9/11

The AQ leadership is, to all intents and purposes, destroyed.

Then why are we still there? In how many wars, what’s the latest count? Bin Laden’s stated aim was to trap the USA in ongoing, expensive wars, bleeding us to death. AQ may or may not be destroyed but they won, nonetheless. Mission Accomplished.

The real economic damage the USA has suffered stems entirely from gross overspending on pork-barrel *domestic* issues..

You’ve gotta be kidding. Do you realize you sound like a broken record (an archaic term often used by my father’s generation) blindly repeating right wing talking points? Do you have any idea how idiotic you sound? Your comment has absolutely nothing to do with 9/11.

One of the economic damages is opportunity cost. Had we not squandered trillions pursuing oil wars, we could be on our way to some form of energy independence.

Enough feeding the troll (sorry). Do see Chris Hedges’ We Are What We Loathe. He was at Ground Zero when it happened.

Karmanot,

Look FWD, never back. Magical realism!

The orgy of 9/11 victimology and self-pity continues apace. From snipers on the rooftops of New York to maudlin media reports to diversions and grounding of planes because people are deemed “suspicious” by spending too much time in the bathroom (not kidding — can’t keep track of them all — fighter jets scrambled to accompany one plane today) to the complete absence of remembrance for the millions of Iraqis, Afghanis, Pakistanis, Yemenis, Somalis, and god-knows-how-many others we have maimed, tortured, and slaughtered.

(And yes, Chris Hedges’s piece is, as usual with him, poetic and powerful.)

Sanity is the new insanity

And vice versa.

OMG! I’ve done my best not to hear Obama’s speech; but the sound bites are unavoidable even on BBC;
What an utter load of bullshit spewing from the decider; unbelievable…

If anyone’s looking for a good retch:

http://news.yahoo.com/football-night-in-america.html

And sorry Bernard but the GOP has no monopoly on the exploitation that took place in the wake of 9-11. 82 dem congress critters and 29 dem senators gave Bush’s crusade their approval. Our stupidity was very much a bipartisan affair, as it remains

” the GOP has no monopoly on the exploitation that took place in the wake of 9-11″

That’s for sure. Hillary Clinton would be president today if she had not voted for Bush’s war on Iraq.

Also, y’all might want to take a look at the current kerfuffle at anarchist Crispin Sartwell’s place, Eye of the Storm:

http://eyeofthestorm.blogs.com/eye_of_the_storm/2011/09/safer.html

Not to mention Krugman http://tinyurl.com/5s5nll4

The Years of Shame

Is it just me, or are the 9/11 commemorations oddly subdued?

Actually, I don’t think it’s me, and it’s not really that odd.

What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. The atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.

A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?

The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.

I’m not going to allow comments on this post, for obvious reasons.