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Well said.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/#060911a
Half a lifetime ago, I worked in this now-empty space. And for 40 days after the attacks, I worked here again, trying to make sense of what happened, and was yet to happen, as a reporter.
All the time, I knew that the very air I breathed contained the remains of thousands of people, including four of my friends, two in the planes and -- as I discovered from those "missing posters" seared still into my soul -- two more in the Towers.
And I knew too, that this was the pyre for hundreds of New York policemen and firemen, of whom my family can claim half a dozen or more, as our ancestors.
I belabor this to emphasize that, for me this was, and is, and always shall be, personal.
And anyone who claims that I and others like me are "soft,"or have "forgotten" the lessons of what happened here is at best a grasping, opportunistic, dilettante and at worst, an idiot whether he is a commentator, or a Vice President, or a President.
However, of all the things those of us who were here five years ago could have forecast -- of all the nightmares that unfolded before our eyes, and the others that unfolded only in our minds -- none of us could have predicted this.
Five years later this space is still empty.
Five years later there is no memorial to the dead.
Five years later there is no building rising to show with proud defiance that we would not have our America wrung from us, by cowards and criminals.
Five years later this country's wound is still open.
Five years later this country's mass grave is still unmarked.
Five years later this is still just a background for a photo-op.
It is beyond shameful.
At the dedication of the Gettysburg Memorial -- barely four months after the last soldier staggered from another Pennsylvania field -- Mr. Lincoln said, "we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract."
Lincoln used those words to immortalize their sacrifice.
Today our leaders could use those same words to rationalize their reprehensible inaction. "We cannot dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground." So we won't.
Instead they bicker and buck pass. They thwart private efforts, and jostle to claim credit for initiatives that go nowhere. They spend the money on irrelevant wars, and elaborate self-congratulations, and buying off columnists to write how good a job they're doing instead of doing any job at all.
Five years later, Mr. Bush, we are still fighting the terrorists on these streets. And look carefully, sir, on these 16 empty acres. The terrorists are clearly, still winning.
And, in a crime against every victim here and every patriotic sentiment you mouthed but did not enact, you have done nothing about it.
And there is something worse still than this vast gaping hole in this city, and in the fabric of our nation. There is its symbolism of the promise unfulfilled, the urgent oath, reduced to lazy execution.
The only positive on 9/11 and the days and weeks that so slowly and painfully followed it was the unanimous humanity, here, and throughout the country. The government, the President in particular, was given every possible measure of support.
Those who did not belong to his party -- tabled that.
Those who doubted the mechanics of his election -- ignored that.
Those who wondered of his qualifications -- forgot that.
History teaches us that nearly unanimous support of a government cannot be taken away from that government by its critics. It can only be squandered by those who use it not to heal a nation's wounds, but to take political advantage.
Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media. Nor did the people.
The President -- and those around him -- did that.
They promised bi-partisanship, and then showed that to them, "bi-partisanship" meant that their party would rule and the rest would have to follow, or be branded, with ever-escalating hysteria, as morally or intellectually confused, as appeasers, as those who, in the Vice President's words yesterday, "validate the strategy of the terrorists."
They promised protection, and then showed that to them "protection" meant going to war against a despot whose hand they had once shaken, a despot who we now learn from our own Senate Intelligence Committee, hated al-Qaida as much as we did.
The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war, on the false premise that it had 'something to do' with 9/11 is "lying by implication."
The impolite phrase is "impeachable offense."
Not once in now five years has this President ever offered to assume responsibility for the failures that led to this empty space, and to this, the current, curdled, version of our beloved country.
Still, there is a last snapping flame from a final candle of respect and fairness: even his most virulent critics have never suggested he alone bears the full brunt of the blame for 9/11.
Half the time, in fact, this President has been so gently treated, that he has seemed not even to be the man most responsible for anything in his own administration.
Yet what is happening this very night?
A mini-series, created, influenced -- possibly financed by -- the most radical and cold of domestic political Machiavellis, continues to be televised into our homes.
The do ented truths of the last fifteen years are replaced by bald-faced lies; the talking points of the current regime parroted; the whole sorry story blurred, by spin, to make the party out of office seem vacillating and impotent, and the party in office, seem like the only option.
How dare you, Mr. President, after taking cynical advantage of the unanimity and love, and transmuting it into fraudulent war and needless death, after monstrously transforming it into fear and su ion and turning that fear into the campaign slogan of three elections? How dare you -- or those around you -- ever "spin" 9/11?
Just as the terrorists have succeeded -- are still succeeding -- as long as there is no memorial and no construction here at Ground Zero.
So, too, have they succeeded, and are still succeeding as long as this government uses 9/11 as a wedge to pit Americans against Americans.
This is an odd point to cite a television program, especially one from March of 1960. But as Disney's continuing sell-out of the truth (and this country) suggests, even television programs can be powerful things.
And long ago, a series called "The Twilight Zone" broadcast a riveting episode en led "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street."
In brief: a meteor sparks rumors of an invasion by extra-terrestrials disguised as humans. The electricity goes out. A neighbor pleads for calm. Suddenly his car -- and only his car -- starts. Someone suggests he must be the alien. Then another man's lights go on. As charges and su ion and panic overtake the street, guns are inevitably produced. An "alien" is shot -- but he turns out to be just another neighbor, returning from going for help. The camera pulls back to a near-by hill, where two extra-terrestrials are seen manipulating a small device that can jam electricity. The veteran tells his novice that there's no need to actually attack, that you just turn off a few of the human machines and then, "they pick the most dangerous enemy they can find, and it's themselves."
And then, in perhaps his finest piece of writing, Rod Serling sums it up with words of remarkable prescience, given where we find ourselves tonight: "The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, at udes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men.
"For the record, prejudices can kill and su ion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own -- for the children, and the children yet unborn."
When those who dissent are told time and time again -- as we will be, if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public chorus -- that he is preserving our freedom, but that if we use any of it, we are somehow un-American...When we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have "forgotten the lessons of 9/11"... look into this empty space behind me and the bi-partisanship upon which this administration also did not build, and tell me:
Who has left this hole in the ground?
We have not forgotten, Mr. President.
You have.
May this country forgive you.
Well said.
Bravo.
Olbermann will be shredded. But his argument is a coherent criticism of an apparent willingness to capitalize on tragedy without ever really addressing the very thing that caused the tragedy in the first place. I'm not sure that the White House has any say about the WTC site other than some degree of bullying competing interests; but the concern does seem less with honoring the dead than with burying political opposition in a slew of invective.
If I were a cynical person, I might surmise that a "open wound" makes for a better photo-op for someone urging everyone to "stay the course" in this rhetorical monstrosity known as the "War on Terror", than a proud memorial that might signify a sense of progress and healing.Five years later this country's wound is still open.
Five years later this country's mass grave is still unmarked.
Five years later this is still just a background for a photo-op.
...if I were cynical.
I don't have a particularly high opinion of Olbermann, but that's easily the best work he has ever produced.
what a load of crap....
I read a great editorial today that criticized 5 deferrment 's interview on Meet the Press. CHeney basically said that the terrorists are emboldened by the debate going on in this country. So , as the author pointed out, is debate supposed to stop? The debate necessary for a democracy must stop if you don't buy his or Bush's argument? Pathetic..
Last edited by George Gervin's Afro; 09-12-2006 at 08:35 AM.
Finally someone calls out the President for squandering the sense of unity this country experienced following 9-11.
I imagine that Olbermann will be skewered before the day's end by those on the right.
Exactly..on one hand the GOP wants untiy on the war in Iraq..and then they turn around and campaign that Dems are not strong enough on defense issues.. but they want unity.. and to not politicize the war in Iraq..
The fact that there is a hole in the ground still underlines the point, more than anything, that government in this day and age, at all levels, is inept, incompetent, and unable to get the simplest of initiatives passed. Let's not look beyond the obvious.
Also, there is much revisionist history going on here.
The U.S. did not invade Iraq because of its ties to 9/11 - The Congress gave the President authority to invade Iraq because of Saddam Hussein's past use of WMD, and the belief that he either still had them, or was actively developing them. Saddam was not allowing inspecters unfettered access, was flaunting U.N. resolutions passed because he had invaded a neighboring country a decade earlier; he was a target in the mideast.
I believe the President and his administration WERE NOT forthcoming with the real reason to invade Iraq, and that was to develop a modern, liberal democracy in the Middle East. The administration naively believed they could invade, write a cons ution, and BAM - instant freedom and democracy. Soon to follow, in there eyes, was Iran, with its young torrent of apparently non-Islamic, Western-loving adolescents, then Turkey, Syria, etc...
This plan, now that we can see it 4 years later, was flawed. The administration underestimated the resistance to what they had planned, and how much the Islamists would fight them. Osama Bin Laden specifically preaches that the Western Democracies are the MOST UNHOLY forms of government ever conceived specifically because they don't have God at their core - that our laws are written without divine guidance! Islam is religion/government/education and daily life all rolled into a single package; there is NO separation. It is diametrically opposed to everything Western society began evolving from since the reformation/renaissance. People who believe like OBL will fight to the absolute end to prevent us setting up our kind of political structure in their homeland. As much as we think they hate our way of life and liberty, they think we abhore and want to do away with theirs. They are right. We are right.
What is the president guilty of? Not stating his true goals from the outset and GROSS miscalculation. Had Iraq gone as the administration planned (and remember as late as Nov. '04 it was still a winning issue), the war critics would have been silenced, and the international hatred of what we were doing over there would not have gotten momentum. Heck, we'd have a two year old, functioning democratic ally in the mid-east! It didn't work out that way.
Mea Culpa? Yep, I believed it would work. I never thought we were going into Iraq to take out Saddam & his weapons. I ALWAYS thought we were nation building, and I thought it would work. I was wrong. Ultimately, Islam is going to have to have its own reformation. Because of its teachings, ANY interaction we have in that part of the world will be seen a meddling, and will certainly not help our cause. Israel, in this regard, is a HUGE problem. As long as we back them, the Islamists will hate us, and will be able to use that hatred to bolster their power, and keep their political and religious systems from evolving. If we don't bakc them; well we all know what happens if we don't back them.
I think the Administration's biggest sin was not recognizing how hopeless the relationship between the West and the followers of Islam truly is.
I agree with you (see bold) but Bush should have made this case before the war. The dishonest part of us going to Iraq was that he and his inner circle knew the country would not support a nation building experiment so they decided to start the war with the nation still reeling from 9/11.. they used the WMDS threat as a way to scare the country and in the end the Iraq war turned out to be an 'ends justify the means' type action..
Bush failed to maintain the unity we experienced after 9/11 with divisive policies and poor communication of his objectives.
Five years later, every issue or policy decision important to America has become another round in an incessant Partisan sport... Republicans vs. Democrats, Bush-haters vs. Bush-apologists. This is due in no small part to the "24-hour news media" trending further and further away from real newsreporting and sinking into the comfortable ratings-cushioned Pundit-dominated format we have today, of which Olbermann is a part. For that reason, his words, while accurate for the most part, ring hollow to me.
I should have written that, but my post had already gotten too long. I agree.
The only give/take that I find bearable is the New Hour. Shields and Brooks are level-headed and seemingly w/o an agenda. They each have a position, but are open-minded and informative. The best criticismy and analysis is generally that coming from the same side of the aisle.
I concur Mr. Olbermann. Well done.
"Welfare Momma"So, too, have they succeeded, and are still succeeding as long as this government uses 9/11 as a wedge to pit Americans against Americans.
"Rich not paying their fare share"
"Corporate handouts/favors/welfare"
"Willie Horton"
...and the list could go on forever. Like THIS administration is the first to pit "American against American"! Olberman is truly just part of the shrill noise of the political "debate" these days. People on "his" side scream, "Take That"...people on the other side: "What a bunch of Crap!". Neither is right.
The administration is incapable of admitting it has made any mistakes, the left won't offer any constuctive suggestions - they just want a pound of the president's flesh; I honestly believe, I know, most liberals now consider GW a much bigger enemy than OBL - more than a few actually think GW orchestrated THE WHOLE THING! Impossible to have a legitimate discussion about how to proceed in this environment. In fact, even if the Democrats get control of BOTH houses, they are going to spend the next two years investigating, holding hearings, etc...rather than getting on with the business of dealing with the issues that are still out there. If the Republicans hold on? I can't even imagine how shrill it will become.
Well, there you go again. I see you've fallen for Rove and Cheney's BS. Most "liberals" as you label them are just as much against OBL as "conservatives" are but they belive the BS that they've been fed from the leaders of their party and can't/won't think on their own. I don't buy all the rhetoric coming from either side since it is just crap anyways.
I don't think most conservatives are war hungry cold hearted people 'cause I know it just isn't true. Surely you don't really believe it either.
"GW a much bigger enemy than OBL"
dubya will very soon have murdered more US military in Iraq than OBL murdered civilians at WTC.
dubya's phony Iraq war will cost the US $1T, many times more than OBL and all other terrorist have cost the USA.
OBL accomplished more, advanced his goals more at the WTC than dubya has accomplished even his bull goals in Iraq.
OBL said it was very hard to strike into the US, so his goal was to draw the US into foreign lands.
dubya complied with OBL's plan in the worst possible way in Iraq.
You're right, I should not have used the word "most", "some" would have been more accurate.
For evidence of "some" I present Boutons:
"GW a much bigger enemy than OBL"
dubya will very soon have murdered more US military in Iraq than OBL murdered civilians at WTC.
dubya's phony Iraq war will cost the US $1T, many times more than OBL and all other terrorist have cost the USA.
OBL accomplished more, advanced his goals more at the WTC than dubya has accomplished even his bull goals in Iraq.
OBL said it was very hard to strike into the US, so his goal was to draw the US into foreign lands.
dubya complied with OBL's plan in the worst possible way in Iraq.
That about somes it up though.
I don't understand the point you are trying to make with this statement. The two men have entirely different goals (one to cause terrror and the other to spread Islamic fundamentalism --).
You would have to admit that causing terror is much easier than setting up a democracy, so I don't think OBL has bested GW in this regard.
Nothing overcomes partisanship like finger pointing.
To with Olbermann and all you other chicken s!!
Now there's a cogent argument.
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