Posted on 09/12/2006 10:58:27 AM PDT by Chi-townChief
Five years later, Sept. 11 still is etched in our minds. The terrorist threat it revealed is a real and present danger. It is not the worst threat we face. Catastrophic climate change has already wreaked more economic damage. Global pandemics will take more victims. Unsustainable U.S. trade deficits pose a greater threat to Americans' economic security.
But the horrors of Sept. 11 supersede those rational calculations. The grotesque horror of the act of terror; the innocent victims jumping to their deaths; the heroism of those who came to rescue -- they will remain a source of agony and of inspiration.
Americans rallied as one to the threat. Partisan bickering was put aside as legislators set to work to authorize action against those who had committed the violation. In the U.N. Security Council, all countries voted for action against those who would target citizens for death from the blue. NATO joined together in authorizing force against Osama bin Laden and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Five years later, we remember that moment, but as from a distant shore. We have lost so much from that day of unity. We have not forgotten the threat posed by al-Qaida. But we suffer from an administration that has failed us, purposefully divided us and consciously isolated us.
President Bush said that Sept. 11 changed everything. But instead of asking Americans to sacrifice to meet the challenge, he called on them, literally, to go shopping. And he allowed business as usual to go on in Washington. Homeland Security funds were distributed by pork barrel politics.
This staggering disservice was compounded by his ''war of choice'' in Iraq. The lies and distortions used to sell the war destroyed his credibility. He alienated our allies and infuriated Muslim opinion across the world, providing al-Qaida with a recruiting boon. The occupation stranded our military in a growing civil war with inadequate forces, inadequate equipment, inadequate training and inadequate direction. The disdain for international law and standards -- expressed in the secret prisons and the torture that is still coming to light -- brought discredit on the nation across the world.
At home, the president chose to wield the ''war on terror'' as a partisan club. The war on Iraq was rolled out in August before the 2002 elections. Democratic opposition to stripping workers of their rights in the new Department of Homeland Security was turned into charges that they were weak on national security. Concerns in both parties about the excesses of the Patriot Act -- warrantless wiretapping, arrests and detentions without charges -- were turned into partisan claims that opponents cared more about the rights of our enemies than the security of our citizens.
Now, with the costs of the failed occupation escalating and the need to change course apparent, the president once again rolls out a public relations offensive designed to paint critics as weak. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld likens those trying to find a way out of the mess to Hitler's appeasers. This is ugly and dishonest, peddling fear for partisan purposes.
One victim of the administration's war on Iraq -- which has cost more than $300 billion, more than 3,000 deaths and over 20,000 wounded Americans -- has been the focus against those who attacked us five years ago. The administration transferred intelligence resources directed at finding bin Laden to search for the mythic weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The president then bizarrely shut down the intelligence unit tasked with tracking down bin Laden. The resources devoted to Iraq made gearing up for homeland security more difficult. To this day, the nonpartisan 9/11 Commission gives the administration poor and failing grades for the many steps not taken.
Now President Bush stumps the country, peddling fear once more, denouncing his critics, summoning Americans to stand with him. But his credibility is gone. The military is increasingly an open critic of his stay-the-course policy in Iraq. Republicans in the Senate lead the effort to bring the extremes of his lawlessness under some legal authority. Allies and adversaries increasingly ignore U.S. leadership and operate independently.
We mark Sept. 11 in somber memory of its victims and its heroes, but also in saddened realization of how much has been lost. Americans have always risen to meet the nation's challenges, and we shall do so again. But it will take a very different leadership to bring us back together and to put us back on course.
mailto:jjackson@rainbowpush.org
His credibility is better than yours, Jesse, since you never had any.
Gee, global warming, pandemics, war, people don't like us,
etc. etc. It's amazing that as dumb as he is, GWB can
engineer such diabolical schemes (or is it really Rove?).
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