Keith Olbermann had a magnificent commentary on his podcast this morning. He began by telling us where he was in New York and the people he lost on 9-11. Then he brought it home. He reminded us of that brief moment when the country came together.
The only positive of 9-11 and the days and weeks and years that so slowly and painfully followed...was the unanimous humanity here in New York and throughout the country. The government, the President in particular was given every possible measure of support. Those who did not belong to the President's party tabled that reality. Those who doubted the mechanics of his election the year before ignored that. Those who wondered about his qualifications forgot that. Nearly unanimous support of his government was granted. And that is something that 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 of them.
And squander it they did — by choice, tearing the country apart for political gain.
They promised bipartisanship and then showed that to them, bipartisanship meant that their party would rule and the rest of us would follow or be branded with ever escalating hysteria as morally or intellectually confused, as appeasers, as those who in Vice President Cheney's words, “validate the strategy of the terrorists.” These men promised protection and then showed that to them protection meant going to war against the despot whose hand they had once shaken, who did not have WMD, who did not have a damn thing to do with 9-11, against whom plans have been laid many years before 9-11 The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war, or at least acquiescing to it on the false premise that it had something to do with 9-11 is lying by inference. The impolite phrase is war crime.
When the country was grieving, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were dry washing their hands, pondering the perfect chance to launch their long-planned war of choice. And “Bush’s brain,” the despicable Karl Rove, saw this as the perfect chance to win the 2002 midterms for the Republicans by destroying our fragile comity. He and his minions claimed they had “evidence” that Saddam had Weapons of Mass Destruction. and demanded that Congress give Bush the power to wage war. Rove timed the vote for the weeks before the election, then branded any Democrat who objected as Saddam-loving traitorous scum. And it worked perfectly (ask Hillary Clinton, and especially Max Cleland).
K.O. then shows how what happened then led to the partisan hellscape America has become...
After taking cynical advantage of the unanimity and the love and transmuting it into fraudulent war and needless death, after monstrously transforming it into fear and suspicion and turning that fear into the campaign slogan of election after election, we arrived in a world in which when Trump enacted the worst imaginable cliche: wrapping himself in the American flag. The morons thought that proved he loved America So they succeeded in this and are still succeeding. Trump uses the hatreds of 911 as a wedge to pit Americans against Americans.
The Democrats could have lambasted Bush over 9-11. After all, he’d been told in his daily briefing, “bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” (to which he replied to the messenger, “Okay, you’ve covered your ass.”) But the Democrats didn’t attack. They knew it was a moment to come together, mourn together, and remember what we all love about America. (They also knew that if Al Gore had been President, the Republicans would have filed articles of impeachment the next day.) The Republicans saw it as a way to launch a three trillion dollar war that killed hundreds of thousands of people and ensured people in that part of the world would hate America for hundreds of years.
This is the best remembrance of 9-11 I’ve seen today. If you’re not listening to K.O.’s podcast every single day, you’re missing something essential.