Liberal Talk Radio

It’s true that history will judge what’s happening now (and also true that the Future will be left to pick up the pieces). And I’ll give you that it’s a sour, sour pickle that we’re in.

The biggest issue, IMO, remains: there’s very little agreement on first principals. In some sense, by quibbling over the definition of “terror” we’ve already conceeded the framing to the Bushies, and I’ve never been convinced that their perspective on this whole thing is right.

I still contend — and this is someone who did personally witness the events of 9/11 and the immediate aftermath — that the correct reaction after the Towers fell was the geo-political equivalent of taking it like a man. Acknowledge the terribleness, resolve to find the guilty, and move forward arm in arm with our multiple friends around the globe. While the Towers falling was terrible, it was the geo-political equivalent of Monica Seles being stabbed by a deranged assailant.  Did the attacks on 9/11 fundamentally change the American economy?  No.  Did they cause the deaths of a large percentage of Americans? No. Did they even represent a dramatic negative change in the safety of the average American?  No — clearly, the will to attack us was there, had been there; 9/11 was the apotheosis, not the birth, of militant anti-Americanism.  If geo-politics were a boxing match, 9/11 was a solid blow to the chin that didn’t even knock us down, but we lost our collective composure and, Mike Tyson-like, bit the world’s ear.

So, one thing I’m certain the historical records will acknowledge is the fundamental insecurity faced on 9/12, not by America collectively, but by a dim and befuddled President Bush* overwhelmed by events so beyond his comprehension he could not possibly contribute anything meaningful to the dialogue.  This was also a president who had no domestic mandate — I call Bush a dimwit in charity, the reality is there was probably some measure of cynical ambition behind everything Bush did once he finally got up from his chair in that school.

And so, there’s my problem.  If we straighten our backs on 9/12 instead of punching in a blind dark fury we live in a very different world today.   France is our friend, we probably still occupy Afghanistan (but with 140,000 troops instead of the paltry numbers there now), Bin Laden is dead or captured because our Special Forces were in country at the time of Tora Bora instead of being refitted for Iraq, Saddam Hussein is still in power (and we’re probably sending him weapons aid clandestinely to help us in our less public war on terror … pity the Kurds), and we never even have this godd*mn debate about America using terror to begin with.

I guess that’s not that constructive, so I refer myself to my own headline. 

* Lest we forget: