September 11: There is much to grieve today. 10 Years of wars, and lies, and numbing.

[Better Believe It]

What We Lost: Remembrance As Narcotic
by Abby Zime
September 11, 2011


There is much to grieve today. First, the act itself, and its losses. Legendary war photographer James Nachtwey happened to be there; his previously unpublished photos of the day capture the surreal horror, almost too beautifully. Then, the first responders, and what we have failed to give them. Next, the tchotchkes, the crap born of America's ceaseless need to trivialize, vulgarize, profit in the name of remembrance. Finally, and most grievously, there is the cost of that willed but so deeply flawed national remembering - the 10 years of wars, and lies, and numbing. We are, nonetheless, still here. Mother Jones: Pray for the dead, fight like hell for the living.

From New York Magazine's 9/11 edition:

"Remembrance became a narcotic that turned a prosperous nation at peace into a debt-ridden wayward giant lumbering around the world, willfully ignorant of its folly, its speech slurred and incomprehensible to anyone but itself. It sedated Congress and the press, which failed to ask the most basic questions about our military adventures. It fogged the minds of once-lucid liberal intellectuals, who grafted their fantasies of liberty and justice for all, down to the last tent in the last village in the last desert, onto a cynical ploy by anti-liberal intellectuals to take their revenge for Vietnam and “restore American greatness.” And it anesthetized Middle America, which developed a taste for media demagogues and cornpone politicians who ignored the messy details of our foreign entangle­ments and the questionable bookkeeping that masked their real cost."

http://www.commondreams.org/further/2011/09/10

[Autumn]

1. Ten years of being bled dry.

Lives, our rights, money. K/R

[msongs]

2. The US military and corporate war machine have successfully attacked the US treasury & looted the US

[MichiganVote]

3. Sorry, I disagree. Its over and its been over for ten years. Not for the families for sure,

but for most of us, its over. The Washington establishment elite, our agencies, the most misbegotten President in forever fucked up and fucked others' over. But its done.

Time to move on. Iraq and Afghanistan MUST be ended. The violence this country has both perpetrated and sustained MUST come to an end.

The time for mourning for most of us is over. Firm resolve is what is needed now.

[whatchamacallit]

4. America was on the path to destruction when we tied our future to a lie

Only those who believe the lie are puzzled by our decline.

[texanwitch]

5. I grieve for the America that could have been without Bush in the Whitehouse.

I grieve for the people who should still be alive.

I grieve for the rights we have lost.