In Memoriam…

Today is September 11th, the ninth anniversary of the heinous coordinated attacks on innocent Americans by radical religious fundamentalists. Like many, if not most, Americans, I am a bit more cognizant this year, owing primarily to the New York mosque controversy, and the idiotic and dangerous Quran burning threats of a megalomaniac Florida pastor.

I find myself mourning anew the loss of thousands of innocent lives of workers in the twin towers, of passengers who died the field in Pennsylvania, of the unsuspecting civilian and military personnel working in the Pentagon that fateful morning, and of so many brave rescuers who headed into instead of away from the conflagrations to assist their fallen brothers and sisters. I do make a distinction between victims and heroes, for while all were victims directly and indirectly, the real heroes were the fighting passengers on flight 93, the rescuers who charged into the infernos, and the tens of thousands of brave men and women who volunteered and who continue to volunteer to put their lives on the line in defense of our nation against an ongoing attack by a small but determined group of radicalized Muslims bent on spreading their religion by violent means.

I think what I mourn most deeply though, is the opportunity that was lost following those first days and months following the attacks, when then President Bush rallied the nation together, bolstered our spirits and soothed our troubled hearts, and held in his hand an opportunity to bind our wounds and unify Americans, and to unite America with the rest of the world. We had been knocked down off our high horse in a most traumatic fashion, which created a unique opportunity to join together with current allies and previous foes to form common cause against global terrorism, to recognize and seize upon our common interests, and to move the country and the world forward in a positive direction. At an early moment there, George W. Bush had the opportunity to go down in history as one of the greatest American Presidents.

He started out well enough, vowing to identify the culprits and make them pay for their deed, and take action to ensure that we would not fall prey to such actions again. He focused rightly on Afghanistan, a failed state which offered safe harbor to Bin Laden and his followers, and began marshaling forces and a plan to deal with our attackers. But then, before we’d even launched our action in that squalid land, he squandered his opportunity horribly…

We now know that the dust and debris from the attack hadn’t yet been cleared when plans began being laid in earnest to attack Iraq, a country that the administration knew had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attack. As a result, the Afghanistan effort was shoddily planned and woefully under-resourced, ensuring its failure from the outset and, as a consequence, squandering the lives of more than 2,000 coalition troops so far up to the time of this writing. While our allies willingly joined us in pursuing this initial justified effort, they were being simultaneously strong-armed into pledging participation toward the Iraq invasion. In the months following our successful invasion of Afghanistan, routing of the Taliban, and predictable failure to capture or kill Bin Laden and the Al Quaeda leadership, the actions of the Bush administration began sowing rifts not only between the U.S. and Muslim nations, but between us and our non-Muslim allies as well. Less than a year and a half after the 9/11 attacks we invaded a sovereign nation without legal justification, leading a bogus international coalition strong-armed together to create a flimsy masquerade of an international effort, and as a consequence severely damaging our standing in the community of nations and splitting our own nation asunder in ways unseen since the outset of the civil war.

Instead of accepting the global outpouring of compassion and brotherhood that resulted from this dastardly and globally excoriated attack, and using the opportunity to motivate our people united in shock and mourning toward some positive end, Bush and his cohort climbed back up on the pedestal, brushed aside calls for measure and reason, swelled out their collective chest, waved the sword and bellowed out in anger and fury. They wielded our financial, military and political strength to bend the situation in their ill-conceived direction, and started a religious war that shows no sign of abating – quite the opposite. Instead of taking advantage of our unrivaled strength to lead a willing global coalition toward alleviating a great evil, they chose instead to add to it with their own criminal behavior. Instead of taking this opportunity to unite the nation toward some positive end and a brighter future, we found ourselves embroiled in increasingly violent rhetoric and political chicanery. And all the while, our brave men and women were spilling their precious blood in vain, and do so to this day.

All the while, Americans were coerced into giving up their civil liberties to an increasingly paranoid police state. Political operatives maligned ordinary citizens who were non-compliant with their outlandish plans. Rules were bent, broken and disregarded in the name of “national security,” while the actual security concerns at our borders and ports were ignored and deprived of resources which were instead being fed into an ill conceived conflict. A true national nightmare…

Conservatives and self-proclaimed “patriots” prod us with their flags and T-shirts and bumper stickers to “Never Forget.” None of us will ever forget. Not where we were. Not what we felt. Not how we huddled with our families and friends in shock and pain and suffering…

And I, for one, will never forget that this opportunity for healing and progress both at home and abroad, purchased at such a horrible price of pain and suffering and death which continues to be levied to this very moment, was squandered. I will wonder what those innocent souls of both victims and heroes whose lives were unjustly and violently taken would say about how their deaths were used to justify all the moral failures and violent deaths that have followed as a result. And I will wonder how long our nation will have to pay for President Bush’s terrible failure of leadership.

And I will mourn…