On this day, eight years ago, a truly illegitimate President of the United States -- who was not elected by the American people but seized the White House by judicial fiat -- sat in an classroom at Booker Elementary School in Florida, reading The Pet Goat with a group of second graders. (Incidentally, he was not accused by liberals of trying to indoctrinate students.)
I do not believe that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were responsible for the planning or execution of the 9/11 attacks. But there remain many disturbing, unanswered questions about why the Bush Administration failed to protect America. Whether that failure was willful, or simply due to ignorance and incompetence, is a question not sufficiently answered by the known evidence. Undeniably, the attacks were among the worst things that have ever happened to America, and among the best things that ever happened to Bush and Cheney (not to mention Giuliani and a large cast of other supporting players). The Bush Administration failed to keep us safe, to its own advantage. Which is why Dick Cheney is so quick to appear on television these days and say that the Bush Administration did keep us safe. The implicit appositive is, except for that one time. Except for the only time.
Americans have been reflecting on 9/11 for eight years now, and ironically, almost all of us have missed the most salient lessons of the attacks. Popular opinion still says that a Christian nation was attacked by Muslims. In reality, a secular nation was attacked by religious people. Those attacks were a triumph of religion over peace, faith over reason, holy book over newspaper. Granted, not all religious people are as religious as al Qaeda. If al Qaeda is 100% religious, let's say, then someone like Rick Warren is maybe 65%. Of course Rick Warren would never crash an airplane into a skyscraper; he's only 65% religious. Not all religious people are murderers. But they are all guilty of the crime of faith, the willful rejection of critical thinking. In its milder forms, this only leads to church socials and virginity pledges.Turned up several notches, it leads to horrific mass murder -- like the Crusades, the 9/11 attacks, and the bloody apocalypse all dogmatic Christians eagerly anticipate.
Before 9/11 was an act of mass murder, it was a hijacking -- and since that day, the attacks themselves have been hijacked. Just yesterday, Sarah Palin used the attacks to attack President Obama, in a typically incoherent statement posted on Facebook, now her main forum. This weekend, the so-called "9/12 Project" commences -- an alleged grassroots uprising, actually orchestrated by Glenn Beck and Dick Armey's FreedomWorks. This series of events, centered around a protest in Washington tomorrow, claims to seek a return to "the way we all felt on September 12, 2001" -- and is obviously organized by people who felt nothing at all. Nobody who was really paying attention -- and certainly nobody who was here in New York -- felt very good at all that day. On 9/12/01, we were terrified, horrified; many of us had lost loved ones; many others were still desperately awaiting news.
Ironically, the actual goals of these right-wing extremists are the exact opposite of the "9/12" ideals they claim to represent. Glenn Beck says that on 9/12, we didn't care about politics; we just cared about what was best for our country. And this is the crowd that persists in spreading blatant lies about the Obama Administration, idiotically blubbering about a socialist takeover, free health care for undocumented immigrants, and all that birth certificate nonsense. On 9/12/01, they should be reminded, Americans were in absolute lockstep behind their President -- despite the fact that they had not elected him, and he had just failed, like nobody has ever failed before, in the President's primary responsibility. Even I was in no mood to criticize George W. Bush that day. America was in a crisis. Kind of like the crisis it's in right now, over health care, except that the health care crisis has claimed, is claiming, and will claim a far greater number of innocent lives.
Just as the Bush regime failed to protect America, Americans now fail to learn from what happened. 9/11 should have led to a national referendum on the perils of neoconservative foreign policy, administrative incompetence, and religious faith. It has not. It has led to a national atmosphere so consumed by fear -- instilled by Muslim extremists and perpetuated by Christian extremists -- that the chairman of the RNC is still calling Obama's health care plan a "socialist power grab," Republican legislators are still coming out of the woodwork to question the President's citizenship, and the Archdiocese of Chicago is apologizing for honoring Ted Kennedy, on the ludicrous grounds that his devotion to women's rights makes him a killer of babies.
Terrorism is only a symptom, one of many. The real problem, facing not only America but the entire world, is religious fundamentalism. The problem has grown worse, not better, since the awful day eight years ago when people of faith came to New York and Washington and Pennsylvania to spread the Word.
