I Get Over the Flu and Bush Memorializes 9-11
It took my stomach a couple of days to catch up, finally shake the chills and notice that a trend has been set. In non-election years, Bush merely observes a moment of silence. But when there’s something to be gained or lost at the polls he pulls out all the stops and tries to divide the nation with fear.
Actually, the president spoke two days ago.
It took my stomach a couple of days to catch up, finally shake the chills and notice that a trend has been set. In non-election years, Bush merely observes a moment of silence. But when there’s something to be gained or lost at the polls he pulls out all the stops and tries to divide the nation with fear.
We've been falling for it and paying the price.
“Five years ago, this date -- September the 11th -- was seared into America's memory. Nineteen men attacked us with a barbarity unequaled in our history. They murdered people of all colors, creeds and nationalities, and made war upon the entire free world.”
Unequaled in our history, unless you look back just a bit. On the ‘barbarity scale,’ the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor took 2,400 lives to the 2,990 lost in Manhattan. Five battleships and most of the American fleet and air force, lost at the opening of a real war is arguably a tougher loss than two office buildings. But it depends upon point of view as well as the need for rhetoric.
This administration is long on rhetoric and damned short on workable solutions. Franklin Roosevelt brought his nation to a full and focused response. George Bush failed to keep even peripheral focus on al Qaeda and windmilled into an unrelated war that he failed to fund, failed to prove and failed to win. Al Qaeda did not make war upon the entire free world, another lie. They initiated a terrorist attack against two buildings in New York they had targeted before, this time with stunning success.
It remained for Bush to bully his way into the wider war, the war of no purpose, the brutally murderous war that saner men told him he could not win.
“On this day, we remember the innocent who've lost their lives, and we pay tribute to those who gave their lives so that others might live.”
But only during election years. In 2003 and 2005, when nothing was at stake, a moment of silence sufficed.
“Since the horror of 9/11, we've learned a great deal about the enemy. We have learned that they are evil and kill without mercy, but not without purpose.
We have learned that they form a global network of extremists who are driven by a perverted vision of Islam: a totalitarian ideology that hates freedom, rejects tolerance and despises all dissent.”
No, George. They just want Israel and America the hell out of their part of the world. If you were to suspect that they took offense at Europe and the West buying the resources under their lands, bribing their dictators and monarchs with both money and weaponry, you might be on the scent of another inconvenient truth.
Radical Islam is the outgrowth of failed oil policy. Further, it’s the love-child of failed cold war policy.
“And we have learned that their goal is to build a radical Islamic empire where women are prisoners in their homes, men are beaten for missing prayer meetings, and terrorists have a safe haven to plan and launch attacks on America and other civilized nations.”
That’s hate-speech, George, racist to it's very core. By that enormous untruth, you drive from away from any reasoned dialog 1.5 billion perfectly rational and peace-loving members of the Muslim faith. Your use of such imagery in a pre-election rant fumbles the ball (yet again) to the Muslim terrorist 1/10th of one percent. You seem unable to keep from feeding the very guys your Iraqi government dares not leave the Green Zone to confront.
“Our nation is being tested in a way that we have not been since the start of the Cold War.”
True enough. And the nation has responded with unending trust to match your unending failure. You have failed as a leader, as a warrior, rebuilder, manager and teller of truths. Your overweening success has been the opposite of what you promised us. "I am a uniter, not a divider" has become ajoke as you continue to divide a country so tragically united by 9-11.
WTC unconscionably remains an open wound in lower Manhattan
New Orleans, a festering sore on the hip of the Gulf Coast
Baghdad, a crumbling death-pit for terrorists, American military and civilian Iraqis alike
Kabul, falling ever closer to Taliban control yet again
“But the war is not over, and it will not be over until either we or the extremists emerge victorious. If we do not defeat these enemies now, we will leave our children to face a Middle East overrun by terrorist states and radical dictators armed with nuclear weapons. We are in a war that will set the course for this new century and determine the destiny of millions across the world.”
There is no ‘victory’ in such engagements, you mutton-head. You did a great disservice to have called it a war. It’s no more a ‘war’ than the war on poverty, the war on breast cancer or the war on AIDS.
You have chosen instead to leave our children to face an economically crippled America, a nation so burdened by your ignorance as to be uninhabitable by any but the super-wealthy class you seek to further enrich.
“Whatever mistakes have been made in Iraq, the worst mistake would be to think that if we pulled out, the terrorists would leave us alone.”
What a pitiful play for sympathy. I know of absolutely no one who has said anything even remotely close to that. You're renaming again. Retitling each failed novel. Your support for Head Start became a celebration of No Child Left Behind, renaming an abandoned effort to make it sound less abandoned. Similarly the need to win in Iraq has become the need not to lose. A Nixonian statement if there ever was one.
“The safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad.”
If you believe that, George Walker Bush, you should be impeached.
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Other better-late-than-never-commentary on the President's 'anniversary;'