Taylor Marsh – TaylorMarsh.com – News, Opinion and Weblog on Progressive Politics

Remembrance and Betrayal
guest post by Ed Encho

Where were you on September 11, 2001?

Every American remembers, every American has a story.

I was in my car when I heard the news that the first tower had been hit and the announcers made it sound as though a small aircraft had accidentally gone off course, little did we know at the time. I was in a meeting when the second plane hit but the glass-eyed stares among the small but rapidly gathering crowd of people standing in the lobby when I emerged told it all.

We all stood there and watched in incomprehensible disbelief, staring at the wall-mounted televisions as the towers fell, people were crying, cursing, praying, the loud braying sobs of one young woman echoed off of the marble walls. I was numb.

A few days later we had a catered buffet in my workplace as was our monthly tradition. This time though we all hung little American flags on our cubicles to display our patriotism and to honor the dead. A big screen television showed the memorial service for the victims. We all cried together and the sixty-five or so of us became united as we had never been before; our mutual grief was a shared bond between us and we had a common sense of mission that no amount of corporate team building exercises could ever instill. We were unified in our profound sense of loss and desire for retribution but most of all we were fearful.

I was hurt, shocked and angered and I cried a lot in those early days. As a loyal American I set aside politics and supported George W. Bush as President despite the differences that I had with the man and his policies and his party. I burned with a desire to go to Afghanistan to work to find the bastards behind the attack but I was too old, my military service well in the past. I was not alone, Americans joined the military and millions cheered when the first missions were launched against Al Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban. Justice would be at hand, our leaders would see to it, it was after all the American way.

One brave young man named Pat Tillman gave up a career in the National Football League, a dream world (for most workaday males) of celebrity and money in order to enlist in the Army to avenge the attacks out of his patriotic love for this country. He was killed by our own troops in what was a tragic metaphor for the sad mess that came in the aftermath of 9/11 and a cynical government that has ever since pitted us against each other, our national unity ripped asunder by a group of amoral and evil men. They used Tillman as a propaganda tool, and then covered up the circumstances of his death, as his father remarked “they blew up their poster boy”. And they used the rest of us as well.

The realization of the lies and the use of the 9/11 attacks as a political bludgeon in order to advance an authoritarian extremism agenda as anti-American as it was diabolical hit even harder. America herself was hijacked in the aftermath of that most terrible of all days, just as surely as the planes that hit those towers were hijacked by extremists so were we all.

It was more than betrayal, it was like rape.

What was more of an outrage than the attacks themselves is that a reactionary cabal within our very government used them as justification to launch a preemptive war against Iraq with further plans according to papers written for the think tank The Project For The New American Century
to wage war and remake the Middle East through what one influential hawk called “creative destruction”. They specifically mentioned that absent “a new Pearl Harbor” that there would be difficulty in gaining sufficient public support to put their plans into motion.

Then came September 11, 2001 and they had at last had their much lusted after opportunity. From the earliest moments of the attacks these men (some of whom were once dubbed “the crazies” by a saner, less corrupt, more pragmatic administration in what are obviously now bygone days) sought to use the tragedy as a catalyst to implement their ideological plans and God help us all they have succeeded beyond their wildest expectations. Perhaps you will recognize some of the names of the PNAC ideologues: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Libby, Bolton and Kristol among others less famous but all too influential and ambitious.

Richard B. Cheney yesterday appeared on Meet the Press where he arrogantly
defended the lies that led to our ruinous misadventure in Iraq and the lies that were used to terrorize the Congress and the American people into allowing it. The same lies that allowed Osama Bin Laden to escape and to remain free to make his videos – the most recent of them commemorating the attacks of five years ago and most likely laughing at how easily it has been to have our own government to do his work for him in institutionalizing fear and the sowing seeds of hate and discontent.

Five years later, America is now a pariah, we have a government that is working to codify torture and uses unconstitutional surveillance in order to monitor critics and political opponents. Our chief executive and his legal army are rapidly working to dismantle the constitution and to imbue the position with the powers normally reserved for kings and emperors, our treasured civil liberties will soon exist only at the whim of an almighty ruler. Just consider one very horrifying thought: one day somebody will occupy the Oval Office who is more intelligent, more competent, more cunning and much more ruthless than George W. Bush. These people are only laying the groundwork by dismantling the framework, what we truly need to fear is what will come in the future when the laws of this country no longer exist for the protection of all.

So as we today mourn the loss of over 3,000 innocent Americans in remembrance of perhaps the most horrific day in our nation’s history let us also lament the loss of the country that we so much loved and have since had stolen away by unscrupulous and immoral lunatics.

Do you want to know what Bush and Karl Rove really think about today? The following is from Andrew Sullivan’s blog:

Next week, I'm informed via troubled White House sources, will see the full unveiling of Karl Rove's fall election strategy. He's intending to line up 9/11 families to accuse McCain, Warner and Graham of delaying justice for the perpetrators of that atrocity, because they want to uphold the ancient judicial traditions of the U.S. military and abide by the Constitution. He will use the families as an argument for legalizing torture, setting up kangaroo courts for military prisoners, and giving war crime impunity for his own aides and cronies. This is his “Hail Mary” move for November; it's brutally exploitative of 9/11; it's pure partisanship; and it's designed to enable an untrammeled executive. Decent Republicans, Independents and Democrats must do all they can to expose and resist this latest descent into political thuggery. If you need proof that this administration's first priority is not a humane and effective counter-terror strategy, but a brutal, exploitative path to retaining power at any price, you just got it.

And tonight George W. Bush’s primetime speech precisely timed to capitalize on the Disney/ABC opus of lies that is The Path To 9/11 will focus on reinforcing the same false assertions that Iraq is an integral part of the mythical war on terror that these snake-oil salesmen have been selling for far too long. It is well past time for Americans to wake up and breathe deeply so as to inhale the stench of this rotten administration for that which it truly is. And it’s not the smell of glory. These people are despicable and contemptible beyond belief, they are far more vile, loathsome and disgusting than even a jar of vomit and may they one day rot in hell for their callous theft and exploitation of the lives that abrubtly ended five years ago in a fiery inferno that they themselves bear much of the responsibility for due to their negligence, their incompetence and their ineptitude.

How fucking dare they?