signalmankenneth
Verified User
We've wallowed too long in our victimhood 9-11 was indeed a devastating loss of personal life. Those who died were mostly US citizens, but included people of all nations, such as the wait staff and bus boys at the sky high restaurant in the Twin Towers. It was a "shared" loss, indicative of the international inclusiveness of America.
But having never experienced a significant mainland attack since the War of 1812 -- as Noam Chomsky points out in his remarkable book, "9-11: Was There an Alternative?" -- we feel ourselves invulnerable as a country. I recall reading an observation of Kurt Vonnegut many years ago -- who survived the allied fire bombing of Dresden in WW II in an underground slaughterhouse for prisoners of war -- commenting that America was distinct among Western allies in never knowing the devastation of cities under siege by bombers, rockets, tanks and mortar attack.
Then there is our national hubris, that American Exceptionalism itself was under attack on September 11, 2001. Like all powerful empires, we feel invulnerable and crush anyone perceived to have pierced through our bubble of "invincibility."
Chomsky and others call 9-11 a crime, which our government treated as a justification for wars that are still continuing ten years later, draining us of military lives in excess of those lost on 9-11, causing civilian deaths in the hundreds of thousands, and being a central contributing factor to the rise in the American deficit.
Europe, which endured WW II, and lost some 30 million people, stopped letting the nightmarish loss of life and destruction hamper its reconstruction more quickly than America has let go of 9-11, which it still clings to and wallows in.
BuzzFlash at Truthout, publishing since May of 2000, reported and broke stories on the attack on the Twin Towers (and the Pentagon) and the Bush/Cheney administration use of the tragedy to launch military conflicts of empire. At the time of 9-11, the Bush administration's poll numbers were low and dropping. All that changed on 9-11, after which the full propaganda strength of the White House and corporate mass media focused on putting US citizens in a state of fear to accomplish strategic military goals to enhance America's superpower status and extend our military footprint.
Yes, BuzzFlash at Truthout focused on verifiable fact that Bush and Rice were warned of likely Al-Qaeda hijackings and how the stenographic DC press let them off the hook on their egregious unintentional or intentional lapse in heightening airport security that might indeed have prevented 9-11.
Rice eventually defended her failed responsibility to protect us by saying something like "but we didn't receive warnings that they would fly them into buildings," which was specious because US intelligence knew for some time of just such a possibility as part of an overall Al-Qaeda strategy. Bush finally admitted, during his presidency, that they were warned of hijackings, but not of a specific target so his administration didn't take action to protect the World Trade Center. The corporate press thought those excuses made sense, except for the simple logical fact that if Bush and Rice, among others, had taken increased steps to prevent hijackings, they might have prevented the hijackings that brought down the Twin Towers and blew up part of the Pentagon.
Furthermore, in exclusive reporting by Jason Leopold and Jeff Kaye on Truthout, it is revealed that US intelligence services did indeed know of Al-Qaeda interest in targeting the Twin Towers and the Pentagon: "high-level DoD officials held discussions about DO5's intelligence activities between the summer of 2000 and June 2001 revolving around al-Qaeda's interest in striking the Pentagon, the World Trade Center (WTC), and other targets."
In other words, the Bush administration was aware that the terrorist organization had set its sights on those structures prior to 9/11 and, apparently, government officials failed to act on those warnings.
And then there are all the lingering threads, still unconnected, of how the CIA and FBI were on to some of the hijackers, not to mention the quickly erased connections of the hijackers to Saudi Arabian backers. There are so many unanswered questions, even more after a 9-11 commission whitewashed the dirty laundry surrounding the attack.
But this much we know. The narrative of our government switched on a dime after 9-11, and we were cast into a state of what Chomsky calls "manufactured consent," whipped up by a bombardment of jingoistic rhetoric coming from the federal government and the airwaves. We were kept in a constant state of fear with crayon-colored alerts. We were pawns in the great game of empire.
As a result, our nation is on the verge of a double-dip recession. While nations like Germany forge ahead economically, Osama bin-Laden achieved one of his major goals: crippling America economically.
We are still wallowing in our victimhood. We had our time to grieve, but we haven't moved on.
After World War II, the US helped rebuild Europe -- with the visionary Marshall Plan that even turned Germany (our former Nazi adversary) -- into thriving democracies and economic engines.
Since Barack Obama was elected, the Republican Party shifted the national narrative from 9-11 to the deficit, which -- as noted earlier -- has been a substantial contributor to our financial shortfall. But 9-11 has continued to be an albatross around the neck of national progress and the closure of grief and grievance.
That will continue to weigh upon us unnecessarily until we get on with a new narrative of innovation, a belief in the strength of democracy, and an understanding that overextended empire cannot endure indefinitely while undertaking squandered and prolonged military expeditions.
We have appropriately mourned those who died in the attack of 9-11. It is time that we honor them by advancing as a nation to write the next chapter of the great experiment in democracy known as America.
By Mark Karlin on Sun, 09/11/2011 - 7:51am.
But having never experienced a significant mainland attack since the War of 1812 -- as Noam Chomsky points out in his remarkable book, "9-11: Was There an Alternative?" -- we feel ourselves invulnerable as a country. I recall reading an observation of Kurt Vonnegut many years ago -- who survived the allied fire bombing of Dresden in WW II in an underground slaughterhouse for prisoners of war -- commenting that America was distinct among Western allies in never knowing the devastation of cities under siege by bombers, rockets, tanks and mortar attack.
Then there is our national hubris, that American Exceptionalism itself was under attack on September 11, 2001. Like all powerful empires, we feel invulnerable and crush anyone perceived to have pierced through our bubble of "invincibility."
Chomsky and others call 9-11 a crime, which our government treated as a justification for wars that are still continuing ten years later, draining us of military lives in excess of those lost on 9-11, causing civilian deaths in the hundreds of thousands, and being a central contributing factor to the rise in the American deficit.
Europe, which endured WW II, and lost some 30 million people, stopped letting the nightmarish loss of life and destruction hamper its reconstruction more quickly than America has let go of 9-11, which it still clings to and wallows in.
BuzzFlash at Truthout, publishing since May of 2000, reported and broke stories on the attack on the Twin Towers (and the Pentagon) and the Bush/Cheney administration use of the tragedy to launch military conflicts of empire. At the time of 9-11, the Bush administration's poll numbers were low and dropping. All that changed on 9-11, after which the full propaganda strength of the White House and corporate mass media focused on putting US citizens in a state of fear to accomplish strategic military goals to enhance America's superpower status and extend our military footprint.
Yes, BuzzFlash at Truthout focused on verifiable fact that Bush and Rice were warned of likely Al-Qaeda hijackings and how the stenographic DC press let them off the hook on their egregious unintentional or intentional lapse in heightening airport security that might indeed have prevented 9-11.
Rice eventually defended her failed responsibility to protect us by saying something like "but we didn't receive warnings that they would fly them into buildings," which was specious because US intelligence knew for some time of just such a possibility as part of an overall Al-Qaeda strategy. Bush finally admitted, during his presidency, that they were warned of hijackings, but not of a specific target so his administration didn't take action to protect the World Trade Center. The corporate press thought those excuses made sense, except for the simple logical fact that if Bush and Rice, among others, had taken increased steps to prevent hijackings, they might have prevented the hijackings that brought down the Twin Towers and blew up part of the Pentagon.
Furthermore, in exclusive reporting by Jason Leopold and Jeff Kaye on Truthout, it is revealed that US intelligence services did indeed know of Al-Qaeda interest in targeting the Twin Towers and the Pentagon: "high-level DoD officials held discussions about DO5's intelligence activities between the summer of 2000 and June 2001 revolving around al-Qaeda's interest in striking the Pentagon, the World Trade Center (WTC), and other targets."
In other words, the Bush administration was aware that the terrorist organization had set its sights on those structures prior to 9/11 and, apparently, government officials failed to act on those warnings.
And then there are all the lingering threads, still unconnected, of how the CIA and FBI were on to some of the hijackers, not to mention the quickly erased connections of the hijackers to Saudi Arabian backers. There are so many unanswered questions, even more after a 9-11 commission whitewashed the dirty laundry surrounding the attack.
But this much we know. The narrative of our government switched on a dime after 9-11, and we were cast into a state of what Chomsky calls "manufactured consent," whipped up by a bombardment of jingoistic rhetoric coming from the federal government and the airwaves. We were kept in a constant state of fear with crayon-colored alerts. We were pawns in the great game of empire.
As a result, our nation is on the verge of a double-dip recession. While nations like Germany forge ahead economically, Osama bin-Laden achieved one of his major goals: crippling America economically.
We are still wallowing in our victimhood. We had our time to grieve, but we haven't moved on.
After World War II, the US helped rebuild Europe -- with the visionary Marshall Plan that even turned Germany (our former Nazi adversary) -- into thriving democracies and economic engines.
Since Barack Obama was elected, the Republican Party shifted the national narrative from 9-11 to the deficit, which -- as noted earlier -- has been a substantial contributor to our financial shortfall. But 9-11 has continued to be an albatross around the neck of national progress and the closure of grief and grievance.
That will continue to weigh upon us unnecessarily until we get on with a new narrative of innovation, a belief in the strength of democracy, and an understanding that overextended empire cannot endure indefinitely while undertaking squandered and prolonged military expeditions.
We have appropriately mourned those who died in the attack of 9-11. It is time that we honor them by advancing as a nation to write the next chapter of the great experiment in democracy known as America.
By Mark Karlin on Sun, 09/11/2011 - 7:51am.
