(The Pentagon 9/11 Memorial. WP Photo.)

I. Anger and Fatigue

The only surprise about the most recent debasement of 9/11, at the Republican National Convention, breaking a long-standing, sensible taboo not to use 9/11 footage for political purposes, was that it stood as long as it did. Almost everything gets degraded over time. But that doesn’t mean we have to like it.

Yeah, I’d like to keep 9/11 completely non-political. But it hasn’t been for a long time. So I’d like to try to delve into what’s urgent and important, but also to remember what’s vital and essential.

Jeffrey Goldberg recently wrote an op-ed called “On Nov. 4, Remember 9/11.” It’s full of dangerous bullshit, such as the revisionist poppycock that 9/11 occurred because of a “law enforcement” approach to terrorism, as opposed to other factors Goldberg’s apparently forgotten. But Jonathan Schwarz nails the most crucial point:
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From Simply Left Behind:

It’s September 11 once again, now seven years out from the attacks that paralyzed my city and horrified the nation and the world.

As John Lennon once sang, “And so this is Christmas, and what have you done? Another year over, a new one just begun.”

It has gotten so far from the hopes and dreams of a nation of September 12, 2001 that we have dumbed down the attacks. Unable to capture and bring to justice the real criminal behind the tragedy, despite an admitted new effort to land him in the desperate eleventh hour hopes of salvaging a legacy, we’ve decided to try and change the story: Osama bin Laden was never the man behind the attacks, Khalid Sheik Muhammed was!

And we have always been at war with Eastasia.

Under Bill Clinton, while internally we were divided thanks to a small handful of uberpartisan numbnuts who believed in party ahead of God and country, we presented to the world a beacon of hope, of good will, of what was right with this nation and could be right for the world. On September 11, indeed, the world stood side by side with us and declared “we are all Americans” from France to Palestine and beyond.

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It’s been seven years since that tragic day and still no memorial. Why is that? I understand that building/creating a memorial shouldn’t be rushed, but seven whole years? Some huge disconnect going on there.

Did you notice the title to this post? Seems the only people remembering 9/11, other than family and friends of victims, are politicians trying to get ahead. Mostly republicans. Mostly Rudy Giuliani. And mostly to play on peoples fears. And it’s usually used in conjunction with Osama bin-Laden™, Al Qaeda™ and the Big Black Bogeyman™.

Really sad state of affairs when such a tragic day is used.

Commentary: Seven years after 9/11, why no memorial?

By Terry McGovern

NEW YORK (CNN) — My son is 7 now. He was just about 7 weeks old when his grandmother, Ann McGovern, my mother, died in the World Trade Center attacks. [...]

Curious by nature, just like his grandmother, he has so many questions. “Where was she that day? Why does everybody talk about 9/11 all the time? What are they building there? Why is it taking so long?” I try hard to answer. [...]

We have lived through the political use and misuse of 9/11 for seven years and we still don’t have a place to visit on the site that commemorates our loved ones.

I really don’t care about the leaseholders or the commercial use of the property. I don’t want to look at Rudy Giuliani in front of a towerless skyline at the Republican convention. I don’t care that the two presidential candidates will visit the construction site on this seventh anniversary.

I want to be able to visit a place of peace that allows me to forget the politics and posturing and reminds me of the beauty of the lives that were lived and lost.

How can it be that, seven years later, this great New York City has not offered us such a place?

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Sept. 10: In Keith Olberman’s special comment he talks about the politicization of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, especially by the Bush administration and the GOP who use the event to terrify Americans into thinking the only safe option is to vote Republican “or this will happen again and you will die.”

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Rudy Giuliani finally gets around to admitting that his role on 9/11 was of absolutely no importance or consequence. That any idiot could have done it:

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani says if Sarah Palin had been president when the U.S. came under attack on Sept. 11, 2001, he’s confident she would have been able to handle the crisis.

In an interview Wednesday on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Giuliani was asked, “If she were the president on 9/11, you would have been confident?”

Giuliani responded: “I’d be confident that she’d be able to handle it. She’s been a governor of a state, she’s been mayor of a city.”

I can’t really call Sarah Palin an idiot. A lying, hypocritical bitch, yes. Idiot, no. But she could have sat in Rudy’s chair that fateful day, with her finger up her ass, and been just as effective. Of this fact I am confident!

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Can someone tell me what the hell ever happened to “fighting them over there so we don’t have to here?”

President Bush pressured the House on Wednesday to pass new rules for monitoring terrorists‘ communications, saying “terrorists are planning new attacks on our country … that will make Sept. 11 pale by comparison.” (emphasis mine)

And the house will, of course, cave to Bush’s demands.

People, I am so tired of this sh*t.

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Oh what a shock…….

WASHINGTON - The Sept. 11 commission’s executive director had closer ties with the White House than publicly disclosed and tried to influence the final report in ways that the staff often perceived as limiting the Bush administration’s responsibility, a new book says.

Philip Zelikow, a friend of then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, spoke with her several times during the 20-month investigation that closely examined her role in assessing the al-Qaida threat. He also exchanged frequent calls with the White House, including at least four from Bush’s chief political adviser at the time, Karl Rove.

Zelikow once tried to push through wording in a draft report that suggested a greater tie between al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and Iraq, in line with White House claims but not with the commission staff’s viewpoint, according to Philip Shenon’s “The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation.”

More at Yahoo News

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In an earlier post, “Where’s bin Laden?” I wrote about the changes to the script for the film Charlie Wilson’s War, specifically, the removal of all mentions of bin Laden, al-Qaeda or 9/11. Mike Finnigan at C&L helpfully passed on a link to “Tom Hanks Tells Hollywood Whopper in ‘Charlie Wilson’s War’” by Melissa Roddy at AlterNet.

Now, via Jonathan Schwarz at A Tiny Revolution (here and here), come two good pieces on the real history behind the film Charlie Wilson’s War.

First up is Chalmers Johnson with “Imperialist Propaganda: Second Thoughts on Charlie Wilson’s War” at TomDispatch.com:
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And of course Mayor Michael Bloomberg is distancing himself from the medical examiner. “The city is defending itself in a lawsuit filed by thousands of workers who say they were not properly protected from the dust.” Well, just as long as none of this comes back to haunt Rudy Giuliani.

Medical examiner rules 9/11 cop did not die from WTC exposure

NEW YORK (AP) – He became the face of post-September 11 illness after his death in early 2006, galvanizing lawmakers and health care advocates to lobby for research and treatment for thousands who breathed the debris-filled air at ground zero.

James Zadroga, the 34-year-old retired police detective who died of respiratory failure after working hundreds of hours at the World Trade Center site, was often cited by those advocates as a “sentinel case” — the first health-related casualty linked to ground zero, suggesting there would be more to follow.

The city’s medical examiner stunned that community this week with a letter declaring that Zadroga’s death had nothing to do with the toxic air he breathed while working at ground zero.

Rejecting another medical examiner’s autopsy, New York City Chief Medical Examiner Charles Hirsch said in a letter to Zadroga’s family that his death was not caused by exposure to trade center dust.

“It is our unequivocal opinion, with certainty beyond doubt, that the foreign material in your son’s lungs did not get there as the result of inhaling dust at the World Trade Center or elsewhere,” said the letter to Zadroga’s father. It was signed by Hirsch and another medical examiner, Michele Slone. The letter was obtained Thursday by The Associated Press.
[...]

“It’s shocking … how can they be so callous?” said Zadroga’s father, Joseph, who broke down in tears last year before a congressional panel convened to study September 11 health. “He had the acid reflux. He had short-term memory loss. … He was on strong medications for the pain in his lungs.”

Associated Press

CNN.com

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By Alec MacGillis
Washington Post

As Rudolph W. Giuliani campaigns for president, he rarely misses a chance to warn about the threat from terrorists. “They hate you,” he told a woman at an Atlanta college. They “want to kill us,” he told guests at a Virginia luncheon.

The former New York City mayor exhorts America to fight back in what he calls the “terrorists’ war on us” and accuses Democrats of reverting to their “denial” in the 1990s, when, he said, President Bill Clinton erred by treating terrorism as a law enforcement matter, not a war.

Democrats, he said in July, have “the same bad judgment they had in the 1990s. They don’t see the threat. They don’t accept the threat.”

It is a powerful message coming from the man who won global acclaim for his calm and resolve after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But it is undercut by Giuliani’s record as mayor and by his public statements about terrorism since the 1990s, which document an evolution in thinking that began with a mind’set similar to the one he criticizes today.

In presenting himself as the candidate most knowledgeable about terrorism, Giuliani stakes the same claim he used to build a successful consulting firm after leaving City Hall: that he is not only a strong leader in a crisis, but someone who was deeply engaged with the Islamic extremist threat long before planes hit the World Trade Center.

read more at The Washington Post

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By PAT MILTON
The Associated Press

NEW YORK - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asked permission to lay a wreath at the World Trade Center site when he comes to New York City next week, but the request was denied, a police official said Wednesday.

The U.S. also has denied a visa to Iran’s United Nations ambassador in Geneva to attend next week’s General Assembly meeting because he was involved in the 1979 U.S. hostage crisis, a U.N. official said.

Ahmadinejad, who is arriving Sunday to address the United Nations’ General Assembly, had asked this month for permission to visit the site of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, police spokesman Paul Browne said.

The request to enter the fenced-in site was rejected because of ongoing construction there, Browne said.

“Requests for the Iranian president to visit the immediate area would also be opposed by the NYPD on security grounds,” Browne said.

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, told reporters Wednesday that the United States would not support Iran’s attempt to use the site for a “photo op.”

read more HERE

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(Photo by Joel Meyerowitz.)

I already wrote my piece on 9/11 for this year, but wanted to highlight a few other pieces. Gary Kamiya’s exceptional Salon article, “The Real Lessons of 9/11,” has justifiably received a great deal of attention. Some highlights:

Sept. 11 is a totemic date for the Bush administration. It justifies everything, explains everything, ends all argument. It is the crime that must be eternally punished, the wound that can never heal, the moral high ground that can never be taken…

Democrats have effectively challenged the reign of nature and instinct in the domestic realm. But they cower when it comes to war. They are afraid to criticize the irrational, instinctive nature of Bush’s “war on terror” because they believe their political Achilles’ heel is the perception that they are “weak on national security.” They are afraid they’ll be seen as wimps. Beaten down by Republican propaganda that asserts that America’s only choice is between the GOP’s macho John Wayne and the Democrats’ dithering Hamlet, they pathetically don their cowboy hats and tank helmets, a tactic that actually reinforces the very image of weakness it is intended to dispel. Unchallenged by the Democrats, the right wing’s master narrative about American power and the need to carry a big stick has carried the day…

The angry bigotry that drove the war rings out loud and clear in the right-wing battle cry: “They attacked us, so we had to attack them.” The recent TV ads run by war supporters repeat this theme: “They attacked us,” a narrator says as an image of the burning World Trade Center appears. “They won’t stop in Iraq.” The key word here, of course, is “they.” Just who is “they”? For Bush’s die-hard supporters, “they” simply means “Arabs and Muslims.” Cretinous rabble-rousers like Ann Coulter and Michael Savage play to this crowd, demanding that we nuke the evil ragheads. For the establishment, “they” is not quite so explicitly racist. “They” refers not to all Arabs and Muslims, but only to the “bad” ones. The “bad” guys include al-Qaida, Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and the militant Palestinians. And, of course, it used to include Iraq (and may again). Anyone who makes this list is eligible for attack by the U.S.
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Bill Moyers‘ Journal is re-running an acclaimed hour-long program from 2004 on 9/11 and the official report. In my area, it’s playing tonight (Friday, 9/14/07). You can check your local listings here.

Please note that this is an hour-long program versus the usual half hour Journal installment. Also, for some reason this program will not be streamed on the web later. So, set your VCRs or DVRs. (I missed this program when it first aired and a friend raved about it.)

You can read more about this program at Moyers’ site and blog here. Now more than ever, it’s important to support PBS and good, independent reporting.

(Cross-posted at Vagabond Scholar)

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This is a moment to seize. The Kaleidoscope has been shaken. The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again. Before they do, let us re-order this world around us.

-Tony Blair, October 2nd, 2001.

9/11 remains a day of reflection and remembrance. Here’s overwritten-but’sincere pieces on 9/11 from 2001 and 2002, as well as blog posts from 2005 and 2006.

As I’ve written before, I always knew that eventually 9/11 would be politicized and misappropriated, but I hoped it would take a while and the damage might be minimized. However, this year, even with less blatant demagoguery about 9/11 (so far; Bush will speak later this week), the manipulation feels more present and grating to me. “Rising above it” may be the right response for some people, and they are certainly entitled to it. But this year, for me, that feels irresponsible. It’s impossible for me to not to think of Petraeus and Crocker and their misleading (at the very least, mistaken) testimony to Congress. It’s impossible for me not to think about the shell game going on yet again, the amazing missed opportunities, and the deep moral crime of sacrificing something sacred and profound for personal gain and group greed. In the process of what the Bush administration has wrought, so many have been punished for absolutely no good purpose. I can still feel sad and disappointed, but so far, anger and disgust are frankly winning out.
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