Regardless of what you think of our current Administration or what’s going on in Iraq, almost 3,000 people died six years ago when a small group of people decided that a much larger group of people needed to die. I know it’s become very fashionable to bash everything Republican, applaud everything Democrat, and laugh with Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert on a nightly basis from our central air and heated homes. I also know how fashionable and irresistible it is to live in our society today which holds “ability to excel in creating revisionist history” as a great virtue to have.
Here are the facts: everyone was scared that day, a lot of people died, and you can’t take an effect and make it the cause. When the attacks happened, no rational person thought to themselves, “Crap! This probably means we’re going to invade a country within six months. I hope it’s well planned…” Pretty much everyone knew it was either bin-Laden or Hussein that was behind it and that it was terrible and frightening. To say with a straight face that you had the demeanor of someone who saw this coming is a joke; no one did. Almost everyone waited for the President to make his speech because, if for nothing else, it gave us a break from having to watch people dying and crying and the buildings crumbling over and over on the TV.
As for the last point about how you can’t take an effect and make it the cause, you can hate Bush or the Administration or the war in Iraq or how we haven’t caught bin-Laden yet. Whatever. But you can’t use the effects of 9/11 and make them the reason that enables you to downplay or forget what happened. Our country’s foreign policy was sketchy at best before 9/11 (remember, it was Clinton who gutted the military and its spending and downplayed bin-Laden’s role in the Cole bombing; remember, it was Bush, Sr. who infuriated bin-Laden by using Saudi Arabia instead of Afghanistan for air operations during the first Gulf War; remember, it was Reagan and Carter who supplied bin-Laden with weapons and training to stave off the Russians, etc., etc.) so to say that it’s somehow worse on a calamitious level now is ridiculous and ignorant.
But, more importantly, remember that this argument could go on and on and on but it doesn’t change the fact that 2,974 non-military people died in one day on American soil. I hold no allegiance to any political party (I’m not a registered voter) and I am a follower to no organized religion (I’m somewhere between Atheist and Agnostic) but 9/11/01 transcended all politics and religion.
9/12/01 through today, on the other hand, now that’s a decidedly different story…