Let's Forget 9/11

[Greybird]

Food for thought by Tom Engelhardt.

[...] Ask yourself this: ten years into the post-9/11 era, haven't we had enough of ourselves? If we have any respect for history or humanity or decency left, isn't it time to rip the Band-Aid off the wound, to remove 9/11 from our collective consciousness? No more invocations of those attacks to explain otherwise inexplicable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and our oh-so-global war on terror. No more invocations of 9/11 to keep the Pentagon and the national security state flooded with money. No more invocations of 9/11 to justify every encroachment on liberty, every new step in the surveillance of Americans, every advance in pat-downs and wand-downs and strip downs that keeps fear high and the homeland security state afloat.

[...] Many of those who loved and were close to the victims of 9/11 are undoubtedly attached to the yearly ceremonies that surround their deceased wives, husbands, lovers, children, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters. For the nightmare of 9/11, they deserve a memorial. But we don't.

If September 11 was indeed a nightmare, 9/11 as a memorial and Ground Zero as a "consecrated" place has turned out to be a blank check for the American war state, funding an endless trip to hell. They have helped lead us into fields of carnage that put the dead of 9/11 to shame.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I wonder how much of this kind of harping on the ick factor is personal promotion by the author--especially when he does it on Al Jazeera. (That's rhetorical--I actually don't wonder. I think it's about 100%.)

This dude knows people are not going to be swayed by his icky thoughts, and he knows they are going to say, "Eeeewwww."

He also knows they are going to talk to each other and say, "Did you read the icky stuff so-and-do said about our mourning and remembrance ceremonies?"

His gets a huge spike in ratings. The ickiness is offset by the fact that his name is being spread far and wide.

Notice that he does not get this kind of publicity for any of his productive stuff. He has to ride the wave of a public ceremony and shit on the people who have sincere feelings about that ceremony.

Another clown who just now played this game is Paul Krugman. Look at this pearl of wisdom (and I am purposely not linking to his blog, but instead to the first result that appeared on my search just now):

Paul Krugman: 9/11 Has Become “An Occasion For Shame”

by Doug Mataconis

September 11, 2011

Outside the Beltway

I'm not even going to quote from the goddam thing.

Well, wherever there are cadavers, there are the maggots who come out to feed on them.

Rather than forget 9/11, I prefer to forget these creeps and their icky publicity stunts.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

Food for thought by Tom Engelhardt.

[...] Ask yourself this: ten years into the post-9/11 era, haven't we had enough of ourselves? If we have any respect for history or humanity or decency left, isn't it time to rip the Band-Aid off the wound, to remove 9/11 from our collective consciousness? No more invocations of those attacks to explain otherwise inexplicable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and our oh-so-global war on terror. No more invocations of 9/11 to keep the Pentagon and the national security state flooded with money. No more invocations of 9/11 to justify every encroachment on liberty, every new step in the surveillance of Americans, every advance in pat-downs and wand-downs and strip downs that keeps fear high and the homeland security state afloat.

[...] Many of those who loved and were close to the victims of 9/11 are undoubtedly attached to the yearly ceremonies that surround their deceased wives, husbands, lovers, children, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters. For the nightmare of 9/11, they deserve a memorial. But we don't.

If September 11 was indeed a nightmare, 9/11 as a memorial and Ground Zero as a "consecrated" place has turned out to be a blank check for the American war state, funding an endless trip to hell. They have helped lead us into fields of carnage that put the dead of 9/11 to shame.

Forgetting is the first step to forgiving and we must never, ever do that.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Rich Engle]

What I won't forget is how it was handled; what was done with it and what resulted. So no, I would tell the ding-dong that wrote this, I am sorry, but that is not an option. Because, we have to know what wasn't done right in order to not repeat the fuckups. This is a basic thing.

It was grandstanding. If you run out of good material, just stir the soup, right?

[Selene]

[Greybird]

About the jingoism I expected, thus far. Did any of you actually read this article?

("Icky"? You can't even think of a more pungent, descriptive, even onomatopoeic word for your viewpoint? Why be so boring, let alone inaccurate?)

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Steve,

You sound like one of those stuck-up liberals looking down their noses on the rest of mankind, posturing with attitude and body language that such inferior creatures couldn't possibly be on the same mental level as them, while pretending to give a damn about important issues.

"Icky" is only boring if you are posturing. I don't posture, so I don't find it boring. In fact, to normal folks (the ones who couldn't possibly be your mental equivalent), it's actually both entertaining and accurate.

Probably something to do with our inferior mental limitations, huh?

Funny, when I read the ENTIRE ARTICLE before I posted, icky was actually the best I could come up with without cussing. (According to icky-dude, I don't have any "respect for history or humanity," support a decade of "profile in cowardice" as the best America can do in response to 9/11, believe in a lot of lies that he, in his sanctimonious conceit is so glad to enlighten me on, and a host of other crap like that, and likewise for the rest of those who do not agree with him. Icky-dude is a precious fussy bossy prick who does not deserve to be read. There, I cussed.)

Do carry on, though. I'm tired of wallowing in contempt, despite detesting icky-dude's Westboro Baptist Church mentality. I'll leave the delights of sustained contempt to you.

I've got to go build something productive and let people--those who so wish--mourn in peace.

(sigh...)

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

If you run out of good material, just stir the soup, right?

Rich,

And if you don't have any talent, you piss in the soup in front of everybody.

It's the only way you can get attention.

Michael

[Mark]

I didn’t like the article’s tone and the "we’ll all die anyway so what’s the worry" argument. That said, though I’d rather read them elsewhere it makes a few good points, among them:

... the victims of those suicidal monstrosities have been misused here [the WTC site] ever since under the guise of pious remembrance. This country [rather aspects of its government] has become dependent on the dead of 9/11 -- who have no way of defending themselves against how they have been used ...

At which point I interrupt, because it doesn’t get at the essence of the misuse: police-state at home, empire abroad.

[9/11] did not endanger the existence of our country ... . Spectacular as it looked and staggering as the casualty figures were, the operation was hardly more technologically advanced than the failed attack on a single tower of the World Trade Center in 1993 by Islamists using a rented Ryder truck packed with explosives.

Known in advance by the FBI, by the way. The author really should have mentioned that.

... 9/11 as a memorial and Ground Zero as a "consecrated" place has turned out to be a blank check for the American war state, funding an endless trip to hell. They have helped lead us into fields of carnage that put the dead of 9/11 to shame.

True enough, but the object of the last sentence is the minor to a major he should have said first: a police-state.

It's a terrible thing to ask those still missing the dead of 9/11 to forgo the public spectacle that accompanies their memory, but worse is what we have: repeated solemn ceremonies to the ongoing health of the American war state and the wildest dreams of Osama bin Laden.

It could have been a much better article, but as is ... eesh. That’s ancient Greek for icky.

Hate to disagree in public with ol’ Greybeard, by the way.

Mark

http://ARIwatch.com

[Brant Gaede]

Food for thought by Tom Engelhardt.

[...] Ask yourself this: ten years into the post-9/11 era, haven't we had enough of ourselves? If we have any respect for history or humanity or decency left, isn't it time to rip the Band-Aid off the wound, to remove 9/11 from our collective consciousness? No more invocations of those attacks to explain otherwise inexplicable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and our oh-so-global war on terror. No more invocations of 9/11 to keep the Pentagon and the national security state flooded with money. No more invocations of 9/11 to justify every encroachment on liberty, every new step in the surveillance of Americans, every advance in pat-downs and wand-downs and strip downs that keeps fear high and the homeland security state afloat.

[...] Many of those who loved and were close to the victims of 9/11 are undoubtedly attached to the yearly ceremonies that surround their deceased wives, husbands, lovers, children, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters. For the nightmare of 9/11, they deserve a memorial. But we don't.

If September 11 was indeed a nightmare, 9/11 as a memorial and Ground Zero as a "consecrated" place has turned out to be a blank check for the American war state, funding an endless trip to hell. They have helped lead us into fields of carnage that put the dead of 9/11 to shame.

Crap. I still remember Pearl Harbor.

--Brant

born in 1944

[Reidy]

The news this week suggests that we're going to forget Greybird, ARIWatch, Krugman and Engelhardt a lot sooner.

[Mike11]

Excellent article.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I think the thing I dislike most about this article is the call to forget history so the Progressives can get on with rewriting it in peace (and darkness). Progressives love for us to forget history, especially of things like attacks. The thing is--perception of attacks unites us and Progressives (or other wannabe masters) can't control that.

The idiotic article above was one of the first times I have seen a Progressive outright say it that way, though.

Glenn Beck just did a thing on Black Tom as a typical example of how this is used to great effect. The Black Tom explosion was actually one of the first major terrorist attacks on the USA (explosion in New Jersey about 5.5 on the Richter scale). Here is the inscription on a small Commemorative plaque in Liberty State Park. (Don't walk too fast if you go there, though. You'll walk right past the plaque and not even notice--sort of like the small print in a credit card agreement.)

Explosion at Liberty! On July 30, 1916 the Black Tom munitions depot exploded rocking New York Harbor and sending residents tumbling from their beds. The noise of the explosion was heard as far away as Maryland and Connecticut. On Ellis Island, terrified immigrants were evacuated by ferry to the Battery. Shrapnel pierced the Statue of Liberty (the arm of the Statue was closed to visitors after this). Property damage was estimated at $20 million. It is not known how many died. Why the explosion? Was it an accident or planned? According to historians, the Germans sabotaged the Lehigh Valley munitions depot in order to stop deliveries being made to the British who had blockaded the Germans in Europe. You are walking on a site which saw one of the worst acts of terrorism in American history.

See? The information is present enough to cover a butt or two if called on it, however it is not noticed. That's the way you play that game.

Notice that we keep hearing that 9/11 was the first major attack on USA soil since Pearl Harbor. But that Black Tom thing doesn't sound like it was a bowl of Cheerios...

Here's a statement from the plaque again: "You are walking on a site which saw one of the worst acts of terrorism in American history."

The year: 1916.

I feel sorry for the guy who wrote that. I can almost seeing him saying to his bureaucratic superiors, "We have to tell people what this really is, the full horror of it," and they replying, "Sure thing... we have a nice little spot in mind where everybody will be able to read it..."

The Black Tom explosion was downplayed even as it happened because Woodrow Wilson was running for reelection on a platform to keep the USA out of WWI and it looked like German secret agents had done it. (Of course, Wilson had the USA enter the war shortly after his second term got underway, but who's complaining?) After that, Black Tom was "encouraged" to be forgotten--that is, until Franklin D. Roosevelt brought it out as justification for rounding up all the Japanese in the USA and putting them in concentration camps.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiight...

Excellent article about 9/11 above, sure is...

Let's forget all about history--especially major attacks...

We have iPads nowadays for God's sake. We have better stuff to occupy our minds with.

Other people can remember all that boring history for us and they can do what is best for us when we need it...

We can always trust our masters them to do the right thing, can't we?

I mean, can't we?...

Michael