Like a vibration that causes a bridge to collapse, the 9/11 attacks exposed grave weaknesses in our nation's defenses, our national institutions and ultimately our national character. Many more Americans have now died in a needless war in Iraq than were killed in the terror attacks, and tens of thousands more grievously wounded. Billions of dollars have been wasted. America's moral authority, more precious than gold, has been tarnished by torture and lies and the erosion of our liberties. The world despises us to an unprecedented degree. An entire country has been wrecked. The Middle East is ready to explode. And the threat of terrorism, which the war was intended to remove, is much greater than it was.
All of this flowed from our response to 9/11. And so, six years later, we need to do more than mourn the dead. We need to acknowledge the blindness and bigotry that drove our response. Until we do, not only will the stalemate over Iraq persist, but our entire Middle Eastern policy will continue down the road to ruin.
Yesterday was a day to remember and to mourn anew. I felt little need to say much more than just recall those terrible, horrible hours. Now, like September 12, 2001, it is time to recover from the initial shock and, perhaps, make an assessment of where we were, where we are, and how we might be somewhere else that is a more fitting tribute to those who lost their lives so horrifically that day.
I remember well the summer of 2001. My younger daughter was born June 6 that year, and the whole summer was one grand day after another - the weather was glorious, work was going more than well, the country, despite the divisive nature of the previous year's election, seemed content. I also remember thinking, and telling my wife sometime that summer, that I believed George W. Bush would be a one-term President. His numbers were already low. Because of official maladroitness in soothing the overinflated ego of Sen. Jim Jeffords, the Republicans lost control of the Senate six months after an election divided it evenly. Even Bush's Solomon-like handling of the stem-cell research funding issue showed him to be ill-suited to the Office; he couldn't even announce a bad policy well.
It has been said that "Everything Changed" because of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Actually, very little, in general, has changed. The sun still rises and sets. Rain still falls. Children are born, young and old couples marry, parents hug their children at night before bed. Evil and good still wend their way through our lives, individual and communal, in a never-ending dance. Yet, we still gaze in fear, horror, and sadness at the images of That Day, and wonder "Why?" and "What next?"
I thought, in what might surprise some readers as post-9/11 generosity, the George Bush handled the immediate aftermath of the attacks quite well. While his speech that night was awful, and his later address to Congress not much better, his handling of the public outrage against Islam was handled well. His insistence on offering space to Muslim clerics, his repeated demand that we not turn what had happened in to an excuse for hating Muslims, or slandering Islam, was not just welcome, but I thought some of his best moments.
Just like everything else, however, he managed to take this opportunity and turn it in to what has turned out to be the biggest, deadliest blunder, in our history. Not just the war and subsequent occupation. The shredding of the Constitution; the bitter, petty partisanship; the silencing of dissent; the cowing of the Democratic Party (which continues to this day); the slow but inevitable descent in to the unreality of our current historical moment, where we are forced to watch the spectacle of political theater trump what should be the necessities of rational policy - the ultimate victory of image over substance. All of these things can and should be laid at the feet of George W. Bush.
Yet, we, too, share part of the blame. We allowed ourselves to be silenced. We allowed our media to throw away its critical edge and boost this war, as well as marginalize the anti-war sentiment that was always large if not always predominant. We allowed ourselves to continue to believe that Saddam Hussein had a hand in the terror attacks. We allowed our elected representatives to set aside their Constitutional prerogatives and hand so much power over to the executive. When it all became too much and we elected a new Congress to correct the mistakes of the previous five years, we allowed that new Congress to fail in its duty. The shadow of those burning, falling towers still hangs over too much of our national life; while it is important to remember - indeed, to never forget - it is also important to remember that, at this remove in time and space, we are not where we should be, and we have far to go to redress the imbalance in our public lives and, most importantly, apprehend and/or kill those responsible.
Once we accept our responsibility for the current imbalance in our political life, we may be enabled and empowered to try to change things. That is my greatest, fondest hope, my earnest, fervent prayer, and the reason I continue to write these little missives of mine each day. We need to save ourselves most, not from al Q'aeda, but from ourselves.
