SEK at Lawyers Guns and Money posted the following yesterday:
Many people are posting versions of “never forget.”
So let’s review, shall we?
1) The 9/11 hijackers were funded by rich people in Saudi Arabia, none of whom have been punished for it.
2) President Bush had ample and direct warnings that Al Queda was a threat yet failed to take them seriously.
3) One security technology could have prevented the hijackings — secure and solid cockpit doors. The airlines fought FAA proposals for them for decades.
4) Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks but more than 10 years later more than half of Republicans still believed it did.
5) For one brief moment almost the whole world was united in horror about the slaughter. Yet our government dissolved that unity within 18 months.
6) The mania that gripped the White House in the wake of 9/11 generated massive violations of US and international law, significant violations of human rights, and a squandering of the moral high ground.
7) If the Supreme Court had allowed the voters to choose the president in the 2000 election we would have had sober, moderate, law-abiding, knowledgeable adults running the country and things would be a lot better now.
8) President Bush not only failed to defend us against Al Queda before 9/11, he let Bin Laden escape from Tora Bora and ceased serious efforts to capture or kill him while he shifted U.S. resources to a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.
Yeah, I am still angry.
You should be, too.
Never forget.
He credits this list to Siva Vaidhyanathan.
I would suggest that just as the past flows seamlessly back to the hysterical Bill Clinton Impeachment, which was led by one of the current Republican candidates, Lindsey Graham, so too it flows forward, to the remarkable fact that Donald Trump currently leads the Republican field, and may end up being the next United States President. Truly, something is slouching towards Golgotha, waiting to be born.
_______________________
Here's a first person account.
http://www.sheilaomalley.com/?p=86971#comment-2449640
If you go to this link you will find, first, a remarkable account of terror, from the inside out. Ms O'Malley is a terrific writer, and captures something very deep in this description of her own life on September 11, 2001, and the following days. In one way of looking at this history, the events themselves stand alone, particular, unique. Individuals all experienced the tragedy, and those very close to it, like Ms O'Malley, were literally swept away by the moments. I was particularly struck by the moment when people hid under benches in Central Park as they listened to jets overhead, before it was understood that these were "our" jets, protecting New York City at last from further assault. To understand this moment you simply had to be there. I was not. From a far distance, my experience of the event was necessarily quite different: amazement, horror yes, but not immediate fear, or a sense of group or mass fear, or the participation in that as a phenomenon. Again, the same thing later, when Sheila leaves her office because there are crowds in the street, and flows with the crowd many blocks away from her office. While it's possible that this has been described elsewhere, I'd never seen such a description. It required being in New York City. Respecting and appreciating this particularity remains important, and the many swirling feelings around this experience obviously remain as well, something I didn't realize when I commented on the piece. As I've noted in my links, Ms O'Malley unfailingly creates one of the best blogs I've ever seen.
It may seem quite ineffective, but all I can do is say "Yeah!"
ReplyDeleteAnd keep writing.