Does anyone else feel the way I do about September 11, 2001?

[Politics_Guy25]

So, for the first time since 9/11/01, I can approach the anniversary of this event without fear of what horrible aims the GOP will try to achieve by exploting it. To me, the day is devoid of all meaning because of what Bush, Cheney and Rove's political machine did to exploit it. If you recall, Rove attended a NY Yankees game right after 9/11, saw the patriotic fervor and said "this is like something right out of Nazi Germany. Perfect." So we have Rove's exploitation of it right from day 1. Then, we also have the quelching of dissent under the guise of false patriotism that that day unleashed. If you recall, from 9/11/01 to 8/29/05 (the day that Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans) no real dissent against Bush was tolerated in the media. Indeed, Tim Russert said live on air on NBC's "Today" the Friday after the Monday that Katrina hit "After 9/11, it was clear that the media couldn't criticize the president because we were at war and national security was involved." He literally said those exact words! If dissent had arisen, the disastrous war in Iraq would not have happened and 4,000 young american boys and girls would still be alive today! Not only that, this event led to mass hysteria which led to the brainwashing of 70-80% of the public that George W. Bush was a heroic leader keeping us safe against "them evil terrarists (intentinal misspelling)" Any democrat that dared utter anything bad about W. was villified. My god, even the Dixie Chicks saw their career ruined because of their opposition to Bush's insane policies. The list goes on. The passage of the Patriot Act which severely curtails civil liberties. And then, of course, one of the most ultimate acts of politicization of that day. The Rove ordered Saxby Chambliss ad against Vietnam war hero triple amputee Max Cleland which suggested that he supported Osama Bin Laden, was a terrorist sympathizer, and that all democrats wanted nothing more than to see Al Qaeda succeed in it's war to destroy America!, which 50-55% of the American public wholeheartedly believed. 9/11 also led to the complete disemboluation of the Democratic party as a party of dissent in America. It took Dr. Dean's insurgent campaign in 2004 to begin to give the democratic party it's voice and spine back. Oh and 9/11 also led to the rise and very nearly the presidency of that egomaniac Rudy Guilani!!! The beatification of a womanizing liar was another side effect of 9/11.

So, basically the point of this thread and I am wondering if any others feel the same way is this: I am asked to mourn this day each year. No. To me this day is not only highly poltiical and partisan, it is also now becoming commercialized with the proliferation of 9/11 movies and books. George W. Bush turned an event that should have united all Americans and made it into a partisan spectacle. Not to mention the fact that this day was used to justify illegal wars, to try to destroy our political party, try to take away our rights and to establish a dictatorship not to mention the questions about what the U.S. government knew and when it knew it that could have prevented this attack from happening (August 6, 2001 presidential daily brief.) This anniversary also marks the day that a large portion of our fellow citizens jumped off the deep end and into bed with a homicidal maniac leader and cohort, Bush and Cheney. WHERE WAS THE CRITICAL THINKING that the public has demonstrated so passionately against health care this summer when it came to a needless war in Iraq?

That said, let me close by stating something important: My heart goes out to all those including many DUers who lost loved ones that day. The loss of thousands of innocent lives is a truly tremendously heartbreaking tragedy and the lives that were shattered by this evil act will never be the same. I remember crying inconsoably at the pictures of the missing that loved ones posted on the streets of NYC in the days immediately after the attack. I mourn the loss of those lives as much as I would mourn the loss of my own parents. HOWEVER, the joke that 9/11 has become is outrageous and it led in large part to a lot of the horrors that President Obama and the democratic congress is trying to undo and will spend the better part of the next 8 years trying to undo. It's a day I'd rather forget. It's a day that GOP politicians as recently as the 2006 midterm elections have relentlessly exploited for partisan gain and it's a day that marked the beginning of one of the most shameful chapters in American history in which not only the political leadership should be held to account but the public that so willingly followed that leadership until Katrina smacked them in the face should be held to account for as well. Also, a day that led to needless murders of our muslim brothers and sisters by misinformed crazies who thought that all muslims wanted to see the destruction of America.

No, tommorrow is not a day to wave the flag. Tommorow is a day to hang our heads in shame at what the terrorists made America become and how America itself helped the terrorists achieve their goals.

Does anyone agree with me? I just re-read the post and it's kind of rambling. I hope the intent of what I'm saying comes across.

[villager]

1. Good points here. Not sure the Democrats ever got their spine(s) back, though...

n/t

[YOY]

2. No. Tomorrow I am going to party my ass off. Get a little drunk and get laid like I always do.

Because it's my birthday and no celebration of the day we found our new boogey men is gonna stop me.

[DeadEyeDyck]

11. I never get invited to your party....

whaaaaa

[Old and In the Way]

3. Millions feel the way you do....

only we can't express ourselves in such elegant and concise terms. I'll remember the victims of 9/11, but I'll also remember that no one was held accountable for this attack. 4000 people died and that was used to jam the Iraq War on us...which killed 100's of thousands more innocents.

No justice was served for these people. You can debate LIHOP or MIHOP, but you can't argue gross criminal negligence and incompetence on the part of the Bush administration. No one was demoted, fired, jailed. That's what history will tell future generations of Americans. Our government failed us.

[Name removed]

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[Nevernose]

4. I empathize, but cannot agree.

I don't mourn because of how I'm asked to feel; I mourn because I'm upset. I'm good at compartmentalizing, though, and can separate my loathing of everything Bush from my memory of how I felt that day -- you can search the archives if you want and tell how remarkably fucked up I was.

Despite what my students ask, I do NOTHING on 9-11. I can't talk about it, I can't show videos, I can't discuss it. If the right-wing wins that day, then so be it.

[Stardust]

6. Well said. I feel the same way. The tragedy has been exploited.

I can't imagine how many time I've seen the footage of the plane hitting the tower, the inferno and the jumpers, and the towers falling. A more tragic scene couldn't have been scripted by the greatest filmmakers. The date 9/11 is indelible now but I am relieved that this year I have been spared having it shoved into my brain.

It's time to move on and try to heal.

[Downtown Hound]

7. I mourned a lot for the victims of 9-11

When it happened and for a long time afterwards. But the memory of 9-11 itself has been completely tainted with all of the bullshit that has since surrounded it. I see 9-11 as much more than a day when thousands of people were murdered. I see it as the day that a very dark syndicate of corporate elitists made an all out dash for total world domination. And they came fairly close to succeeding.

That is how 9-11 will always be remembered by me. It was the day that the America I used to know and love officially disappeared. And even though it is starting to get back on track, it still has a long way to go. I imagine I will live with the repercussions of what happened under the Bush administration for the rest of my life. As Charlton Heston once said, "God damn them all to hell!"

[Mythbuster]

19. Amen nt

[TxRider]

8. Wall o text! It burnzzz..

And me without my reading glasses..

9/11 was a lesson in complacency. A costly one.

But the time it can be used as it was in 2001 is gone..

[Ozymanithrax]

9. Terrorists did not make us do anything...

For the most part, a majority of Americans followed willingly. They willingly sent other people's sons and daughters to die. They willingly allowed a President and Vicepresident to become dictators.

[DeadEyeDyck]

14. to me it is all a bad dream

I was at school and in 6th grade and still in Germany. We did not make that big of a deal out of it. It has always been a long time ago for me. But my Dad lives it like yesterday. He is retired Green Beret and is ready to go back to war every sept 11th. Kinda scare me during that time of the year.

[gtar100]

10. Everything the conservatives touch gets corrupted. 9/11 was no exception.

You are so right on with your synopsis of what happened. There's no remembrance for the victims of 9/11 until you push aside all the political crap that you mentioned. It became the day that America really lost its soul. We are still struggling to get it back. And that wasn't the doing of the terrorists. We did that all to ourselves.

Great thanks go to DU, Air America, all the progressive blogs, and all the protesters willing to fight back against the insanity. With them I felt a firm foothold in reality and a life line to human decency.

Thank you for your post.

[imdjh]

12. I wanted to see punishment on an imperial scale.

I really did. I wanted to see a major retaliation for the attack on the US, something huge that would send a message to all the world that the US would not tolerate terrorism. But whatever was done, I wanted it to be done right and without regard for the opinion of anyone else in the world. I certainly didn't want a zillion dollar mess, I was thinking closer to a 100 million dollar driveby.

[Old Hob]

13. I remember it as one of the darkest most infamous days in American history.

It was like December 7th, 1941; October 29, 1929; and April 12th, 1861 all rolled up into one.

[imdjh]

15. Naw, it was freakier than that.

[Subdivisions]

16. I feel the same way. I want to see justice. So far, there is none. n/t

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

17. I'll put my Class A's on and attend a very somber memorial service, then I'll go back to work.

[Mythbuster]

18. While I mourn the loss of those that perished on 9-11

I still believe with all my heart that it was a false flag operation orchestrated by the radical right neocons, namely the PNAC. I've caught a lot of flack for that opinion over the years that have passed since, but if I place blame for 9-11 anywhere, I place it on the heads those who were governing our country. May God Grant peace to all those that perished and their families who suffer to this day.

[Old Hob]

20. the WTC was bombed under our watch too. It just didn't go down that time.

The USS Cole was also bombed under our watch. were those both PNAC conspiracies too?

[CJCRANE]

25. The first WTC bombing:

Tapes Depict Proposal to Thwart Bomb Used in Trade Center Blast

Law-enforcement officials were told that terrorists were building a bomb that was eventually used to blow up the World Trade Center, and they planned to thwart the plotters by secretly substituting harmless powder for the explosives, an informer said after the blast.

The informer was to have helped the plotters build the bomb and supply the fake powder, but the plan was called off by an F.B.I. supervisor who had other ideas about how the informer, Emad A. Salem, should be used, the informer said.

http://www.nytimes.com/1993/10/28/nyregion/tapes-depict-proposal-to-thwart-bomb-used-in-trade-center-blast.html

[eridani]

21. I like it as a day of service n/t

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

22. We reclaim the memory of those 3,000+ people starting today

I was skimming freerepublic earlier and saw thread after thread that included photos of people jumping from the buildings, with an excerpt from Obama's speech to the mideast used as a caption. it was about as disgusting as freeperville has ever been.

the rightwing has never given a damn about any of their fellow human beings that died that day. the loss oflife was just another politcal football to them.

at least now we can honor the memory of those who fell without having to weep as some neocon in power uses it to jack up their approval rating

[soverywendy]

23. It's American Self-Pity Day

Sadly, 9-11 is the foremost example of this pathetic nation's inability to do anything.

"Waaah, we couldn't stop terrorists, or maybe the government did it, and our economy sucks but we're No. 1 the best ever, and we have founding fathers and we have the best health care but we have no health care, and no jobs and shitstain radio and we got attacked but we couldn't nuke anyone because we couldn't find them so our trillion-dollar nuke-weapons are useless and, and ... sniff ... waaahhhhh ... I want more bumper stickers and ribbons and troops ... waah!!!!"

Someone please change little America's diaper.

[zinnisking]

24. Who is Rudy Guilani?

Do you mean "Rudy Nine-eleven Giuliani Nine-eleven"?

Ed Schultz had a senator on his show Sept. 11, 2001 who said "We all knew something was coming. We just didn't know when." Does anyone know which senator it was? I have searched Google to no avail.

[jumptheshadow]

26. Good points but it's more visceral for me

Some years I don't feel it as much but some years it hits me like a sledgehammer, even if I'm not keeping track of the date. It's almost a physical thing.

This is a sledgehammer year.

[RFKHumphreyObama]

27. I sympathize with your point of view and perspective, however I cannot relate to it

For me 9/11 is a deeply painful, traumatic and heartbreaking anniversary. This may sound a bit weird since I am not American and have lived in America. But let me try and explain….

Even while not American, I have always deeply and profoundly felt a deep kinship and affinity with every aspect of the American nation –its history, its culture, its people, its politics (well, OK, not with the right-wingers and Freepers who are totally incomprehensible and represent the worst extremes of what America has to offer but you get my gist) and its lifestyle. Don’t ask me why that is, it has always been so. America is a nation that has captivated my heart since childhood and I have a deep love for its people

When 9/11 happened, therefore, it felt like my immediate family was under attack. It represented an attack on everything that I valued and cherished from the core of my being. Reading through the names of the people affected, it really felt like I had experienced a deep personal loss even though I didn’t know any of them. I deeply grieved for their families and for their unfulfilled lives in a way that I never have for any other event around the world. I used to go to bed at night and wake up in the mornings thinking about the victims I had read about and their stories.

When I was in Canada in 2003, I purchased a book that was essentially a compilation of all the New York Times “Portraits of Grief” articles that it had published. It had biographies, photos and personal anecdotes from family members for most, if not all, of the victims. And looking at them, they could have been any of us. There were wives, husbands, children, mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters of every colour, creed and nationality. I look at it at this time almost every year and that deep personal sense of loss and tragedy hits me almost as hard as it did when it first happened.

I live in Australia. I reflect on and grieve for the Australians who lost their lives on 9/11 in the World Trade Centre and on the planes. One was a left-wing political activist who had a bright future ahead of him. Another of them, a woman who died on one of the hijacked planes, was a retiree enjoying the big holiday that she had planned for. And there were so many more heartbreaking stories of victims from back here in Australia that I remember

I remember hearing the agonized calls of loved ones contacting their families, many of them knowing that they were going to die and wanting to say their final goodbyes. Those stories will always haunt me.

But 9/11 haunts me for another reason as well. It symbolized to me the loss of the hope, idealism, optimism for the future and the faith in humanity that I once had

Yes, of course I study history and know how evil people can be. But you’ve got to remember that I belonged to a generation whose earliest memories were of the Berlin Wall and statues of Lenin falling and Nelson Mandela walking free from prison. We were too young to remember the Reagan years and most of our formative years had been spent under the peace and prosperity that the Clinton era had provided. It was hard not to get caught up in the feeling that the world was becoming a better place and that humanity was improving for the better. Call me spoilt, naïve, idealistic and whatever else but that was how I truly felt. Seeing a group of terrorists commit such a barbaric, evil, callous and heartless act on such an unprecedented scale just really struck at the heart of everything I believed in. It has changed me as a person. I no longer have the hope, optimism and idealism that I once had (although Obama has helped somewhat). I sunk into a deep depression after 9/11 from which I have yet to emerge and which may have played a role in altering my life’s course to an extent that is still haunting me to this date. I will never be the same person that I once was.

So that’s why the day has so much significance for me and why I will mourn and grieve (although some part of me still wants to try and forget about it). It is still immensely painful and I wasn’t even close to what happened. I can only imagine what it must be like for those who lost loved ones or who were in the vicinity of New York

I agree with all that you said about the way that Bush and Republicans used and abused 9/11 and the dreadful consequences that it has had for this world. There was a tremendous amount of goodwill and sympathy toward the US after 9/11 –there were vigils in Tehran, for goodness sake! I will neither forgive nor forget what Bush or the Republicans for what they did after 9/11 and what they have used it to get away with. But that doesn’t detract from the sense of deep personal loss and sadness that I and many others feel for the events of that day and the countless lives and families that were destroyed and nor should it.