Don’t know why I didn’t see this coming but the coverage in the press and over the airwaves memorializing 9/11 is one big Bush/Cheney love-in. Facts are being whitewashed, perspectives are being distorted. Republican talking heads are out in full force, repainting that horrible event as something noble and brave, not so much in the acts of the firemen and police officers who lost their lives or were scarred by the events, but in the acts of Bush and Cheney. They kept us safe!
Lost in all this is the callous disregard by the Bush Administration for the warnings of bin Laden’s imminent attacks and the deer-in-the-headlights reaction by the president himself in the moments after the disaster. The only major terrorist act in US history happened on these men’s watch. 3,000 people died and the western world has changed forever, for the worse. In one of the worst cases of presidential negligence in the history of the US, the dystopic duo dropped the ball and are now being hailed as gladiators and heroes.
Few if any are talking about the response by the US, which was to invade a country which held no respect for the perpetrators of 9/ll and had absolutely nothing to do with it. Not many are discussing how the invasion of Iraq has doubled down the hatred in that part of the world for the west and strengthened the undercurrent of extremist Islam. Few are talking about the cesspool that Iraq has become because of that foolhardy and unnecessary war. And no one is mentioning the hundreds of thousands of dead as a result of that gross miscalculation.
Yet today Bush and Cheney are being held up by conservative pundits as heroes. History is being re-written in the media, not so much by historians but by strategy men and women whose sole job it is to spread propaganda for the GOP. Documentaries are being shown painting Bush as the new military hero and protector of peace. The delusions being woven and the misdirection that is being practiced are masterful and sick.
A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?
The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.
Here’s one of the worst practitioners with one of the worst and most deceitful perspectives.
