A day after 9-11

One day after the anniversary of 9-11 is an appropriate opportunity to comment on the grave robber mentality that has become the hallmark of the Bush administration. Six years ago a terrible tragedy catapulted New York and the United States onto every television screen in the world and within an hour of the first plane hitting the World Trade centre, the world was united in condemning the actions of the terrorists who perpetrated this abominable act and the world declared solidarity with the American people. Media attempts to show Palestinians celebrating were quickly shown to have been manipulated, stories of Afghans making victory signs were soon proved untrue. Perhaps for the first time ever, there was a feeling of global unity to stop the horror.

It was indeed the jackpot for Bush. He could have launched a worldwide strategy for keeping the nations of the world united, it could have been the starting point for a real global fight to stop terror, to stop wars and to stop the killing. It was a moment to reach across to those who felt themselves as not belonging to this new age and to show them that we are all in this together. It was a moment to show the world that the United States was about peace and freedom and not about war and hegemony.

Well, he blew his moment.

Bush used up all the goodwill, all the power and all his “political credit” in order to invade Iraq. It was a gamble and it was even well set up. There was an initial half-hearted stab at getting Bin Laden and then the propaganda machine started grinding into action, crushing any and all objections beneath its patriotic tracks as it lumbered across the American Nation carrying its message deep into the heartland: “Iraq and 9-11 are linked.”

That tactic still hasn’t stopped and as Salon’s Gary Kamiya wrote in a piece yesterday, Bush referred to Al-Qaeda 95 times in a speech about Iraq. He’s still at it plugging away at the only card he has left: that which banks on the ignorance of the people to discern between Al-Qaeda that carried out the deadly attacks on September 11, 2001 and Al-Qaeda wannabes in Iraq.

It’s no coincidence that General Petraeus’ report on the progress of the so-called ‘surge’ is brought to us on September 11. It’s no coincidence that Bush and Cheney keep plugging away at the connection that never existed between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. So it comes as no surprise to hear about a new advertisement campaign organized by a group known as Freedom’s Watch, a rag-tag group of wealthy Bush allies amongst who’s founders is former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer. The Washington Post reports that four spots are airing in 60 congressional districts in 20 states and the ads have one aim: to plug the idea of staying the course and to link Iraq with the events that tragically happened six years ago and in order to do so, the Bush Junta of course turns to the epitomy of sacrifice: a wounded American soldier.
The television commercial is grim and gripping:

A soldier who lost both legs in an explosion near Fallujah explains why he thinks U.S. forces need to stay in Iraq.

"They attacked us," he says as the screen turns to an image of the second hijacked airplane heading toward the smoking World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. "And they will again. They won't stop in Iraq."

Ari Fleischer defends the ads and says it is not misleading to say “they attacked us” whilst showing pictures of Iraq and then talk about Iraq whilst showing pictures of 9-11. Ari Fleischer maintains that “Nine-one-one is a bona fide, legitimate reason to remind people…why we need to win in Iraq.”

The truth is that the group of politicians who nearly fell over themselves to start the war that has turned into the biggest political fiasco in America’s history, the Rumsfelds, the Bushes, the Cheneys and the Wolfowitzes were never concerned about the victims of the World Trade Center disaster. They were concerned with only one thing: getting to the oil and they thought they had it sown up!

They had a cause, they had a crusade and they had a wound they could stick a knife into and twist every time the American people became restless. They could manipulate the logic, fake the intelligence and the stupid population would swallow it – it was a golden opportunity to take Iraq, take Baghdad and funnel the oil into the hands of the US oil conglomerates. So what if we have to give the British a few drops – lets take them on board too. It’ll be a cakewalk and by the time the dust has settled and the war’s over everyone will have forgotten about the half-truths and the deceptions that got us there. There’ll be lots of happy Iraqis, Ahmad Chalabi’ll see to that and when they wave their purple thumbs whilst showering our troops with flowers and sweets the public’ll go nuts – nuts I tell ya. They’ll love it!

Only it didn’t happen that way. The 9-11 story should be about remembering what hate does and remembering the fact that innocent people were killed because others felt they were expendable. Innocent blood was spilled because criminals had no sense of ethics. Innocent children were left without a father or a mother because someone, somewhere, thought they had the God-given right to bring death and destruction onto a people. Instead, Bush, Cheney, Rice, Pearle, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld used the victims of 9-11 to justify doing the dame thing to another country, another people and this time, leave 100,000 dead and millions homeless because they felt they had the right to do so and for that, they can never, ever be forgiven.