Do we need a terrorist attack in the United States to open the eyes of Democrats?

Question

Oh, it’s a long, long while from September to September. This year, the anniversary falls, for the first time, on a Tuesday morning, and perhaps some or other cable network will re-present the events in real time — the first vague breaking news in an otherwise routine morning show, the follow-up item on the second plane, and the realization that something bigger was underway. If you make it vivid enough, the JFK/Princess Di factor will kick in: You’ll remember “where you were” when you “heard the news.” But it’s harder to recreate the peculiar mood at the end of the day, when the citizens of the superpower went to bed not knowing what they’d wake up to the following morning.

Six years on, most Americans are now pretty certain what they’ll wake up to in the morning: There’ll be a thwarted terrorist plot somewhere or other — last week, it was Germany. Occasionally, one will succeed somewhere or other, on the far horizon — in Bali, Istanbul, Madrid, London. But not many folks expect to switch on the TV this Tuesday morning, as they did that Tuesday morning, and see smoke billowing from Atlanta or Phoenix or Seattle. During the IRA’s 30-year campaign, the British grew accustomed (perhaps too easily accustomed) to waking up to the news either of some prominent person’s assassination or that a couple of gran’mas and some schoolkids had been blown apart in a shopping centre. It was a terrorist war in which terrorism was almost routine. But, in the six years since President Bush declared that America was in a “war on terror,” there has been in America no terrorism.

In theory, the administration ought to derive a political benefit from this: The president has “kept America safe.” But, in practice, the placidity of the domestic front diminishes the chosen rationale of the conflict: If a “war on terror” has no terror, who says there’s a war at all? That’s the argument of the Left — that it’s all a racket cooked up by the Bushitlerburton fascists to impose on America a permanent national-security state in which, for dark sinister reasons of his own, Dick Cheney is free to monitor your out-of-state phone calls all day long. Judging from the blithe expressions of commuters doing the shoeless shuffle through the security line at LAX and O’Hare, most Americans seem relatively content with a permanent national-security state. It’s a curious paradox: airports on permanent Orange Alert, and a citizenry on permanent …well, I’m not sure there’s a homeland-security color code for “Gaily Insouciant,” but, if there is, it’s probably a bland limpid pastel of some kind. Of course, if tomorrow there’s a big smoking hole where the Empire State Building used to be, we’ll be back to: “The president should have known! This proves the failure of his policies over the last six years! We need another all-star Commission filled with retired grandees!”

And that would be the relatively sane reaction. Have you seen that bumper sticker “9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB”? If you haven’t, go to a college town and cruise Main Street for a couple of minutes. It seems odd that a fascist regime which thinks nothing of killing thousands of people in a big landmark building in the center of the city hasn’t quietly offed some of these dissident professors — or at least the guy with the sticker-printing contract. Fearlessly, Robert Fisk of Britain’s Independent, the alleged dean of Middle East correspondents, has now crossed over to the truther side and written a piece headlined, “Even I Question The ‘Truth’ About 9/11.” According to a poll in May, 35-percent of Democrats believe that Bush knew about 9/11 in advance. Did Rumsfeld also know? Almost certainly. That’s why he went to his office as normal that today, because he knew in advance that the plane would slice through the Pentagon but come to a halt on the far side of the photocopier. That’s how well-planned it was, unlike Iraq.

Apparently, 39-percent of Democrats still believe Bush didn’t know in advance — or, at any rate, so they said in May. But I’m confident half of them will have joined Rosie O’Donnell on the melted steely knoll before the Iowa caucuses. If Iraq is another Vietnam, 9/11 is another Kennedy assassination. Were Bali, Madrid, and London also inside jobs by the Bush Gang? If so, it’s no wonder federal spending’s out of control.

And what of those for whom the events of six years ago were more than just conspiracy fodder? Last week the New York Times carried a story about the current state of the 9/11 lawsuits. Relatives of 42 of the dead are suing various parties for compensation, on the grounds that what happened that Tuesday morning should have been anticipated. The law firm Motley Rice, diversifying from its traditional lucrative class-action hunting grounds of tobacco, asbestos, and lead paint, is promising to put on the witness stand everybody who “allowed the events of 9/11 to happen.” And they mean everybody — American Airlines, United, Boeing, the airport authorities, the security firms — everybody, that is, except the guys who did it.

According to the Times, many of the bereaved are angry and determined that their loved one’s death should have meaning. Yet the meaning they’re after surely strikes our enemies not just as extremely odd but as one more reason why they’ll win. You launch an act of war, and the victims respond with a lawsuit against their own countrymen. But that’s the American way: Almost every news story boils down to somebody standing in front of a microphone and announcing that he’s retained counsel. Last week, it was Larry Craig. Next week, it’ll be the survivors of Ahmadinejad’s nuclear test in Westchester County. As Andrew McCarthy pointed out, a legalistic culture invariably misses the forest for the trees. Senator Craig should know that what matters is not whether an artful lawyer can get him off on a technicality but whether the public thinks he trawls for anonymous sex in public bathrooms. Likewise, those 9/11 families should know that, if you want your child’s death that morning to have meaning, what matters is not whether you hound Boeing into admitting liability but whether you insist that the movement that murdered your daughter is hunted down and the sustaining ideological virus that led thousands of others to dance up and down in the streets cheering her death is expunged from the earth.

In his pugnacious new book, Norman Podhoretz calls for redesignating this conflict as World War IV. Certainly, it would have been easier politically to frame the Iraq campaign as being a front in a fourth world war than as a necessary measure in an anti-terrorist campaign. Yet who knows? Perhaps we would still have mired ourselves in legalisms and conspiracies and the dismal curdled relativism of the Flight 93 memorial’s “crescent of embrace.” In the end, as Podhoretz says, if the war is to be fought at all, it will “have to be fought by the kind of people Americans now are.” On this sixth anniversary, as 9/11 retreats into history, many Americans see no war at all.

Answer 1

No.
That is a horrible and very Anti-American thing to say.
Maybe you find the anniversary of 9/11 to be suitable for political hate speech. I believe most Americans would not.

Answer 2

First off you're a thief this is a cut and paste Editorial, secondly what kind of person thinks an attack on their fellow citizens is in any way helpful to anything other than chaos and despair, that said the Democrats are wide awake, I am so sick of this ridiculous BS that because we think there's a better way to approach the issue of terrorism that we somehow "don't get it" seems to me you all don't get it, Iraq was a blot on our national Honor, never before have we attacked a sovereign nation without direct provacation, secondly it's was a poorly planned and executed war that has led to a RISE in global terrorism and is a recruiting poster for jihadists, how stupid do you have to be NOT to understand that, I would think in the semi retarded range of intellect, we can agree to disagree and let the war of ideas sway the public, obviously you've learned NOTHING from the last elections and in my eyes maybe that's a good thing because if you can't see you're side is failing at the mission of defeating terrorism with it's current tactics you deserve to be gone and let the next group come in to clean up the mess you've made and actually do the real work on the many fronts necessary to truely make this a safer nation

Answer 3

Did you all catch the propaganda
Jill did
"If Iraq is another Vietnam, 9/11 is another Kennedy assassination. Were Bali, Madrid, and London also inside jobs by the Bush Gang?"

If???
and then the far flung Bali....
This is a sly piece of work ..... first rate propaganda
Watch - September Clues, see how they did it
The importance of September Clues cannot be over stated

Answer 4

Obviously he wants change so maybe that's is what he will do. Change some of the ridiculous laws and change some useful laws that are not being enforced or not in effect. Also please remember that Presidents can write laws and be the head enforcer of laws, but all laws and acts he writes must, I repeat MUST, be approved by congress. So if your scared that Obama will make the entire country Muslim (which is a stupid, ignorant thought to begin with, but that's beside the point) he would have to get Congress' approval which he would probably not get because a) it would be violating a constitutional right and b) Congress is full of christians. I hope this helped.

Answer 5

lol. Whether you believe it or not the Democrats want to be in Iraq and if one of their candidates happens to get the presidency next year you will see exactly that. You will have another attack on US soil. It will be blamed on Osama Bin Laden and his place of refuge will be known just before or immediately after as Iran. Then the war with Iran will start, early next year sometime I would think. Did you here them talking about Iran up there on Capitol Hill today? The troops won't be pulling out of Iraq anytime soon. War with Iran is paramount to the plan. There is no way the US will walk away from Iraq and Afganistan now.

Answer 6

I wish people that rely solely on fox news for their information would quit posting novella-lengh whine fests. Its republicans faults Bush is there to make these monster decisions to start with, and what does political party have to do w/ anything? I guess you are convinced the government never lies, never covers up anything, never does things w/ selfish, fascist reasoning behind it, and everything they say went exactly as they said it? Hmmm. Good thing they found those weapons and caught the guy responsible. Oh wait . . what? No WMD? Saddam wasnt part of the taliban or even a direct threat at the time? Hmm. Glad we wasted even more tax dollars tracking them and him down, while Bin Laden is sending us PSA's from his cave.

I bet yo uare one of those people that say other countries hate us out of jealousy too, arent you? Thats not it darling, they hate us, because they HATE us. Our fat, lazy, hypocritical, arrogant approach to everything, and on top of that a leader that wouldnt know "deserving healthcare" or "jobs being lost to immigrants" if it smacked him into next week. bush is out for profit, and profit only. Throw us into a war for oil? OKAY!!! Merge us w/ mexico for cheaper labor and less exporting cost? SURE! No matter if people will die needlessly, be broke, need welfare they cant get because making 6 bucks an hour doesnt qualify you, and so on. Thanks republicans!!

Answer 7

Are you aware that American companies sold chemical weapons to Iraq to go to war with Iran in the 80's? They trusted them back then...Why do you think the sudden change of heart?

Answer 8

I thought we were supposed to be fighting them over there so we wouldn't have to fight them over here. If we have another attack over here that turns that into another big neocon lie.

What about homeland security? Are they not doing their job? If they were we would not worry about another attack. Are you concerned about another attack? Is the failure over there or over here in controlling the terrorists?

Answer 9

Well that was way to long to read.. but it seems you are talking about conspiracy theorists... not all, not half, and not most Democrats are conspiracy theorists... or think 9-11 was an inside job, or think someone should have known it was going to happen...
The lawsuits are because of security.. not because someone should have known it was going to happen.. but because security was not as tough as it should have been...

Answer 10

I didn't read the whole post. But your question sounds as if you think 9/11 and the situation in Iraq are the same issue. They aren't.