9/10: A DEFINITIONAL DAY FOR THE LEFT
This article originally appears in The American Thinker
Tomorrow while much of the country pauses to remember the victims of 9/11 on the five year anniversary of that horrible day, it will occur to many of us what those attacks signified; the day that the United States awoke from its decades-long slumber and finally faced up to the fact that we were at war with a grimly determined, fanatical enemy hell bent on destroying us.
For others, especially for those on the left, 9/11 will be remembered as a tragedy, a day when our “chickens came home to roost” and nearly 3,000 of our fellow citizens paid the price for our folly. In this historical construct, rather than remembering 9/11 as a wake up call, the left sees the anniversary as a day of atonement, a day to make amends for our past sins.
Michelle Malkin has an interesting piece about one aspect of this phenomena and its weird manifestation in Washington state:
Moonbat America is beyond parody. Yesterday, I told you about Bremerton, Washington’s 9/11 commemoration–commemorating “diversity” and immigration and anything except the actual events, heroes, victims, and villains of 9/11.
Well, here’s more inanity from the Pacific Northwest.
First, take a look at a few of the King County (WA) library system’s Sept. 11 programs (hat tip: reader J.S.):
Yes to the World: Songs of Peace, Unity and Healing for the Whole Family
Presented by Lorraine Bayes and Dennis Westphall. The founding directors of Tickle Tune Typhoon sing songs to celebrate the beauty of life. Come sing and dance at a family concert that supports friendship, peace, cooperation and caring for all living things.
This has become known as “9/11 Denial” where the full implication of the attacks are simply put out of mind and the comfortable bromides and somnolent fantasies about the brotherhood of man and world peace are eagerly substituted. Harsh realities that require one to look into the abyss and accept the fact that evil men wish to do us enormous harm are carefully placed in a box and hidden away lest the children (and those with child like minds) be exposed to the discomfort of a smashed worldview, battered and broken by the exigencies of history and the materiality of events.
This is only part of the equation, of course. Living in a world where quite literally there never was a 9/11 appeals to only a certain segment of the left - aging hippies and the radical sophists who have abandoned reality and created their own personal gulags of politically correct ideas and actions. For them, 9/11 is one more opportunity to demonstrate what they believe is their moral superiority over the rest of us.
But for the majority of the left, it is the yearning for a return to a 9/10 fantasy world that occupies their thoughts this weekend. These thoughts include a determined effort to carefully construct a historical narrative that proves that 9/11 was a gigantic mistake and that rather than moving on to face the assault on the west by radical Islamists, it would be better if we learned from our errors and repaired to the safety and security we believed were ours on 9/10.
There is obvious comfort in this historical fallacy. And there is political gain as well. For this reason, the left has built a storyline about 9/11 that takes the form of both a Chaucer-like cautionary tale and Hollywood conspiracy fable, all the better to appeal to the confusion many Americans are feeling about the aftermath of 9/11 and our response to terrorism in general.
That response - the invasion and overthrow of two regimes in the Middle East that supported terrorism - seems to many on the left to supply verification for Ward Churchill’s thesis that 9/11 was the result of America’s bullying and our insatiable desire to dominate. To the mountebanks who have spent the last 5 years spinning conspiracy theories about Haliburton and secret neocon cabals, the challenge became one of trying to translate their distrust of American power and loathing of American purpose into a palatable mix for the masses to latch on to and embrace.
While not completely swallowing the Ward Churchill view that 9/11 happened because we were hated throughout the world for policies promulgated before the attacks, the left has taken the bare bones of Churchill’s critique and pasted it on to the aftermath of 9/11 to posit the notion that in the months following that awful day, “the world was with us” and it was only because of the policies put in place since the attacks that the nations now despise us. This has the virtue of cleansing the historical record of any mistakes made by Bush’s predecessor while blaming the President for the virulent strain of anti-Americanism that has infected the planet from Europe to the Middle East and beyond.
This myth of worldwide solidarity with America following 9/11 has been successfully advanced thanks to a stubborn refusal by most of us to look carefully beyond the outpouring of genuine feeling for the plight of New Yorkers and the American people as a result of the catastrophe and examine the long held anti-American feelings of most of the rest of the world who saw the attacks as both a punishment for our transgressions as well as an occasion for joy that the mighty USA had been brought down a peg or two in the scheme of things.
One need only look to our closest ally Great Britain for proof that the solidarity myth is a crock. Less than 48 hours after the attacks, former Ambassador to the Court of St. James Philip Lader appeared on the BBC program Question Time where he was roundly booed and “slow handclapped” after his defense of American policy, reducing that worthy almost to tears. And despite the fact that the BBC apologized, William Shawcross, who was in Europe at the time of the attacks wrote on September 17, 2001:
But the response of some of the Question Time audience reveals a darker side and shows the awful truth that these days there is just one racism that is tolerated - anti-Americanism. Not just tolerated, but often applauded. Like any other nation, the US makes mistakes at home and abroad. (I wrote about some of those in Indochina.)
But the disdain with which its failures and its efforts are greeted by some in Britain and elsewhere in Europe is shocking. Anti-Americanism often goes much further than criticism of Washington. Too often the misfortunes of America are met with glee, a schadenfreude that is quite horrifying.
Even the proof most often cited by “The World Was With Us” crowd - a front page editorial in the French newspaper Le Monde entitled “We are All Americans” - is, after close examination, nothing more than a rehash of American sins and an expression of the widespread view held by both elites and commoners that we got what we deserved.
John Rosenthal writing in The Wall Street Journal on October 17, 2004 on “The Myth of ‘Squandered Sympathy:’
Thus are legends born. For the solidarity ostentatiously displayed in the title of Mr. Colombani’s editorial is in fact massively belied by the details of the text itself.
By the fifth paragraph, Mr. Colombani is offering his general reflections on the geo-political conditions he supposes provoked the attacks:
“The reality is surely that of a world without a counterbalance, physically destabilized and thus dangerous in the absence of a multipolar equilibrium. And America, in the solitude of its power, of its hyperpower, . . . has ceased to draw the peoples of the globe to it; or, more exactly, in certain parts of the globe, it seems no longer to attract anything but hatred. . . . And perhaps even we ourselves in Europe, from the Gulf War to the use of F16s against Palestinians by the Israeli Army, have underestimated the hatred which, from the outskirts of Jakarta to those of Durban, by way of the rejoicing crowds of Nablus and of Cairo, is focused on the United States.”
The editorial that headlined the idea that “We are all Americans” then degenerated into conspiracy mongering:
In the following paragraph, Mr. Colombani went on to add that perhaps too “the reality” was that America had been “trapped by its own cynicism,” noting that Osama bin Laden himself had, after all, been “trained by the CIA”–a never substantiated charge that has, of course, in the meanwhile become chapter and verse for the blame-America-firsters. “Couldn’t it be, then,” Mr. Colombani concluded, “that America gave birth to this devil?”
Almost from the start of the War on Terror, the left’s critique of the President has utilized this myth to both rail against Administration actions and point to a time when our policies fostered good will around the world and a morality of purpose here at home. That time turns out to be 9/10 and the golden age that preceded it or, more specifically, anything that happened in America before January 20, 2001.
This is why Democrats are fighting tooth and nail to prevent the showing of ABC’s The Path to 9/11. Any countervailing narrative that shows President Clinton in anything less than a flattering light, especially as it relates to his Administration’s response to terrorism, must be suppressed. The shocking response by Democratic legislators in threatening The Disney Company, parent of ABC, with nothing less than yanking it’s license to broadcast has at bottom, a fervent desire to prevent any information that might show the truth of how the United States spent the 1990’s sleepwalking through history.
And the outpouring of invective directed against the program has another cause as well; the belief that the Clinton-Albright policy of treating terrorism largely as a law enforcement problem would be revealed as the monumental failure it turned out to be. Viewing the terrorist problem as a “nuisance” as John Kerry famously averred (as if bloodthirsty jihadists were nothing more than “muggers”) may be comforting to those who believe that our problems are a result of not stopping the world from spinning on 9/10. And the attraction of this narrative in a political sense may be that it resonates with voters who have become weary of the conflict and wish to elect those who would play along with the fantasy that 9/11 was a fluke and that we can all return to a time when we didn’t have to think about annihilation and Armageddon.
In short, the left is opposing the showing of this film because 1) Clinton actions are criticized and 2) Bush’s actions aren’t criticized enough. The latter being the main point of anger for liberals in that it goes against everything they have tried to obfuscate for the past 5 years. They want the enduring image of 9/11 to be George Bush sitting in a classroom reading a children’s book not the towers collapsing or people jumping out of buildings. Anything that goes against The Narrative is a threat to expose the entire tissue of lies, exaggerations, misrepresentations, conspiracy fantasies, and deliberate falsehoods perpetrated over the last 5 years with the help of an all too willing media and a vast network of former government officials always willing to shift blame for their own inadequacies in the face of Islamic terrorism.
The great divide in American politics between 9/10 liberals and 9/12 conservatives may prove to be our undoing in the War on Terror unless some kind of consensus can be reached that bridges the chasm between those days. Whether that can be accomplished at this point is extremely doubtful. It may take another wake up call to bring about the kind of unity that is so sorely lacking thanks to the polarization of our politics and the outright denial of so many of the simple, incontrovertible fact that we are at war and the conflict began what seems so long ago on a stunningly beautiful September morning.
It behooves us to consider the possibility that the September 11 atrocities were indeed more successful than we are willing to admit.
I certainly would never expect any of our domestic political opponents to acknowledge they’re being played by international jihadists. But when they sandbag EVERY SINGLE ATTEMPT by the Bush administration to safeguard the country, it starts looking less like cynical political opportunism and more like complicity with enemies of the United States.
In any case, this country is divided in ways I would never have thought possible in a September 10th world. When half the country sees the other half as a greater threat than religious fanatics who travel the world leaving a trail of mass murder in their wake, we are faced a set of political conflicts that must be resolved before the United States can defeat Islamofascism.
Regards,
-the Canine Pundit
http://caninepundit.blogspot.com/
Comment by Sirius Familiaris — 9/10/2006 @ 12:59 pm
Rick — What a FANTASTIC encapsulation of the post 9/11 schism between left and right. During the 1990s we all sang lullabies while the Muslims set up wars in our domain. But the reality of our predicament is FAR WORSE: fully 5 years after Islam’s rape of America, and for whatever reasons, the entire West is still utterly asleep about Islam — we are still completely unprepared for the Muslim onslaught that is gaining momentum against us. In every quarter Muslims are working to subvert our systems and cause us harm yet we still tolerate them in our midst — in fact we ENCOURAGE them to spread their cancer unchecked in our domain. Most of us still don’t have the slightest clue about that blood stained ‘religion’ of hatred and conquest, despite many Muslims speaking out clearly about their malilgnant intentions.
Whether through bake sales at the local mosque, obfuscating on National TV the rapine nature of Islam, or through beheadings and burnings and bombings — ALL Muslims are determined to see more Islam and less of us.
Our Western leadership (both left AND right) is guillty of not educating itself or us about the heinous nature of this primitive eating machine of Islam. It has eaten many great cultures and religions and excreted them out as waste products — think or Persia in her former greatness, and now the cesspool Iran has become — think of Hindu India raped for a thousand years until two huge chunks got thrown to the ravenous wolf (and now, his appetite whetted, he wants Kashmir and more)– think of Christian Byzantium formerly the center of gravity of Christianity (and therefore the apple of Islam’s eye at the time) now a wasteland known as Turkey where Mein Kampf is on the best seller list — Think of the entire Christian and Jewish Middle East… now a seething sewer of Arab bigotry and Islamic genocide — The beast has passed this way — we see the spoor of Islam everywhere we look: backwardness, hatred, hopelessness, totalitarianism, corruption, evil — that’s Islam’s domain. Who had the bright idea to let millions of these vectors of destruction into our domain? Once we collectively knew they were our mortal enemies!
The diamond of the West was cleaved brilliantly on that day in September — and, in the same manner that the Jihadists used our own wealth and prowess against us by perverting the uses of our property and technology — the passenger plane becomes a missile — the fuel becomes his incendiary — the weight of the plane and passengers become throw-weights, their memory a poisonous stiletto to carve our hearts at the thought of their pathetic powerlessness to prevent it — the Western media as the perfect terror force-multiplier and their greatest mosque megaphone. Our mortal enemy brilliantly exploited our innate fractures and fault lines to perfect effect.
Did the cleaving of the Western diamond, the PERMANENT sundering of the increasingly radical left and the right destroy the value of the gem? Or did it go a long way towards removing the ugly flaws which developed over time? I’m still trying to decide.
In November this lifelong Democrat plans on jumping ship — into what waters I do not no — we’re all in uncharted territory now. We’ve already sailed too far from those former September 10th shores — and we’ll never see that land again.
Comment by John Scheafer — 9/10/2006 @ 1:02 pm
Well said, CP.
I took a lot of flak a few weeks ago by daydreaming that perhaps once one of their own was sitting in the big chair, the left would do an about face and realize the pickle we’re in.
At the very least, they would defend the actions of their man (or woman) and present the appearance of solidarity. The psychological affect that might have on our enemies would be tremendous.
But then - it’s just a daydream…
Comment by Rick Moran — 9/10/2006 @ 1:03 pm
” 9/10: A definitional day”
Quotes from a definitional piece by Rick Moran, via American Thinker:Tomorrow, while much of the country pauses to remember the victims of 9/11 on the five year anniversary of that horrible day, it will occur to many of us what those attacks signified: th
Trackback by Maggie's Farm — 9/10/2006 @ 2:47 pm
Spot on, Rick.
Comment by bird dog — 9/10/2006 @ 2:47 pm
Rick,
I’m still trying to figure out how the left claims that we deserved 9/11 for America’s sins but on the other hand they vomit 9/11 conspiracies that it was an inside job by the Bush administration. I know that coherent thought is lacking by the left and most Democrats but this is just down right psychotic. To have this mentality back in the White House or in Power with the influence of the lunatic left would be inevitable suicide.
Comment by Jiggity — 9/10/2006 @ 2:52 pm
Good piece Rick.
I am afraid it will take another attack on us before the left fully gets this. I listened to Howard Dean on Foxnews Sunday and when asked if he would apologize to Rove he said No, he should be taken out of office or impeached or some hogwash.
When you have enemies of the State fighting our every effort on the war and irrational moonbat leaders spewing out garbage daily from their loony mouths, alas, it will take another attack and more innocents to make them comprehend what we are up against.
It is time for strick racial profiling and strong immagration reform NOW, theres no telling how many have been smuggled over by money hungry Mexican smugglers, and I, for one, fear for my Nation. May God bless us all and keep us safe.
Comment by Drewsmom — 9/10/2006 @ 5:46 pm
Excellent commentary by Rick Moran. He correctly notes the falseness of the “solidarity myth”, which idiotically pretends that “the whole world was with us” until “Bush thumbed his nose at our allies”. Apparently the Arab street that erupted in joy at news of 9/11 had not gotten news of their solidarity with us.
The other part of the myth is that Bush turned the world against us. What drivel. It turns out it wasn’t us who “thumbed our noses” at our allies. Rather, some of our allies stabbed us in the back. France and Russia were in cahoots with Iraq to steal billions of dollars from Oil For Food — the U.N. program criminally mismanaged by Kofi Annan. How absurd to blame the bad behavior of others on Bush.
Our enemy more than anything wants to see a divided and weakened America, and sadly, the Democrats (at least too many of them) have accommodated the enemy’s wishes. A unified America is the enemy’s worst nightmare.
Comment by GnuCarSmell — 9/10/2006 @ 6:31 pm
Most agree, the period of our safekeeping since 9/11 was the result of a successful global offensive against terrorism. But I wonder how many agree this action is sustainable. A successful global offensive requires 1) committed allies, and 2) support for the cause by a majority of people at home. Regarding allies, two portentous events occurred in the past week: Pakistan announced the withdrawal of troops from its western border regions, and Tony Blair announced his pending retirement. Pakistan and Britain may therefore soon go the way of Spain and others. Regarding the home front, we hear the election in November is a referendum on the war that will sweep control of the House and possibly the Senate to the Democrats. It appears the character of the GWOT may be changing from a global-offensive to a local-defensive conflict. If so, we may see how effectively the Democrats’ law-and-order approach continues our protection.
Comment by Larry — 9/10/2006 @ 9:19 pm
It is interesting to read this article and the following comments.
There are lots of negative labels and insults
directed to the Left. There are also some questions about why we are so divided…………..I wonder why.
It would be helpful if we were united in the WOT instead of involved in critizing the other side. Where are the people and politicans reaching out to the other side, to other Americans?
It seems we are more interested in being right than in beating the terrorists, especially if we are looking foward to another attack to “prove” we were right.
If we do not hang together, we will hang separately.
Comment by wittwcl — 9/10/2006 @ 10:18 pm
[...] Rick Moran says the day defines the Dems. [...]
Pingback by The Anchoress » 9/11, Iraq, WMD, Clinton’s “birthday” and more — 9/10/2006 @ 10:19 pm
NY Times Editorial Remembrance of 9/11 – More Crap from a Crappy Newspaper
The New York Times published its 9/11 memorial editorial this evening on their website in advance of tomorrows print copy. I read it with a bit of wonder and fascination. Not for the editor’s words of wisdom or for the sophisticated heart felt homage…
Trackback by Webloggin — 9/10/2006 @ 11:37 pm
[...] Right Wing Nuthouse: 9/10: A DEFINITIONAL DAY FOR THE LEFT [...]
Pingback by Webloggin - Blog Archive » NY Times Editorial Remembrance of 9/11 – More Crap from a Crappy Newspaper — 9/10/2006 @ 11:39 pm
9/11 - a day of rememberance. Of how the Right-wing in this country hate their fellow Americans more than they hate the enemy because these fellow Americans may lean to the Left. Saddening and sickening. Well, the Left had pretty good guidance:
“You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man’s age-old dream — the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order — or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. ” — Ronald Reagan
Comment by Syntax — 9/11/2006 @ 12:09 am
“We are at war” with who? Terror? Terrorists? Muslims? al Qaeda? Talliban? Iraqi Sunni Insurgents? Iraqi Shiite militia? Hezbollah? Hamas? Iran? Enemies of Israel? Jihadists?
You people make it sound so simple to understand. Like the enemy is so clearly defined and the battle plan so obvious. Well it’s not. After the attacks of 9/11 the world generally felt that going after the perpetrators was a justified war, liberals and Democrats included. But when it came to Iraq and the neocon “plan for a new American century” and things started to fall apart. Democracy was going to the cure all for the Middle East problem. After spending over $300 billion dollars, straining our military to its limits, killing tens of thousands Iraqis (half of them children), over 2.600 dead soldiers and almost 20,000 wounded, we have a democracy. The brave people of Iraq went to the polls risking their lives to vote. And the winner is–SCIR or the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution. Whoops!
You want simple? Here’s simple: American foreign policy either increases the number of terrorists or decreases them. There seems to no doubt that the current policy is dramatically increasing Jihadists. Previously Jihadists were a minor radical element in the Arab world. Today Jihad has become mainstream in the Arab world because of the Iraq war.
BTW, After the UK bombing plot was rolled up a few weeks ago George Will wrote, ‘John Kerry was right. Combating terrorism is mainly a matter of intelligence and law enforcement.’
Comment by Turnabout — 9/11/2006 @ 3:44 am
For the ACLU, 9/11 is just another day to attack the Bush Administration
Nothing to honor the heroes and the victims of an unprovoked day of savagery that took the lives of 3,000 innocent Americans. No credit at all to a government and an administration, love them or hate them, that has successfully averted another horrif…
Trackback by Stop The ACLU — 9/11/2006 @ 2:18 pm
John Scheafer, kudos to you as well as Rick. Brilliant comment. Eloquent and purposeful and right to the true point.
Comment by the-gunslinger — 9/12/2006 @ 9:18 pm
I know it doesn’t matter, not even a little bit, but for the sake of whatever, I’ll point out that there are like five people on “the left” who think we deserved to get attacked.
No Democratic Senator, Congressperson, Governor, Mayor, State legislator, City council member, or Daily Kos poster. But that won’t stop you from thinking so, and it won’t stop me from losing my lunch when you suggest it, and the bloody wedge of extremist political rhetoric will continue to divide our country. Which is why, like I said, it doesn’t really matter.
Yes, I’m in a sour mood, heh.
Comment by matt — 9/14/2006 @ 1:52 am
Ok, I’m not quite ready to let this go. This is how the list breaks down of people who think we “got what we deserved”
1. A few hundred or so looney American lefties that a few hundred or so other looney American lefties take seriously. Not that that makes their opinions any less odious.
2. A few hundred or so religious right leaders that millions of people take seriously.
3. A few hundred irrelevant European “journalists” that no one takes seriously.
Comment by matt — 9/14/2006 @ 2:38 am
[...] One final note; I realize the idea that “the world was with us” after 9/11 has now become firmly ensconced as one of the enduring myths about that horrible day. But as numerous people (including myself) have pointed out, the facts do not support that conclusion. Those interested in the truth might read this article which has links to other analyses that debunk that bit of hooey promoted by the left as a means to criticize the Bush Administration for losing something the government of the United States never had – the unqualified support of most of the world’s governments. [...]
Pingback by Right Wing Nut House » CROCODILE TEARS FROM THE LEFT — 12/19/2006 @ 4:17 pm