What we should never forget on 9/11
By Shared with permission from Siva Vaidhyanathan, this is what I’ve been wanting to write all day, but couldn’t do so quite so eloquently:
Many people are posting versions of “never forget.”
So let’s review, shall we?
1) The 9/11 hijackers were funded by rich people in Saudi Arabia, none of whom have been punished for it.
2) President Bush had ample and direct warnings that Al Queda was a threat yet failed to take them seriously.
3) One security technology could have prevented the hijackings — secure and solid cockpit doors. The airlines fought FAA proposals for them for decades.
4) Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks but more than 10 years later more than half of Republicans still believed it did.
5) For one brief moment almost the whole world was united in horror about the slaughter. Yet our government dissolved that unity within 18 months.
6) The mania that gripped the White House in the wake of 9/11 generated massive violations of US and international law, significant violations of human rights, and a squandering of the moral high ground.
7) If the Supreme Court had allowed the voters to choose the president in the 2000 election we would have had sober, moderate, law-abiding, knowledgeable adults running the country and things would be a lot better now.
8) President Bush not only failed to defend us against Al Queda before 9/11, he let Bin Laden escape from Tora Bora and ceased serious efforts to capture or kill him while he shifted U.S. resources to a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.
Yeah, I am still angry.
You should be, too.
Never forget.