9/11-The Day Nothing Changed

I’m angry today my friends. That’s nothing new as I’m always angry. Today, like every September 11th for the past six years I wake up angry. Six years down the road from the events of September 11, 2001 its obvious the greatest tragedy of this generation has had as much impact on the lives of Americans as a McDonald’s ad campaign. We were told 9/11 would be the day where “everything changed” yet nothing did. We remain a nation of consumer driven, disinterested, obedient sheep more concerned with the comeback attempt of a chubby, washed up pop star then with world events. Hey, I plead guilty too. Look at the content in yesterday’s post. With the exception of the victims of 9/11(their names appear in the post beneath this), their families, and the brave men and women who serve in the military, our lives continue unchanged and free of sacrifice.

I’m not going to recap what happened on 9/11. You remember how the sky looked that morning. You remember where you were when you heard the news of the attack and the fall of the towers. I’m not going to bother to recap how the government dropped the ball in Afghanistan and allowed the architect of the attacks, Osama bin Laden a six foot five inch Arab on kidney dialysis to escape from Tora Bora (I have no need because Newsweek did a bang up job of it a couple weeks ago and you can read it here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20430170/site/newsweek/). I’m not going to discuss (much) the colossal failure of the Bush War in Iraq. This is about how we as a nation have failed post 9/11.

With each anniversary of 9/11 I find myself at our post 9/11 stupidity. We continue to drive SUV’s and guzzle gas like nothing ever happened. Ignorant or just oblivious to the fact that the fuel comes from the very region that launched the attacks. We willingly sacrifice our civil liberties under the Patriot Act but do not demand stricter gun control laws in order to prevent further acts of domestic terrorism like the shooting at Virginia Tech. We stood idly by as George W. Bush pissed away the good will of the world by needlessly and foolishly attacking Iraq (after he and Darth Cheney made the talk show rounds falsely linking Iraq to the 9/11 attacks a disgusting slander against the memory of the victims of that tragic day).

9/11 should have been the wakeup call for this generation. Instead we just pressed the snooze alarm. Our president never asked us to sacrifice so why should we take the initiative on our own? We are no safer now than we were six years ago in fact Bush’s folly in Iraq has created terrorist recruiting grounds where none previously existed. He has wasted the resources and snuffed the lives of our volunteer army.

Its easy to blame Bush, Cheney and the NeoCons for this quagmire in Iraq and for what the world has become post 9/11. But we all share the blame. We buried our heads in the sand right along with the media in the rush to war in Iraq. The Democrats forgot they were the opposition party and only made gains in Washington because of the sheer ineptness and corruption of the ruling Republicans. Elected to do one thing, get us out of Iraq, the Democrats can’t even do that right. Say what you want about the French but as Michael Moore rightly points out in Sicko, in France, the government fears the people. Here, we fear the government.

Pearl Harbor gave rise to the Greatest Generation and a period of unprecedented rationing and sacrifice. Germany and Japan, the ultimate bogeymen, were taken on and destroyed (we did screw up and leave Stalin standing but hey two out of three ain’t bad!). Good triumphed over evil and the bad guys paid for their crimes. After 9/11 we did nothing but create more enemies, squander precious human and material resources all the while we pretend all is as it was before. Our President talked tough about bin Laden (Wanted dead or alive my ass Mr. Bush) but did very little to catch him and rarely speaks his name. Its an obscenity that 6 years to the day of the 9/11 tragedy bin Laden is around to mock us with a new video. Post WWII we rebuilt Europe and Japan, post 9/11 we ignore global warming and left New Orleans to drown. We are the Pathetic Generation. In World War II we were led by a handicapped President, today a mentally retarded one leads us. Despite our lack of leadership post 9/11, we could have done so much more. But hey, who has time to make the world a better place when you’re discussing Sanjaya’s hair? On September 11, 2007 the United States is the same as it ever was.