The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 left a bunch of ridiculous legacies that pretty much everyone with an ounce of sanity agrees we should let go. For example, let’s get rid of the TSA and go back to the old days of airport security. And let’s stop saying that we have to do something before we think about what to do.
Happy 9/11 Day
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
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How about just good old mindless distrust of anyone with a turban even if their Sikh or only offense is a Arabic sounding name.
For the capitalist set filling the screen with old video and old discussions to avoid talking about today’s issues.
Then comes the fun of using supercomputers to read emails and listing to calls. For the really unenlightened prove you have moved on from 9/11 and punch an Asian for bringing Covid-19 to the USA.
I remember where I was on the 20th anniversary of 9/11. I was watching the mainstream media collectively acting like it had been against Afghanistan all along. They’re still avoiding bringing up Saudi Arabia and still pushing the false narrative that Afghanistan had something to do with 9/11. They sure as hell aren’t screaming from the rooftops that they’re going to get to the bottom of all this.
And just like on 9/11, we have a mentally/intellectually diminished puppet occupying the office of the presidency. And an absolutely repulsive creature squatting on the vice presidency. Lockheed Martin and the rest, as on the original 9/11, are doing fine, the roads are crap, college is way overpriced, healthcare is lousy, etc., etc.
Looking forward to the 25th anniversary. You know Trump will make it classy.
“The Terrorists Only Win If We Let Them Change Our Way of Life.”
“We’re told to go on living our lives as usual, because to do otherwise is to let the terrorists win.”
“If Americans begin to yield their own freedoms at home, the terrorists have won.”
“Our response to terrorism should be carefully measured. If our First Amendment rights suffer as a result of a terrorist attack the terrorists have indeed, won.”
Any of these sound familiar?
Unfortunately, it was then that President Bush made his biggest blunder. The Patriot Act. And most of the county, like willing supplicants begging for alms to quiet their fears lapped it up.
I’ve no doubt Mr. Bush had good intentions with the Patriot Act, the TSA, Homeland Security and all the rest. But as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Lost Rights…Lost Freedoms…Lost Liberty…Lost Life…Lost War
“I’ve no doubt Mr. Bush had good intentions with the Patriot Act, the TSA, Homeland Security and all the rest.”
No. No, he didn’t.
“Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions.”
― T.S. Eliot
Most. Most of the evil.
Although I doubt that Dubya possesses the refinement of personality and intelligence to parse to the detail you accord him, if I do accept that initial condition, that Dubya possessed the capacity to have good intentions, it’s still, no. No, he didn’t. Not with all that came along. The Patriot Act, the TSA, Homeland Security, it all fed into the Little Boy Georgie’s fetish for finally being bigger and better than his daddy, who he hates/adores. Everyone else on the dark side simply wanted it all codified because that’s how you get to a police state. It’s 20 years after Dubya’s Freudian crisis, and if I lived in Texas today, I could be making fat bank turning in Greyhound drivers for $10K a pop for transporting pregnant women to get abortions. In another 20 years, everything will think it’s perfectly normal to submit a report on the neighbors and their doings every week to Facebook. Just like it was in East Germany but with a few modifications through technology.
3,000 Americans died on 9-11. Our revenge has taken the lives of 900,000 people in the Middle East, the vast majority of whom had nothing to do with the WTC attack. That makes typical Israeli retaliation against the Palestinians look like the epitome of compassion.