perpetuates some of our overreaction to that day. No one party should seek, and neither deserves any political credit for anything having to do with 9/11.
The president attained a degree of justice, which is praiseworthy. But today is not the day to toot that horn.
I have two very strong personal reactions to 9/11.
I remember the long drive home from work to pick up my kids from school (1st and 3rd grades at the time) and searching for how to explain to their young minds what had just happened. I wasn’t sure how to make sense of it myself but I was very conscious that this was a huge parenting moment of responsibility for me.
Second, I was hugely worried about how Bush and the nation would respond. In the first few days and weeks I was somewhat relieved and optimistic. Then, I recall sitting up up almost all night on the first anniversary depressed, angry and in despair for my kids because Bush and the nation had royally fucked it up and (largely) collectively lost its mind. I don’t recall a worse day in my adult life. War with Iraq looked inevitable, personal liberties were under assault, fear mongering and stupidity ruled the day, and reasonable, moderate thinking might as well have lost in a vacuum of outer space.
Today, I don’t think I can be grateful enough — for my kids and the nation — to have the president we have.
I was shocked to realize that CBtY, who is a senior in high school, was in first grade on 9/11.
From 1st grade to graduation in just over a decade. Is that really all it takes?
IIRC, you could see the smoke from the towers when you went over the Sourland Mountains. That’s astonishing.
Yep, a senior. And she isn’t nearly as fucked up at the world she is growing up in.
And yes I could see the smoke as I drove on Grandview Rd in Skillman, NJ — oddly enough in front of the former home of corrupt Somerset County Prosecutor Nick Bissell who five years earlier killed himself in an Nevada hotel room as US Marshals broke in, rather than be hauled off to serve his prison sentence.
He had been convicted of, among other things, planting drugs on people and then confiscating their home and cars as “drug seized property” as part of a plea agreement to avoid jail. (I literally wonder if he got the idea from an episode of The Rockford Files)
Anyway, hugely off topic, but the location I was at added to the surreal feel of the day and moment.
Agression against (NOT “war with”) Iraq looked inevitable when, within hours of the first attack, there were public attempts, announced on the news, to tie Saddam Hussein to the attacks. It was a case of brazen opportunism, and they got away with it in spades.
I had a colleague at the time who was an Assyrian-Iraqi immigrant, and when I stuck my head into her office that morning we both said, almost simultaneously, “My God, they are trying to pin this on Saddam, and they’re going to use it as an excuse to attack Iraq”. We both had family and friends there still who were enduring their tenth year of horrific suffering at the hands of Bush I, Bill “I feel your pain” Clinton and now Bush II. We didn’t know whether to laugh at the absurdity of it, or cry for all the reasons that became obvious in the next years as the Bush administration and the overwhelming majority of Democrats, both “liberal” and “progressive”, aided mightily by the press, successfully marketed and executed a lie-based war of pure aggression.
the overwhelming majority of Democrats
Huh? The overwhelming majority of Democrats voted against the AUMF, and opposed the war all along.
The AUMF-Iraq was only one of many decisions made by Congress in the aftermath of 9/11. Also, Democrats in the Senate authorized the Iraq War by a 29-22 margin. Only Feingold resisted the Patriot Act. The AUMF-Afghanistan was ridiculously broad and open-ended. And it was the Democrats, not the Republicans, who forced the ridiculously stupid and wasteful creation of the Dept. of Homeland Security. Nowhere near a majority of Democrats had the president’s back on Gitmo. There has been no pressure from elected officials on the left to hold Bush-era personnel or officials accountable for murder and torture.
If you want to paint that overall picture as a majority of elected Democrats opposing Bush’s foreign and national security politics, you’re crazy. And remember how Howard Dean was treated by the Democratic Establishment. Being a dirty hippie was never a popular place to be until Obama emerged on the scene. And he proved that you don’t have to be a dirty hippie to oppose stupid wars.
The statement I was replying to was:
“the overwhelming majority of Democrats, both “liberal” and “progressive”, aided mightily by the press, successfully marketed and executed a lie-based war of pure aggression.“
That is, the Iraq War.
“he proved that you don’t have to be a dirty hippie to oppose stupid wars.”
Since a large majority of Democrats opposed the stupid war, I’m not sure what he proved.
And, as you always do, you found it necessary to put words into my mouth in order to make even a lame argument. I said nothing about the House or the Senate, or the votes, nor was I referring only to elected officials. I was referring to Democrats in general, particularly those with the power to shape public perceptions and views.
“Words in your mouth.”
Lie.
I never accused you of saying anything about the House or Senate. You, quite dramatically, didn’t provide even a shred of evidence from the real world to back up your drama queen nonsense, so I, as is my habit, volunteered some of my own.
So now, backed into a corner, you gin up a new line of nonsense: when you said Democrats didn’t oppose the Iraq War, you didn’t mean Congressional Democrats. (Oh, of course not.) The only problem with that is that Democrats across the country opposed the Iraq War by an even larger margin than their co-partisans in Congress.
I don’t need to invent things to make your arguments look dumb. Your arguments are dumb all by themselves.
You are completely, utterly wrong about this. Democrats opposed the Iraq War by landslide numbers. Democrats in Washington, Democrats across the country. Sorry to intrude on what is clearly a beloved, though bogus, narrative.
No one I know supported that fake war.
“The overwhelming majority of Democrats voted against the AUMF, and opposed the war all along.“
Yeah, well, 61% of Democratic representatives is arguably not an “overwhelming” majority, and 58% of Democrats in the Senate voted for it, which makes your majority even less “overwhelming”.
The numbers are 58% against to 42% in favor. A sixteen point margin is a landslide in American politics.
Nice walkdown, though: “Sure, I’m completely wrong, but, well, don’t say it so loud!”
Why don’t you try getting your facts right before hurling venom?
You start off complaining about the Bush administration pinning a massacre on the wrong guy just because they wanted to get him all along, and you end by doing exactly the same thing, for exactly the same reason.
I knew we were going to war with Iraq on 29 Jan, 2002 — the day Bush43 gave the Axis of Evil speech.
He put it out there and there was no way he was going to be able walk it back. He would look like an even greater fool to the world and frankly he probably couldn’t win re-election if he backed down. I don’t think the American public would have settled for just some color coded alert system and bearded special ops on horseback in Afghanistan searching in vain for bin Laden.
Iran and Korea seemed less likely if for no other reason than they seemed much more risky to undertake and harder to sell. But Saddam? (In my best goober voice)”Shit we kicked his ass once. Let’s do it again, but this time finish it. Right?”
While perhaps irrelevant because within hours of 9/11 the WH was trying to pin it on Saddam, the dumbest thing about the Axis of Evil speech is that Frum came up with the term, not because it described good policy but because he thought it was a good way to sell (stupid) policy to American by somehow linking the “War of Terror” to WWII and fighting THAT axis. Ridiculous.
Andrew I agree that the intent was pretty clear at that point, but it did not become a done deal until they had a pretext, which they got on Sept 11.
As for Iran, I guess they’re next in line at the moment, and the pretext is not a whole lot better than the one the devised for Iraq.
The one sour note for me at the Dem convention was the triumphal blood lust on display about the killing of bin Laden. I’m not saying there was no reason to get rid of him, but making a celebration of it just brought back to me all the dark days after 9/11 when it seemed this country could go so out of control that the rest of the world might band together to try and stop the rogue nation we were becoming.
I had several sour notes that I noted, but I get what you’re saying. The best I can rationalize it is that President Obama, as the bearer of the Democratic standard, is continually under pressure to fight back against the familiar charge from the GOP that Democrats are weak on national security in general, and GWOT in particular.
Personally, I can’t wait until we get to a level of national sanity when we can put this whole War on Terror period behind us, but until that day arrives, if we want to be politically viable, we have to give the voting public frequent–often overt–reminders about precisely who did what, when, and how it worked out.
I don’t like it either.
Yeah, I understand the political reasons for it, but my problem was with the tone. Making a cool decision to assassinate someone is a grave step, even when that someone is an international criminal of the first order. Pointing out that Obama brought bin Laden to his end can be done without a cheerleading atmosphere. It also makes me uneasy given all the moral discomfort of the ongoing drone programs.
You can’t win the peace until you’ve won the war.
I get how you feel, but you need to understand. Americans really are that blood thirsty, as long as it’s “over there.” The response to 9/11 showed that we really are a nation of cowards.
But he still perpetuates some of our overreaction to that day. No one party should seek, and neither deserves any political credit for anything having to do with 9/11.
The national overreaction, as you describe it, to 9/11 is not under the President’s control. It just so happens that he’s played an instrumental role in bringing at least part of that drama to closure. He can’t just “aw, shucks” it, that would be disingenuous at best. He has to ride this wave of at times overbearing sentiment as best he can without falling off or being engulfed by it. It’s a horribly fine line to walk.
If anybody can address this event with the dignity called for, it’s President Obama.
That said, “in both parties,” rankles. A lot. The Democratic leadership got steamrolled under a toxic landslide of jingoism and misdirected rage. Ari Fleischer openly said that naysayers and critics of the Bush admin needed to “watch what [they] say.”
But we don’t have to go through the litany of outrages. Short story: both sides don’t, and didn’t then.
Bullshit.
With the exception of a too-small minority, the Democrats went along with Bush in everything he wanted to do, and even pressured him into creating the Dept. of Homeland Security, which he didn’t want to do.
Even to this day, the Democrats refuse to allow Obama to close Gitmo, and there is no pressure on him to curtail the Patriot Act or punish anyone for starting a war of choice on false pretenses and torturing and murdering people in our custody and at our mercy.
Obama has a lot on his plate, and without the support of his own party, he was no way to make these things right.
Never let the Democrats off the hook.
Give the voters credit, however, for picking Obama over the assholes who authorized this mess.
Nah. I get where you’re coming from, and there’s a ton of history to address, but whatever else you can say about Dem cowardice–justifiable and otherwise, and believe me I’ve been a HUGE critic of the party and how it fails to stand up to the GOP going back to Bush II–there’s just no equivocation between what they’ve done as a party and the modern GOP.
I call bullshit on your bullshit.
the word you were going for is “equivalence.”
In any case, Bush was ultimately responsible.
You’re right, it’s “equivalence.” I’m making a lot of uncharacteristic mistakes like that lately. Probably need to start reading real books again.
They’re the Democrats; of course there’s equivocation!
Well, sometimes anyway. Kinda. In a sense…
Just posted a diary – Deafness by Bush Even After 6th Warning of Al Qaeda Attack
To the degree that Bush and the GOP got the whole “War on Terror” thing so wrong (and that the American people largely went along with it), and that Obama has been refreshingly smart, thoughtful and restrained on it, I think it is OK and even important to point out how and why he is getting it right.
There is a lot to be done still that politically Obama doesn’t have the capital to do. Gitmo is still open. The Patriot Act is still in force. Homeland Security is still probably the biggest waste of government pork in all of government. And I still need to take my fucking shoes off and get xrayed every time I fly. And more.
With the exception of a too-small minority, the Democrats went along with Bush in everything he wanted to do
The Democrats in Congress voted against the Iraq AUMF by a 58%-42% margin.
56% is too small, but it’s a too-small majority.
“he’s played an instrumental role in bringing at least part of that drama to closure.“
What part of it has he brought to closure? Killing bin Laden? I can’t see that as closure. Killing bin Laden may make a lot of Americans feel better – revenge does that for some people – but it hasn’t solved any real problems.
The so-called “withdrawal” from Iraq – oh, except, of course, for an imperial citadel that is laughably called an “embassy”, a couple of tens of thousands of mercenaries, and a few thousand “military advisors” or whatever they are calling them these days. The United States has not withdrawn from Iraq, they have merely changed the nature of the occupation.
I no longer pay the slightest attention to 9/11. It is a day of defeat for the US. I see no virtue is the celebration of a defeat. It is a day of victory for alQaeda, and we should ignore it. Let those who suffered loss grieve in private.
I’ve always been put off by the pageantry we attach to the day, both for reasons of how the GOP exploited it politically, but also the self-indulgent manner in which a large segment of our population chose to treat it as a permanent chip on their shoulder in pursuing foreign policy.
Mainly though it’s because I’d already gone through the whole drama 7-8 years before during the OKC bombing, which took place some few miles away from my home. I was working at the campus paper at the time, and when I got there everyone was positively excited about being in the epicenter of an event of such national importance. If you didn’t have your lights on while driving down the street during broad daylight (some sort of commemorative act of solidarity, I guess), you got honked at, flipped off, the evil eye, whatever. The word “Heartland” entered the national dialogue and was uttered, it seemed, every 20 seconds or so.
I guess it’s made me pretty cynical overall. By the time 9/11 came around, I had that 4/19 experience filtering out everything that followed.
I could not possibly say it better than you did in your first paragraph – thanks!
I would suggest, though, that it was not only the GOP that shamelessly exploited the events of 9/11. I would suggest that the Democrats dove right in there with every bit as much fervor, and have more than done their part to sustain the “9/11 effect” and use it to their advantage.
And wasn’t the OKC bombing done by a nice, white, Christian boy from….where? Middle America somewhere, right?
These references to Heartland from politicians always seem to echo “Fatherland” to me. We never said anything like that before 9/11.
When I was growing up in the 50’s, a decade that is ancient history to most of you, the media, the churches, the politicians, and the schools always said we were better than (exceptional if you insist) the Nazis and Communists because we didn’t torture, because we had a rule of law, because we believed in innocent until proven guilty, because our nation was founded on an idea not an ethnic group or a religion. Yes, I know there were dirty little truths undermining all of those, but that was the GOAL, the IDEAL, our self-image. We don’t even try any more.
We are well on the path to Caesarism and Bread and Circuses. Hollywood gives us our Circuses, but who will give us our Bread?
“The president attained a degree of justice, which is praiseworthy.“
So to a progressive revenge in the form of summary execution in the complete absense of due process is not only “justice”, it is downright “praiseworthy”?
Oh – yeah. Obama even does that to U.S. citizens nowadays.
And I suppose “we’re a nation of laws”, too.
OK.
It is to virtually 80% of the population, give or take, Hurria. Part of me still wants to fight this mentality, but most of me just wants to say, “Why bother?”
Not to mention I have conflicting wars with myself over liberal intervention, not getting involved, and the United Nations being a body worth supporting. It’s a deep conflict I have with being an internationalist and wanting wealth spread throughout continents, and knowing that the PTB have their own agenda for engaging in such interventions (which inevitably go against the people they’re supposed to help more often than not).
Show me any law, national or international, that was created with events on the scale of 9/11, and military organizations of the nature of al Qaida in mind.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42861619/ns/world_news-death_of_bin_laden/t/was-it-right-kill-bin-laden/
#.UE9aV6A3quI
We’re talking about events and groups of violent semi-military groups that go beyond anything anticipated. Something like Baader-Meinhof would be easy to deal with by comparison.
Now I have some questions also about what should have occurred. But I think that given the extremes of bin Laden’s crimes, his evasion protected by foreign governments, and the sheer unpredictable messiness of reality, there is little else we could have done.
There are actually a lot of things I disagree with in this writeup of Booman’s, but this one statement is right on target.
The point isn’t necessarily that little else could be done, but that death and revenge does not equal justice.
Bin-Laden had eleven years to surrender to authorities. Actually, he had more than that because he was indicated for the 1998 embassy bombing. He didn’t turn himself in. Instead, he continued to plot to kill more Americans. Shooting him was both self-defense and justice.
From what we know, it was more expedience than self-defense. While I am glad he’s dead, don’t for a minute mistake it for justice.
From what we know, they took fire first. When you’re moving up stairs with night-vision goggles on after having just taken machine gun fire, and a man peeks his head out, you shoot. Why wait for the grenade? Pure self-defense.
“Justice” has a number of meanings. My favorite happens to come from the social teaching and social action traditions of the Catholic Church.
Among the questions at the core of events is “Was bin Laden a criminal or a military enemy?” That is what I was trying to get at. I think there are a lot of interesting discussions to be had fleshing that out. I haven’t seen anything conclusive on either side. Is there any definition of “justice” relevant to the kind of situation Obama was faced with in attempting to take bin Laden IF this was a primarily military and not civil situation?
This is a stupid debate to have.
You can be guilty of nothing more than tax evasion. If people on your property open fire at the sheriff issuing your summons, you can expect to be killed. If bin Laden wanted to live, he could have lied down spread-eagle on the floor and waited for the Seals to come up the stairs.
There is absolutely no moral quandary here whatsoever.
This kind of hand-wringing is frankly embarrassing and it’s the reason the American people spent 30 years thinking Democrats weren’t serious enough to take care of foreign policy.
What is embarrassing is self-professed “progressives” making arguments that sound like Michael Savage, Rush Limbaugh, and their ilk.
Yeah, Bin Laden could have turned himself in. Right. And so could George W. Bush.
I would be willing to have the conversation, but so far there is no meat in your comments and it seems you really don’t want to have a conversation. Is this just a drive-by mini-rant for you?
Let me be clear. I would have gladly killed bin-Laden myself. Some people shy away from the kind of thing, and that’s fine. We need people like that, too. But anyone who says it isn’t “progressive” to track down and eliminate threats to the people of this country isn’t a progressive I want to be associated with.
You put a guy on a civilian airplane with a bomb in his underpants? You are going to get taken out. You try to ship ink cartridges made into bombs on a plane? You will be taken out. You hijack our vessels and hold people hostage for ransom? You will be taken out.
On all of these things, I completely support the president’s actions.
What I have said is that we need judicial oversight of any action taken against a U.S. civilian. The process we used in the Awliki case was extra-constitutional and should not be repeated. But the decision to target him was justified. Only the process was flawed.
You sound like a Republican when you act like you think “progressives” won’t kick the ass of anyone who threatens Americans.
“that sound like”
Sound like to whom?
To many conservatives, the arguments for affirmative action “sound like” the arguments for segregation.
That’s because they are idiots.
And you are a big blowhard who can’t make an argument without putting words into people’s mouths.
You’ve spent the entire thread flat-out lying about Democrats’ support for the Iraq War, and when I point out that you’re wrong, I’m the one putting words in people’s mouths?
Pathetic. You’re one of those annoying people who knows absolutely nothing except that you’re always right.
bin Laden convicted himself out of his own mouth. It’s incontrovertible that he was the one at fault. I was very pleased to see Obama kill him.
I’m talking about “justice” and that has multiple meanings OK? To many it means the application of The Nation’s prosecutors, law enforcement and courts. I was writing mostly with that sphere in mind. But you’re completely on the moral plane of the word, and that is fine too. So I completely agree with this:
“There is absolutely no moral quandary here whatsoever.”
Time and time again, bin Laden put out videotapes claiming credit for 9/11, atrocities, etc. He confessed on tape.
I’m actually less interested in debating what happened to bin Laden than most folks here think. My long view is this:
The law WAS outdated. So Congress made NEW law:
That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any
future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RS22357.pdf
And then they made more http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-u-s-government-changes-since-911.php
And the UN got involved http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2001/SC7143.doc.htm
You missed my point entirely.
I am so out of here.
Tape after tape, bin Laden confessed and took credit for every action that we suspected him of doing. So, we took action too. Too bad for him – he picked the wrong target.
Killing Obama was entirely justified. I’m glad they didn’t capture him to try him.
You’ll get the Secret Service after you, as soon as they return from Cartagena, Colombia of course.
Ha!
Did you hear that the guy who shot Jack Lemmon is up for parole again?
http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/23/mark-david-chapman-john-lennon-
killer-denied-parole-7th-time-ny_n_1824704.html&sa=U&ei=0u5PULDsM_DI0AGu8YHICQ&ved=0CBoQ
FjAA&usg=AFQjCNH2n_Q2ECID3YhovaIxfDwmQPUBZg
There are several layers of justification, justice and legal behavior/actions being discussed. See my other response to you.
What a shame not one of those tapes pre-dated the events of 9/11. With Muslim fundamentalists cheering the successful attacks on the US, it was surprising that OBL was slow to claim credit.
What an amazingly stupid comment. Honestly. The 9/11 attack was predicated on surprise. Your point is that UBL would only be culpable if he put out something before the attack?
Production/documentation date = release date? Since when?
It’s not even clear that OBL took credit for the attacks after the fact per Paul Craig Roberts:
Will just add that the Navy Seal cashing in on the claim of killing OBL alleges that his face was blown off before they reached him. Surely making it that much easier to ID the man they got.
There’s also this:
Perhaps the dumbest thing you have every written here.
Usama bin-Laden had a trial right here in the United States and he was convicted. He was a fugitive and the FBI’s most wanted man. He had over a decade to turn himself in, but he refused to do so and instead made videos and carried out other communications in an effort to plan and incite murder and violence against American civilians.
When the Navy Seals arrived at his compound, they came under immediate machine-gun fire.
He got all the due process anyone deserves.
I think you could argue that Bonnie and Clyde and Dillinger got less due process and they were just murdering, bank robbing folk heroes.
In Clyde’s case especially he made a point of saying he would not be taken alive and unprovoked had killed several police to reinforce that point. So the police took him to mean what he said.
Bin Laden was not going to suddenly say he was sorry and this terror thing was all just a big misunderstanding.
No matter how overwrought you are when you use inappropriate words to create a false impression, it will never be illegal or immoral to shoot at the enemy in a declared war.
Bin Laden and Awlaki got exactly the same due process as, respectively, officers in the Kaiser’s military and officers in the Confederate army.
Absolutely correct. There is no moral ambiguity here. Killing him was perfectly acceptable and perfectly OK.
I am reminded of the Sicilian proverb:
“The law is for the rich.
The gallows is for poor.
And justice is for fools.”
I DO agree that it was not justice, but revenge. Still…
“Vendetta e dolce” in my street Italian, probably grammatically incorrect.
The attack on Pearl Harbor left the US more defenseless than 9/11 did. A few hundred more died on 9/11 but many hundred more were injured on 12/7/41. US WWII deaths were 415,800 — a fraction of the millions of civilians killed in that war in Poland, USSR, and China . The attack on Pearl Harbor was always a more momentous event than 9/11 (it really did effect the everyday lives of almost all Americans over the next four years) but was that defense failure dragged out every year by politicians as proof of their military prowess?
What happened eleven years after the fact on 12/7/52 —
Then again — Germany and Japan were defeated in less than four years after the US entered the war. And the WOT goes on and on.
When you cannot say what victory looks like, of course the war goes on and on and on until some bright politicians declares arbitrarily that it has been won. But that we still need to be vigilant. And then reverses all of the attacks on civil liberties that happened post 9/11. And then reverses those that are still hanging over from the Cold War.
Is there any president who will devolve that much power back to the people?
No.
You can’t put Humpty-Dumpty back together again. Once power flows to the sovereign, it stays there until the whole system is overthrown, from the inside or the outside.
When you cannot say what victory looks like
We have: http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/panetta-us-within-reach-of-defeating
-al-qaeda/2011/07/09/gIQAvPpG5H_story.html&sa=U&ei=8spPUKriDc7C0AGpoIGYCA&ved=0CBMQFjAA&
amp;usg=AFQjCNGqOmtGCpZtX_GJL-hWwTEE_J7-BQ
This is probably the most important overlooked story of the past four years: the Obama administration redefined the War on Terror (eternal, unwinnable, ill-defined) into the war against al Qaeda, including defining a set of achievable victory conditions.
Marcy Wheeler has it right.
“Romney is stuck in the Cold War era. Obama is stuck in the 9/11 era.”
The rest of the world has moved on, way down the road. But the US seems stuck between those two eras and the military industrial complex that continues to play on the feelings those engendered.
Except for US overreactions, the world is a much safer place than it has been in quite a while. Who will tell the people?
And yes, the DNC’s hyper-patriotism and reaffirmation of American exceptionalism, not to mention giving Netanyahu Jerusalem, did bug the hell out of me. Zero lessons learned by either party.
Agreed.
And the whole 9/11 thing year after year after year is nothing but American self-indulgence. I’m deeply sorry for the lives that were lost, the bodies and maimed, and for those who lost loved ones on that day, but compared to the horrors and misery the U.S. has dealt out overtly and covertly to the rest of the world 9/11 isn’t even a drop in the bucket.
That’s what I thought – blame America first. I am not an Israeli supporter either, but hatred of Israel is no reason to blame us for everything.
Where is this coming from? I saw nothing in hurria’s comment that would provoke this.
Read between the lines.
In other words, if you put enough words into your opponent’s mouth, you can create any argument you like.
Can’t say I see it that way.
If the rest of the world has moved on maybe it is because they weren’t the ones who were attacked and then got bogged down in two flawed wars.
But regardless, I don’t see a lot in Obama to indicate he is “stuck” in a 9/11 mindset. He has some political realities he is stuck with, but I only see that as slowing, not stopping him from moving the nation towards a vision he has for a Post-9/11-21st Century America.
Demographics are changing the politics and economies of America and much of the world. Shifts, both economic and philosophical about energy are making what happens in the Middle East less strategically important. Issues of creating competitive, efficient, intelligent infrastructure and workforces I think is becoming more important — and I think many Americans are coming to see that and I am sure Obama does.
Mostly I think America right now, 11 years removed from 9/11 is concerned about mundane stuff like jobs and a secure future and not about terrorism. In fact, I think by killing bin Laden, Obama closed the book on terror for most Americans and opened the book of much more important threats and opportunities.
“If the rest of the world has moved on maybe it is because they weren’t the ones who were attacked and then got bogged down in two flawed wars.“
Andrew, with respect, tell that to the Iraqis and the Afghans, not to mention the people of the NATO countries who ended up in Afghanistan, and those who got coerced into joining the United States in its war of aggression on Iraq.
The United States is hardly the only country to be attacked, and 9/11 was certainly not the worst attack any country has experienced. On the contrary, during its history the United States has dealt far more death and destruction than it received on 9/11, and for reasons that were no more defensible than those of the criminals who attacked the Twin Towers.
I get you. And there is no need to debate the horror mankind can inflict on itself. There are plenty of examples from all corners.
But the NATO participants in Afghanistan and “coalition” participants in Iraq largely went home long ago. We still have thousands in country in Afghanistan and Kuwait. The US can’t go home because it made this mess and are stuck with it.
And as the remaining Superpower, it can’t either. That’s not what Superpowers do because non-superpowers can and do cut and run when they find they made a mistake. Someone has to stay to deal with the mess and if the US doesn’t then it loses its claim as a superpower — a claim that is increasing dubious and perhaps irrelevant anyway.
And the United States still has tens of thousands in Iraq. Obama did not withdraw from Iraq, he just reconfigured the U.S. presence there, sending it to the next stage of imperial conquest.
And yes, the U.S. CAN leave. The U.S. is no more the correct party to stay around “clean up” the mess it made than a rapist is the correct party to stay around and help the victim heal.
If that’s what America is concerned about, why is the homeland security state rolling on and on. How about a repeal of the PATRIOT Act, a reversal of the warrantless wiretapping dragnet, a restoration of habeas corpus and the idea that crimes on American soil can be tried in American courts. How about a declaration that the AUMF for Iraq is over. And a similar declaration trimming the powers in the AUMF for Afghanistan to pre 9/11 sorts of authorization of force.
Seems to me that the American people would cheer this restoration of the Constitution.
Marcy Wheeler thinks Obama should have told his intelligence briefers, “Okay, you covered your ass,” when they warn him about al Qaeda.
Read her article before you mischaracterize it. That in fact is not what she said.
Another prisoner has died at Guantanamo because the Obama administration has not decided to declare an end to the nonsense at Guantanamo and free prisoners who have been detained for eleven years in spite of the fact that they are demonstrably innocent of being terrorists. That the administration wilted under the fear campaign and did not try the terrorists in New York City, which could have been mostly completed by now instead of this military tribunal charade which is really a kangaroo court with predefined outcomes.
Because the US too big, mighty, and proud to say about some of the prisoners, “We made a big, huge mistake.” A mistake, by the way, that would have been caught much earlier had the Bush administration followed US criminal court rules instead inventing their own.
The evidence is pretty good that Obama has been listening to his intelligence briefers. It is not so good in figuring out why there are folks still out there who might hate the US. And especially figuring out that being the puppet of Netanyahu–how else can you characterize the railroaded Israel platform plank that legitimizes the theft of East Jerusalem–is not helping American interests.
What I remember most of that day now known as 9/11 was the thought that amidst all this tragedy was the sense that this event would give George Bush a dangerous amount of power. The first thing I told my son when he got home from school that day was that upon his eighteenth birthday I might be taking him to Canada.
My sense that I might have to take my son to Canada was thankfully wrong, but my sense that this event would give George Bush an unprecedented amount of power was tragically true. From that day he would maintain that it was a different world after 9/11 giving him, as Commander in Chief, constitutional military powers which were unlimited in scope. John Yoo in an appearance many years ago at the Constitution Center here in Philadelphia asserted the only check on the “Commander in Chief’s” power would be if he lost the “War on Terror”.
Not unexpectedly, my country responded to its wounds with retribution and to its fears with ceding of both personal freedoms and long held professed values. We allowed ourselves to be taken in and manipulated by our fears.
9/11 did not change the world. It is still a world, as it was then, of infinite possibilities for human triumph or tragedy. The world has not changed but maybe we have. We had a perfectly understandable reaction to a horrific event. In retrospect, though, after spending trillions of dollars on war, destroying trillions more in property of the countries we invaded, and more importantly sacrificing the lives or maiming thousands of our own sons and killing or maiming hundreds of thousands of both the innocent and the warriors who believed in their cause, have we learned anything?
Do we still believe in a winnable “War on Terror”? If so, how can we defeat terror, a concept which has been with mankind since the dawn of history? We must not forget the tragedy of 9/11, but we must not let ourselves or the rest of the world fall victim to the notion that terror can be overcome by creating even more terror.