Traitor dick made torture polite again.

I’m ashamed it happened in the first place, we were warned.

Chalk another homerun for Paul Krugman.

Thanks to the Bush administration (and the cowardice of Capitol Hill Democrats), we wasted $3 trillion on wars which continue to this day. Our constitutional system is more severely damaged than at any time since 1860. Government operates in secrecy, and no one is held accountable. Fear, blind hatred, and magical thinking have replaced facts in public debate. The selfishness of “security moms” (and dads) has blinded them to the deterioration of their living standards and the destruction of their childrens’ futures.

We learned all the wrong lessons from 9/11 and did the exact opposite of what was in our best interests.

Is anyone proud, 10 years later, of the war launched under false pretenses that killed several hundred thousand innocent Iraqis and killed or wounded 40,000 Americans?

A war crime of immense proportions. How many Iraqis experienced their own 9/11 in the U.S. Nazi-like application of “shock and awe”? (Beware, the link takes one to photos of the “shock and awe” bombardment of Baghdad.)

Krugman is a tool of the Establishment. He was hired by them to be the extreme left, which is well to the right of the center of the people, mark the borders of criticism.

On edit: Just like Juan Cole is a “consultant” to the CIA. Hired to represent “liberal humanitarian intervention” POV.

Can there be any doubt that the terrorists have won?

Yes in order to slow our ability to go beyond condemnation and take constructive action.

Yep. No talk about alternatives allowed.

So many purposes are served. Everyone will be happy with the crumbs he threw us and no one will think of going beyond Krugman and speaking about the real crimes of the admin. Ganging up on Krugman by the right in coming days will also intimidate others from saying anything at all.

Is anyone proud…

Yes. The President is proud, as I documented. I am sure the President is even more proud today as we Celebrate the Day we celebrate because it made America even more great and united and strong and wealthy. Oops, not wealthy, but happy, we are a very clappy happy people because 9-11 brought us all together.

The reason that I am not viewing any September 11 memorials live or on television:

What truly saddens me is that “America” seems to forget the individual persons whose lives were taken (and their surviving families) and “America” has transformed the attack into a mighty “bloody shirt” symbol for an endless “global war on terrorism” and in Iraq and in the unending war in Afghanistan caused 1,000 times more death than at the World Trade Center.

Yesterday, September 10, my town (Hamilton, Mercer County, NJ) organized a public September 11th memorial at the entrance to Veterans’ Park, right beneath the restored and mounted Vietnam era Air Force F4 Phantom jet. Humility or arrogance? Why “America” will never understand the other 99% of the world.

Another FireDogLake respondent for another post wrote an accurate thought about “our leaders”: “Maybe I’m thinking about the destructive power of manipulation, about the arrogant and terrible fools who toy with the hearts of others out of their own ambitions.”

I wonder how many people taking part in 9/11 memorial jingoism ever lived or worked in NYC, are police officers or firefighters (or have on their family), or know someone who was a victim of international terrorism.

Remembering 9/11 — Other than the folks at PBS Frontline, who remembers the date ….

John O’Neill was thrown out of the FBI for pushing too hard on Al Quaeda attacks against our embassies in Africa & the U.S.S. Cole.

National Security PDB was presented to Bush “Bin Laden determined to strike inside the U.S.” and was ignored every day thereafter.

Passage of the so called Patriot Act.

Passage of the AUMF authorizing Cheney’s endless war on the noun, terrorism.

Colin Powell’s lies at the U.N. to justify the War against Iraq

The list goes on and on ….

Glad Krugman, Atrios, Digby and a bunch of others aren’t sugar coating a thing — you know — like out of “respect”. Would that sort of respect not be hypocritical? Of course. Let the winger’s heads explode.

To quote Tristero over at Digby:

“I want to make the point that many of us – including Digby, including myself, including millions of other ordinary Americans who marched in 2002 and 2003 – never changed our minds about the Bush/Iraq war because we got it right from the start. . . .

“And those of us who were right have as little power now – even less, by some measures – to influence the public discourse than we had back then.”

“Even less” power now. The shame never ends.

And still, Condi’s inane denial serves to dismiss those of us who had it right from the start: “no one could have predicted . . .”

If it would have helped to call bull shit, over and over, we would be living in a different nation.

I was jogging about 5 miles away when the planes flew into the WTC. I’ve always found people outside the city much more frightened, jingoistic, etc. than the people I knew in the city.

Another? Not even close. But like a broken clock, he just so happens to be correct at this particular moment in time.
No hate bro…. I’m not especially worried about you being a propaganda victim. I’ve been their and done that too, on the other side of the coin.

The far-right is flipping out over Paul Krugman’s remarks about 9/11 today.

Good for them. It really wouldn’t be the same day without a nice old-fashioned right-wing geek rage.

If we are to take a moment to reflect on anything today, then I suggest we reflect on just how caustic the response to 9/11 has been to our national identity, both at home and abroad.

If Vietnam taught us anything, it is that we will not be able to heal as a nation until we bring our troops home.

Yeah, Media Matters keeps relating stories of right-wingers who screech and yowl and bang their fists on the table about folks who “disrespect the memory of 9-11.” Uh, guy, the attacks started about 8:30am, by about 2:00pm, Rumsfeld was trying to blame Saddam Hussein for it. 9-11 was shamelessly exploited even before the fires were put out.
No, 9-11 never was a “pure” or “innocent” event. It was callously exploited right off the bat.

How can we “heal as a nation” or even want to when such criminals are in charge.

Mrs. Tiger, who grew up in New Jersey, worked in lower Manhattan for a couple of years. She made countless trips up those stairs leading from the PATH trains to the financial district. It galls her to no end that people with no connection with New York City whatsoever considered themselves the victims of the attacks.

I, too, grew in New Jersey, about a dozen miles as the crow flies from the WTC. When I was in high school I could see the towers, then under construction, from my bedroom window. Quite a few people from the town i grew up in were killed in the attacks, and you can see their names on numerous street signs all over town.

It was callously exploited right off the bat.

And most people swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.

“We have wasted History like a bunch of drunks shooting dice back in the men’s crapper of the local bar.” -Charles Bukowski

A generational defining moment happened in America and we were told to go shop and kill.

“A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and by common hatred of its neighbours.”- William Ralph Inge

This delusion has been used on Americans for far too long and days like today just reinforce those delusions.

“Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism – how passionately I hate them!”-Albert Einstein

In the span of 10 years the American people have become even more small minded than they have been before.

“It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen the Earth in its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars.”-Arthur C. Clarke

Instead we are dismantling our space programs, denying scientific evidence of our predicament and propping up a rapacious economic system bent on destroying the very notion that cooperation and human dignity is paramount above all things.

This little girl from Tal Afar will remember Inauguration Day 2005, that’s for sure. Her parents shot to pieces by US troops and her little brother wounded.

Kissinger’s Lessons of Viet Nam:

Consolidate the Media. Buy it all up. Pay big salaries to craven “journalists”, tv anchors and reporters so they will lie for you.

Never show the corpses or coffins on tv.

Expand the Power of the Unitary Executive, Stack the courts.

If you do that, you can run a war – several wars – to the benefit of the Military Industrial Complex for ten years and beyond.

I worked on Wall St (the figurative one not the literal one; the firms I worked for were located in midtown, then in the 20s). I knew not a single victim. The two people who I knew at one of the money managers on a high floor (name of firm eludes me right now) were traveling on 9/11.

You’ll remember that WTC was always a money loser, just like its replacement. Built under auspices & supervision of PANYNJ, graft & corruption running wild, unconscionable delays, unrentable when finally complete owing to glut of office space on the market, so filled up with state govt employees.

Going down exactly same path with replacement.

On edit: NJ commuters paying for replacement thru sky high bridge, tunnel & RR tolls.

And the Democrats never called out Bush and his administration for exploiting the attacks. In fact, Leon Panetta, who surely should know better, linked Iraq and 9/11 while visiting troops in Iraq. In other words, he ratified the biggest Big Lie of the entire Bush administration.

The financial firm you’re thinking of is probably Cantor Fitzgerald, which lost about 1/3 of its world-wide work force that day.

It’s not just the right that’s upset with Krugman. There’s a post on the Village Voice site that complains that his post only makes assertions of his position and does nothing to explain his reasoning. The complaint is that while his points may be valid they are undermined by his lack of analysis. The fact is that the attacks were a tragedy. The people who died in the towers, on the planes and at the Pentagon and their families were victims of a crime as were the first responders who were killed. This tragedy should not be obscured by the way it was exploited by Bush & Co. The exploitation that occurred makes the prolonged mourning necessary. I can understand Krugman’s anger, but as we know from the tea party, anger uncontrolled by reason is insanity.

The best response from working people to 9/11 is to reclaim the history and not fall party to the jingoism and bunker mentality.

No that wasn’t it. CF is sell-side. I was talking about clients on buy-side. It’s been so long, I can’t think of the name anymore.

Agreed.

The VV criticism is just plain silly. Krugman’s piece is opinion, not analysis. You’d think the VV might have a nodding acquaintance with the diff.

On edit: Wasn’t VV bought by someone? What is their political stripe these days?

I found this book helpful in neutralizing the “power of pride” and nationalism as celebrated in the USA:

The Deaths of Others: The Fate of Civilians in America’s Wars.

by John Tirman, copyright: July, 2011. Oxford University Press.

ISBN 978-0-19-538121-4

A million dead Iraqi civilians, five million Iraqi refugees, millions of orphans. All of whom do appear to be invisible every 9-11.

And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.

That sounds about right to me.

Dick Cheney is proud. He believes in an authoritarian state.

And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.

Sounds about right to me.

Opinion without analysis is of limited use. Here is the entire text of Krugman’s column -

“Is it just me, or are the 9/11 commemorations oddly subdued?

Actually, I don’t think it’s me, and it’s not really that odd.

What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. Te atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.

A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?

The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.

I’m not going to allow comments on this post, for obvious reasons.”

If someone on the right made sweeping generalizations like that we’d be rightfully up in arms. I stand by my statement that exploitation by the right shouldn’t deny those who suffered loss the right to mourn.

So those of us who are unemployed should do what?
Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.
Sorry, also, that I’m kind of tired of reading easy already learned answers to very complex questions today.
I’m sure you’re a very nice person.

I would say that the aims of bin Laden have largely been achieved with the compliance of the most of us. I was deeply offended by the comments of Vice President Biden in Pennsylvania yesterday. Those who thrive on jingoism certainly got it.

If Vietnam taught us anything, it is that we will not be able to heal as a nation until we bring our troops home.

If Vietnam taught us anything, it’s that those on the right will never learn and will always simmer in bitter resentment that the hippies caused America to lose a war. Yes, it was a war that served no useful purpose to America’s security. Yes, it was a war that could not be won because the only choices were to either leave or kill all the people we were allegedly trying to save, but you can’t talk sense to the senseless. To borrow from a recent movie title, we have to accept that those on the right are our idiot brothers.

I would like to know the answer to this. Where have the real leaders gone. I do feel a collective responsibility for not doing more to bring down or change an evil economic system that is enfeebling he people but it seems all the impulse to leadership in activism has been sucked out. Where has it gone?

If there were no hippies, the right wingers would have invented them to fit their narrative.

“True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else.” -Clarence Darrow

The PNAC and its signatories are the real war criminals of this century.

Mourning for the dead and not seeking justice is a useless exercise in self indulgence and pity.

Bin Laden said that his goal was to “bankrupt” the U.S. Well, what can we say? Perhaps, can argue that “post hoc ergo propter hoc” is a logical fallacy. That he can’t take credit for our for our economic meltdown any more than he and Ronald Reagan and the Pope can take credit for the fall of the Soviet Union. I guess we could argue that, if we wanted to.

Assuming facts not in evidence, namely that there ever were “real leaders.” The folks we call leaders needed only one qualification: the ability to get to the top of the mountain, defeating all others along the way. They aren’t leaders in any other sense of the word. This seems to be a particularly crazy crew at the moment, but can’t say the U.S. has had many who both became King of the Mountain & had any other aspects one would be proud of.

And who could forget the way the corporate media jumped all over John Kerry in 2004 when he said 9/11 should be treated as a criminal event and not a reason to declare war on various countries. The war industry was seeing dollar signs and used 9/11 to enrich themselves, which they are still doing.

Krugman is right. 9/11 should be commemorated as a tragic event followed by a shameful, political, greed-induced orgy of killing innocent people by our government and war machine, which were pretty much one in the same.

I was encouraged on Friday when I read Glenn Greenwald’s post about the results of the latest Pew Research poll in which 43% of the people believe that “US wrongdoing might have cause the attacks on 9/11,” as opposed to 45% who said “No,” and 13%, who were undecided.

When the same questions were asked 1 year after 9/11, 38% said “US wrongdoing might have caused the attacks on 9/11,” as opposed to 49% who said “No,” with 13% undecided. The results right after 9/11 were 33%, 55%, and 12%, respectively.

The poll also found that 40% believed it was “necessary to give up civil liberties in order to curb terrorism,” as opposed to 54% who said it was not necessary. 6% said they did not know. The results 5 years after 9/11 were 43%, 50%, and 7%, respectively. 1 year after 9/11, they were 49, 45, and 6%, respectively. Right after 9/11, the results were 55, 35, and 10%, respectively.

Right after 9/11, more people than I realized (35%) thought it was unnecessary to give up civil liberties in order to curb terrorism and that percentage has now increased to 54%.

More surprising is that the country is now about evenly split between those who believe that “US wrongdoing might have caused the attacks on 9/11.” That’s a huge reversal from 33% versus 55% right after 9/11.

This is not good news to the criminal banksters and the corporations they own that make up the MIC. The people are wising up and the propaganda is failing.

Given the government’s massive incompetence, astonishing pratfalls in so many areas, and its absolute refusal to listen to and follow the will of the majority of voters on so many issues like, for example, ending the wars, holding the criminal banksters accountable, and protecting social security and Medicare, there can be no doubt that voter dissatisfaction, if not outright disgust, will continue to escalate as the gap between what the people want and what the government delivers continues to expand.

Revolution is rapidly becoming a matter of when rather than whether and all we need is a spark.

The food insecurity and starvation caused by the deadly combination of the effects of climate change reducing the world supply of basic foods and speculation by the filthy rich in the future prices of food commodities will likely be the spark that produces the irreversible conflagration that brings down the rich.

Absolutely correct. Every frikkin’ bloody time I try to argue Bush’s guilt in my local papers online comments sections, the right-wingers immediately bring up all the Democrats who cravenly agreed with Bush. Fortunately, those statements of agreement died out about December 2002, so I can argue that “Bush knew” that there were no WMD for a period of at least three months, anyway.

I lived in NYC from 1978 until September 2000 on Bank Street. Every morning and evening I looked down Greenwich Street at my favorite view of the Towers.
On the morning of 9.11, a friend living in Boston called me telling me, “Go turn on your television. Don’t talk, just go turn on your TV, now. Any channel…” I turned on the set to see the first Tower burning and watch as the second plane hit.
The first words out of my mouth that morning were, “You don’t disenfranchise a people in their own land without it coming back to bite you in the ass.”
During the course of the day, the drums of war beat louder even as I lamented that no one seemed to see the event as I had. It took weeks to hear anyone say that our choices had inspired passion, zeal, anger, and desperation in the men who carried out the deed.
Rather than re-think the empowerment of tyrants on behalf of ‘vested interests’, the U.S. leadership sought vengeance and retribution even as they lied about what they knew, when they knew it, and what they did about what they knew.
That afternoon, as every media outlet resounded the drums of War, I took a friend’s dog Shane for a walk on Mount Olympus, a hilltop community here in LA off of Laurel Canyon. My friend’s nickname, I kid you not, was Zeus.
So,on a beautiful LA day, I was walking Zeus’s dog Shane in Mount Olympus thinking about what was going on all around the country. At the corner of Hercules and Jupiter, I looked up at the sky and asked,” How do I tell them that vengeance and retribution serve no one?”
On the breeze, I heard these words,
“Share Misery, I will share Misery. Share Joy, I will share Joy.
Whatever you choose I will share because I AM YOU and we share what You choose.”
I had my answer there in Mount Olympus. We might have chosen more “Care Fully”. The less ten years have demonstrated the wisdom in the words I heard that day. We have cared less about the many more around the world we have disenfranchised. We will share the instructive consequences of those choices until those who claim advantage from the subsequent events understand that in a gracious Universe, Advantage arises for only purpose:
Only mankind has the capacity through the gracious application of Free Will to transmute Advantage into Benevolence. Benevolence is that which might be shared by all; Advantage is that which, by definition, cannot.
Some in power intuitively understand this. Most do not.

Even now many in Congress seek to disenfranchise people in their own land without caring about the instructive consequences it invites. They do so to Advantage for a miniscule portion of the population that lines their pockets.
When will they learn?
I welcome the voices who look back upon the last ten years and see the instructive consequences of our electoral choices hobbling a nation.
May we choose more gracious representative bodies in the very near future…

This was the breaking point with me and the Democratic Party. I’d gone along since the end of the Vietnam War just shrugging and voting along, but Iraq convinced me I couldn’t trust the party without checking out their every policy position, and whoa, once I started that!!

Here’s the link to Glenn Greenwald’s post in which he discusses the Pew Research poll.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/09/09/public_opinion/index.html

Anyone?

Unfortunately, lots. Those people are very proud ’cause that is what they want.

I was even later than you.

After 9/11 I immersed myself into learning about foreign policy, terrorism, Islam, a whole host of subjects I knew nothing about. I soon learned that the only diff bet Rs & Ds on foreign policy is that Ds want to bomb them for humanitarian reasons too.

But it took until after the housing meltdown for me to refocus on domestic policy and then I saw that, there too, there were no diffs bet Rs & Ds, except that Rs are batshit crazy.

great fdoloow up by Mrs. Volker or whatever he name is. Way to call bullshit on Chambliss, Andrea.

Greenspan. Whatever.

Definitely! Dr. Krugman outshines himself every week. Sadly president Obama would never appoint him or even listen to him.

We’ve invaded, killed, tortured, phone tapped, wire tapped, and imprisoned without due process.

We’ve ignored our own laws and Constitution.

We had Wall St run wild and imploded the world economy only to be bailed out on the backs of the taxpayers.

We have not rebuilt – not the WTC nor New Orleans.

Bush made us a third world country. Obama put his seal of approval on it.

I’m really tired of this fucking shit.

And just so you know – I did my fifteen years for God and country, protecting us, and I’ve met the most amazing people who have dedicated their lives to serve and protect. None of that works if the people at the top – our President, our Vice President, don’t do their Goddamned jobs – and they didn’t.

Indeed. And all the more reason to harden our resolve to never be played again.

Disagree with you on Krugman. He is certainly right as far as he goes which is not very far, on purpose. Read comments 6,8, and 9.

‘The first words out of my mouth that morning were, “You don’t disenfranchise a people in their own land without it coming back to bite you in the ass.”’

I agree that the hijackers believed their cause to be just. I just don’t agree that their methods were defensible then or are defensible now. If we decry ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and genocide in Rwanda, shouldn’t we also condemn the murder of thousands of civilians here?

Oh, beats me. I’ve done a lot of reflecting today. Mentally and verbally. Loss. Grieving. Change.
But, I just don’t have an answer to that one. I hope you understand.
Maybe the Island of Greed?

We shall have to do far more than “heal as a nation”, this time, Hippie Joe, we shall have to rebuild civil society … beginning with the rule of law and progressing to a rational and humane economic system.

Effectively, we are facing nothing less than beginning FROM the beginning … again. Things cannot be “fixed”, as they are broken beyond simple “repair”, beyond simple “tweaking”.

The alternative is a new Dark Age … which is what the Masters, in this all-out class war … cannot wait to usher in. “Nuvus Ordo Seclorum”!

DW

Is anyone proud that at Firedoglake and Glenn Greenwald’s blog legitimate and important questions about what really happened are not welcome to be discussed among Serious Progressives?

It was indeed the “unthinkable” what happened that day. So unthinkable that even today we live in denial about it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCIHw4wAO5A

The 9/11 tragedy taught me much about denial, about the power that officialdom can exert over our beliefs and actions, and most of all about the importance of seeking the truth on our own, outside of the dogma of control.

That’s a response, not an answer. Maybe there haven’t been leaders ever who fit your expectations. But, still.
eCAHN. I wish you the best.

I’ll meet you at the well.

If we decry ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and genocide in Rwanda, shouldn’t we also condemn the murder of thousands of civilians here?

Terrorism is always evil, and like genocide it is too often effective.

LOL!

You are totally wrong. I and others are always posting about controversial national security topics, including 9-11. And there are not that many “Serious” Progressives at FDL.

Terrorism is always evil, and like genocide it is too often effective.

How, then do we confront evil?

It’s not a Q of condemning their methods. It’s a Q of figuring out a way of U.S. not conducting foreign policy to create their grievances to begin with.

Buy hey, if you’re going to condemn terrorists’ methods, then start with the U.S., the biggest state terrorist of all. Needlessly slaughtering innocents in the millions all over the world.

I’m ashamed it we let it happened in the first place, we were warned.

Maybe?

Our moods resonate. I feel much the same.

I don’t think that the U.S. government sponsorship of evil governments is defensible. But I do think that pretending that the people killed in the attacks are somehow culpable for the actions of our government or are less victims because of those actions and therefore less worthy of being mourned skates close to blaming a rape victim because she dressed in a certain way. The men who flew those airplanes committed an evil act.

You miss my point.

I agree with you on your point.

Where I disagree is that you are misfocused. I am suggesting entirely diff framing. I think your framing is too narrow.

Okay. I actually like you people. You seem real. It’s time to grow the fuck up and dismiss the unicorns and fairy dust bullshit.
http://www.zerohedge.com/
You will not ever outsmart these people. EVER
Guaranfuckingteed.
Coalitions matter.
Join one or spend your life losing……………

OBL won. Because we reacted in the ways he expected. Probably way beyond what he dared hope for. America should have shrugged, downplayed and marginalized terrorism and terrorists, thus neutralizing how terrorism leverages itself into having far bigger impact than it otherwise could. Instead we completely freaked out and have spent and sacrificed ourselves, our principles, our wealth, in exactly the ways OBL hoped for.

I will never understand our outrage. How we can justify putting the ultimate value on the 9/11 victims lives but utterly discount the deaths of so many more innocents elsewhere by our actions and policies. I’m unable to make the cognitive disconnect required for the term “collateral damage”.

“Grow the fuck up” isn’t exactly a time-tested way to win friends and influence people. But thanks for playing.

eCAHN, that comment sounds like you’re sliding into conspiracy country.
I expect better sense from you.

Everybody here missed the hearings, or what? http://911blogger.com/

George Bush has no regrets about what he did after 9/11…even $3T later.

He doesn’t talk much about how he feels about what he did before 9/11, or whether he as any regrets about what he did after 8/6/01.

I think it’s a newbie. Hasn’t been around long enough to find the archives.

We should have treated it as a criminal act, not an act of war.

Sorry that I am acting strident. I don’t disagree with Krugman’s anger at the right for its manipulation of the public. I do think that he may be projecting somewhat when he surmises that the memorials reflect a sense of shame and that his comments as they stand come across as insensitive.

As to your point, what framing do you suggest?

I don’t think the original comment on the causation of someone committing a terrorist act was intended to soften the “evilness” of such an action. The problem is the US has had responsibilities in the world, even if those amount to simply NOT supporting some factor of the destruction of freedom around the world. (e.g. dictators, governments, Corporations.)

I’m pretty sure the comment was more that our hubris and greed had created a monster in the eyes of some, that needed to be in their eyes “retaliated” against. Granted, most of the victims of an attack like this are innocent, as are those lost on 9/11. But really what eCAN is pointing out is that your framework for understanding how many people die as “innocents” really is skewed if you are focusing on pointing out how “evil” the hijackers were.

Its just perspective, we all have to try to improve ours, instead of pretending false patriotism will keep us safe.

Plenty of people on here read ZH, and are aware of how useless this day has been in comparison to the markets/civilization/etc. You could have been slightly nicer in tone =P

Tough love isn’t called tough for nothing. I’m 100% serious. I’ve been checking out firedog for as long as I’ve been checking out ZH.
ZH hands firedog their ass on a plate.
I’m concerned for OUR country, not your ideological fetish.

I observe that we share the instructive consequences of choices made by those we have empowered. It’s not a question of culpability by victims as you suggest. There is no blame involved. There are simply choices and outcomes. I observe a group of men, primarily Saudi in nationality, with chauvinistic zeal and passion for their countrymen, sought to get our attention in act of desperation– a 9-1-1 message to the nation, if you will. These men also demonstrated acceptance of an ungracious concept that our nation has pretty much taught the world: acceptable collateral damage. There is no such thing as “acceptable collateral damage” even when given names like “shock and awe”. It should never be confused with personal sacrifice though it often is by those who argue that collateral damage is acceptable for others.
As for mourning the loss of loved ones, of course that serves a noble purpose and honors their sacrifice as part of a national drama shared. There is nothing that I have written that suggests otherwise and I am surprised that you read it into my comments.
Those responsible are those who distract, mislead, prevaricate, and generally choose for the nation and others other than they would choose for themselves. They all might have chosen differently. Many hold them above accountability for the events of that day. I do not. We are responsible for hypocrisy as a nation until these men are called to account for their deceits.

If your local Home Depot is open, I strongly suggest you get in the car and drive there because you’re using much too broad a brush.

Inside job

Destroyed what was left of the republic

Stick a fork in her, she’s done.

I believe that Bush and Co were criminally negligent in their inaction vis a vis Bin Laden prior to 9/11. I also believe that once Bush & Co had the cover of ousting the Taliban (who did a pretty good job of outraging the left and the right prior to 9/11 by their actions against women and the destruction of the Buddha statues) their plan was always to use Afghanistan as a pretext for launching a war against Iraq.

My concern is that we not continue to give a pass to the evil that Bin Laden & Co unquestionably did. Attacking civilians whether in New York, London, Baghdad, Dresden, Hiroshima or Nagasaki is a moral evil.

Just wanted to chime in and say that, regardless of how “inside the bubble” Krugman may be (and he is) – or maybe especially because he is – that was a brave post for a high-profile columnist, on this day, and he should be lauded for it.

Maybe I’m still being affected by the rather eye-opening Michael Moore autobio excerpt in the Guardian yesterday.

I accept that we Americans engage in the evil practice of collateral damage. We are by no means the source of this practice. My point is that it is an unacceptable evil no matter who practices it.

1. LOL. I made a comment to that effect on a prior thread. Or maybe this one. Who can keep track.

2. Juan Cole IS a consultant to the CIA. Google him & counterpunch.

3. I’ve had a lot of interaction with Krugman on this subject & watched him very very very closely since he was here on book salon 12/08.

So where have I disappointed you in summarizing all my analytical work with a simple comment?

Let’s repeat that: “Everything Krugman wrote is true.” And understated. The lies are still being spread, lives and wars are still being bled, and fortunes and careers at the very top are still being made by those same lies. Guys like Bill Keller are so ashamed, they are hiding those lies under more lies, and mischaracterizations that minimize their own wrongs and elite crimes. And guys like Dick Cheney and his immediate network are not yet in jail for them.

The “framing” should be the real crimes of the admin & prosecution thereof. And mzchief’s point about whole other approach, of negotiation, that might be alternative to military.

Or a million other possibilities than boo-hoo-hoo W is a mildly bad boy.

Hahahahahahahah.

It is certainly appropriate to remember our own fallen. It would be horrendous, not insensitive, to ignore thereby the lives lost and ruined owing to our own national overreaction, to our wars built on lies and the havoc they have caused, killing hundreds of thousands and displacing millions. Our own elites, whom we have rewarded and re-elected, have made the two inseparable.

The missing third leg of that stool is domestic surveillance and the developing police state. They do not make us more secure any more than our multiple foreign wars reduce the number of people who hate us for harming and demeaning them, not because of our once staunchly held freedoms.

If you look at my post @ 91 I think you’ll see that we agree concerning the culpability of Bush & Co. I just object to the truly heroic acts being obscured by giving attention, even negative attention, to the scoundrels.

I don’t mean to suggest that the scoundrels not be held accountable. Just that today they not foul the memory of those who we lost.

Here’s my take on that.

Why do govts, religions choose to celebrate their greatest humiliations (Easter, Ashura, 9/11 are but 3 examples). BC it focuses revenge & anger on the “other” rather than on the crooked leaders where it should be focused.

I was 5 miles away from WTC on 9/11 so I appreciate everything that was done afterwards. I went down to look as close as I could get.

It’s still all minor compared to what is really impt about the event. Besides the PTB clearly shit on the heroes of the aftermath by not providing proper care, planned from the beginning. And focusing only on the heroes and not how they were and still are being shit upon by the PTB would make a tragedy worse.

To say nothing of the three trillion dollars all this shit has cost us and the loss of schools, infrastructure,health care and all other things we could have done with all that money. Anyone think that maybe the deficit hysteria and the spending cuts in SSMM may have something to do with 9/11 and our reaction to it?

eCAHNomics -
I agree with much of what you’ve said about the use of humiliations. I do wonder if Krugman is playing the establishment’s game, though. Here’s my thinking – Krugman’s takeaway line is that 9/11 has been irrevocably soiled. He posits that everyone is ashamed. His unspoken premise is that everyone should be ashamed. Therefore he has now set up an equivalence with the first responders who died and the fake heroes like Bush & Co. Be ashamed of all of them and the establishment gets to slink away unpunished.

I agree with much of what you’ve said about the use of humiliations. I do wonder if Krugman is playing the establishment’s game, though. Here’s my thinking – Krugman’s takeaway line is that 9/11 has been irrevocably soiled. He posits that everyone is ashamed. His unspoken premise is that everyone should be ashamed. Therefore he has now set up an equivalence with the first responders who died and the fake heroes like Bush & Co. Be ashamed of all of them and the establishment gets to slink away unpunished. The fact that he closed his post to comments could indicate his fear of being called to defend this conclusion.

Sorry for the double posting. In my haste to respond I forgot to tag it as a reply.

Krugman’s focus is not on first responders, so I couldn’t say how he equivolates them bc he didn’t address that issue.

The fact that the Obama people gave him a copy of last week’s presidential speech before it was issued proves your point.

True – but the memorial services are all about the victims which includes the first responders. Their names are read out. The events take place at the WTC site, the Pentagon and Shanksville. The column he posted today has to be viewed in that context. Either knowingly or unknowingly he gives cover to Bush & Co. by injecting a sense of shame on the commemoration. It’s like saying that mourning the victims of the attack on Pearl Harbor is irrevocably damaged by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There should be a distinction, even if only a small one.

The sense of shame is injected by political and corporate elites that seek to profit from commemoration and from the fear and tax dollars jointly evolving from them. It is not generated by critiquing the establishment’s use of national tragedy to inflict enormous, expensive, civil rights reducing change on us and chaos on “enemies” abroad who won’t give us their natural resources for free.

They’re only upset because it’s true.

you are way too polite, p.j.

ecahnomics’ comment on krugman is silly, blathering nonsense.

You know I feel the Twin Towers and Building 7 were blown up.
They were blown up because the WTC was full of asbestos fireproofing and people making high incomes breathing asbestos fireproofing for decades.

It’s always about the money with these guys. They turned a few billion in likely Halliburton asbestos mesothelioma liability into many billions in insurance.

Every sample of WTC dust sent to independent labs for testing finds tiny little microspheres of molybdenum from structural steel was exposed to such high temperatures it melted.

Molybdenum has the 7th highest melting point of all the elements. The temperature Molybdenum melts is 2896 K, 2623 °C, 4753 °F. There’s nothing on this planet that can make jet fuel burn even half the temperature needed to melt the molybdenum right out of the structural steel beams.

The WTC buildings didn’t collapse. They were annihilated. Atomized.

“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”
— Arthur Conan Doyle

It doesn’t compare to Bosnia or Rwanda, Demi called it the the Island of Greed. The towers where the symbol for capitalism and greed. That they didn’t use fighter jets or drones is because they didn’t own any. That fact makes it no more a genocidal attack than ours in Afganistan or Iraq. The pentagon attack was a legal target.

The first responders have been memorialized enough, but building a fetish-ized Grief Industrial Complex has its benefits, especially for concern trolls. All too reminiscent of “Support The Troops.”

So you’re saying that the people who died in the towers and on the airplanes were guilty and deserved death? I’ll leave out the Pentagon because you’ve already classified tat as a military target.

Well I agree with you mostly, so I don’t want to make it sound like I’m being critical. You’re right, they shouldn’t be given a moral pass for the evil they definitely did. Your listing of cities is also a good example of true evil. I’m just not sure the comment was trying to give OBL and company a pass, but that’s just my opinion, so I’ll leave it at that.

As for Afghanistan, if you want to talk about who is to blame, I’d like to bring up Charlie Wilson and company. And how we forgot who bled the Ruskies white for us. But that’s another issue, I’m not sure the left would have sprung for invading Iraq, probably bombs and sanctions, a la Libya, but that wouldn’t have worked. And the Dem track record was trash on the war anyways, so who really knows.

Sorry for responding to an older post, my internet is spotty, carry on!

Thanks. I agree with just about everything you’ve brought up, including Charlie Williams. And no, I’m not giving OBL a pass. I think that his acts are an unjustifiable and therefore reprehensible means to achieve his arguably legitimate end of removing non-muslims from Saudi Arabia.

You’re out of your element here at this site iseeitfx. We don’t regard Obama as “our Jesus“; that is your ideological fetish, not tolerating criticism of Obama, that they all must be racists, and this constant refrain from you telling us to grow up and get with the program is obnoxious, as are your many references to nutsacks. Just traversing your comment history makes me queasy.

I didn’t say that they deserved it and your trying to put words in my mouth. They deserved it as much as the Taliban deserved being targeted. I said it wasn’t ethnic cleansing, nor genocide like you characterized it as, or compared it to. It was an asymmetrical revenge attack on a symbol that has caused them much bloodshed. Western capitalism, greed, and the want for oil and natural resources.

“Idiot brother” does not convey the threat they are to les estrangers or to their fellow citizens. For profit, for god, and for country, they are ready to murder.

They have been eliminated.

I’m not aware of Juan Cole supporting “humanitarian” military intervention. In what case did he?

EDIT: I see that he supported the NATO intervention in Libya.

This is not good news to the criminal banksters [...] The people are wising up and the propaganda is failing.

I would prefer a manifesto. They have already prepared theirs.

I read a column by Noam Chomsky on Al Akhbar, and he said that the left has been completely atomized. They brought the cold war home. Remember COINTELPRO? It hasn’t stopped. Any group that is not on the right that coalesces has been, or will be targeted.

Everyone says “collateral damage.” The US has killed millions and millions of innocent people, mostly Third World peasants, year after year after year. There is so much blood on our hands. Our tax dollars go to these holocausts.

In the Sixties, in Indochina, we killed over 3 million people, maybe more. This is just the Vietnam War. Anyone can look up this stuff. But you can’t bring it up. People in the US are brainwashed by so much Jingo they can’t think straight. This is why I am an anarchist. The State is and always will be violent. And this is just the US.

And this is why I am a pacifist, as well.

Cole:

I have taken a lot of heat for my support of the revolution and of the United Nations-authorized intervention by the Arab League and NATO that kept it from being crushed.

The predator rules. The fools who chastise the rescued French don’t realize the true cost of their “valor”.

They don’t say “collateral damage” for our benefit. At some point, by Jingo, there will be more oppressed than brainwashed. Could it be that point was reached some time ago but we don’t know it?

Revealing factoid:

The phrase “by Jingo” was a long-established minced oath, used to avoid saying “by Jesus”. Referring to [a song sung in British pubs and music halls around the time of the Russo-Turkish War,] the specific term “jingoism” was coined as a political label by the prominent British radical George Holyoake in a letter to the Daily News [...]

What were they swearing to Jesus? “The Russians shall not have Constantinople.”

God love those Christian fanatics. Maybe it’d be enough to be an anarcho-atheist?

That is grace. But mankind has a duty to benevolence because privileging advantage leads to ruin.

Thanks BT. Just popping in to offer my appreciation for the sort of discussion that the 9-11 anniversary should prompt, rather than the endless “where were you and how did you feel” drivel that is damn near everywhere you look and listen this week. This is why I love FDL so much. Thanks.

The leaders cultivate pity, not regret. They are Krugman’s target.

i am totally ASHAMED…not in my name,even though i am past my bloom time,i took a 12 hr train after driving 4 hrs to the closesest station to protest…i do not honor my corrupt violent country anymore..i dont know it anymore

What happened to the left?

Here’s the plan:

Attack of American Free Enterprise System

DOCUMENT DESCRIPTION

In this 1971 memo to Eugene Sydnor at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, lawyer Lewis Franklin Powell Jr. calls for business to play a more activist role in American politics. The memo was written two months before President Nixon nominated him to the Supreme Court. The memo is credited with inspiring the founding of many conservative think tanks, including the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and the Manhattan Institute.

TRANSCRIPT:

Confidential Memorandum:
Attack of American Free Enterprise System
Date: August 23, 1971
T0: Mr. Eugene B. Sydnor, Jr., Chairman, Education Committee, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
From: Lewis F. Powell, Jr.

This memorandum is submitted at your request as a basis for the discussion on August 24 with Mr. Booth (executive vice president) and others at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The purpose is to identify the problem, and suggest possible avenues of action for further consideration.

Dimensions of the Attack
No thoughtful person can question that the American economic system is under broad attack. 1 This varies in scope, intensity, in the techniques employed, and in the level of visibility.

There always have been some who opposed the American system, and preferred socialism or some form of statism (communism or fascism). Also, there always have been critics of the system, whose criticism has been wholesome and constructive so long as the objective was to improve rather than to subvert or destroy.

But what now concerns us is quite new in the history of America. We are not dealing with sporadic or isolated attacks from a relatively few extremists or even from the minority socialist cadre. Rather, the assault on the enterprise system is broadly based and consistently pursued. It is gaining momentum and converts.

Sources of the Attack
The sources are varied and diffused. They include, not unexpectedly, the Communists, New Leftists and other revolutionaries who would destroy the entire system, both political and economic. These extremists of the left are far more numerous, better financed, and increasingly are more welcomed and encouraged by other elements of society, than ever before in our history. But they remain a small minority, and are not yet the principal cause for concern.

The most disquieting voices joining the chorus of criticism come from perfectly respectable elements of society: from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians. In most of these groups the movement against the system is participated in only by minorities. Yet, these often are the most articulate, the most vocal, the most prolific in their writing and speaking.
[..]

It’s an outline of the plan of attack, and infiltration of institutions by the Chamber of Commerce and Government on the Left, the workers, antiwar protestors, etc…

The symbol you refer to contained human beings who died. I’ll repeat what I wrote in an earlier post. An arguably legitimate end cannot be achieved by an immoral means. To do so delegitimatizes the end.

The events that preceded it and the events that followed it were every bit as immoral. You want to hold 9/11 criminals up as something different or special, and out of context. Sheer numbers should be able to tell you something, hundreds of thousands dead to 3000, we don’t know for sure because our victims don’t count, or count for much or we would count them.

Ho hum. Your morals are higher than the 9/11 planners’. Congratulations.

And what have your morals to do with your country’s policy? What, they specifically deny your morality? Oh my goodness, you have your work cut out for you.

History Commons: Profile: Eugene Sydnor, Jr.:

Powell calls these effots “either political demagoguery or economic illiteracy,” and warns, “This setting of the ‘rich’ against the ‘poor,’ of business against the people, is the cheapest and most dangerous kind of politics.” Most corporate entities and personnel have paid little to no attention to these attacks, Powell says; he acknowledges that “businessmen have not been trained or equipped to conduct guerrilla warfare with those who propagandize against the system, seeking insidiously and constantly to sabotage it.” But, he says, this training must commence, for the survival of America’s corporate business culture.

How that’s for terrorism and moral bankruptcy? The guerrilla warfare of Castro and Ho Chi Minh worked so well against America, why not bring it home?

The public must be reeducated, Powell writes, to see business and corporate interests as inherently good for America. The obvious and most effective venue, he says, should be through the means of television, using educational programs, paid news analysts, and advertising as much as possible—“[i]f American business devoted only 10 percent of its total annual advertising budget to this overall purpose, it would be a statesman-like expenditure,” he writes.

Only “Marxists” insist that “capitalist” countries such as the US are controlled by big business.

Powell’s guerrilla campaign rectified this problem.

Corporate interests must, Powell says, “attack [those] who openly seek destruction of the system. There should not be the slightest hesitation to press vigorously in all political arenas for support of the enterprise system. Nor should there be reluctance to penalize politically those who oppose it.”

What happened to the leaders? They stirred up the paranoid wingnuts.

I think almost every president since and including McKinley has been proud to create or sustain a conflict because it makes him the leader of a nation rather than just the mere servant of a republic.
McKinley made the first stab, Wilson delivered the coup de grace; there has been no republic since and the last serious attempt at restoration was made by the progressive Sen. Robert Marion La Follett, whom Walter Karp called “the last great republican of consequence in American history.”