The Real Tragedy Started on 9/12

I heard a snippet of a country-style song on the radio with the lyrics, “Where were you when the world stopped spinning?” (maybe it was, “...turning?”) in reference to 9/11.  There were thousands whose lives either ended that day, or whose lives were so disrupted that the world did indeed feel that way.  How can your heart not ache for them?  They were not in “harm’s way”, nor were they threatened by anyone - nor threatening anyone - by simply living their usual routines that morning. Yet their world stopped spinning because some fringe ideologues recklessly decided to make a grand, symbolic, criminal gesture.

For those who offered, or needed, or received help after the tragedy, everyone’s compassion is warranted.  Indeed, if there's a good thing about any tragedy it is the potential for growth through the demonstration of compassion.  This is why we so often hear, ‘it is not what happens to you in life that counts, it’s how you react to it’.

For a short while, a world that previously might have had mixed feelings about America, was unified in their show of support. What followed as “America’s” reaction gives clear, strong testimony to the power of fear and greed.  It took only a little while to turn aside the outpouring of goodwill,‘circle the wagons’ and reinforce the world’s previously-held disdain for the failed promise of the U.S.A.

It took the powerful greed of a very few powerful men to capitalize on the powerful fear that the attack had instilled in the American people.  Instead of quenching the small flames of public pain, jitters and anger through clear-sighted leadership, they fanned the flames into a consuming fire of terror and then turned their sights on selecting a profitable object for revenge.  

Donald Rumsfeld was appointed to a cabinet position by Dick Nixon, our criminal president, who once called Rummy “..a ruthless little bastard”.  For about the next thirty years, Rummy and his good friend and protegé, Dick Cheney each worked their ways into and out of key administrative positions in government and big business, helping themselves and each other up the ladder rungs of power and wealth, to where they stood on 9/11:  Secretary of Defense and Vice President.  These two mortal stand-ins for Lucifer somehow spawned an equally-evil, if dull-witted, offspring.

President George W(orst Ever) Bush, in roughly the same time frame, skipped out on Viet Nam by signing with and going AWOL from the Texas Air National Guard, bankrupted a small Texas oil company, got slapped with a DWI, lost a bid for a seat in congress, was handed an ownership stake of the Texas Rangers (and screwed that up), won the governorship with the strong-arm help of his father.  (Here is a link to a list of his “accomplishments”, in case you’re looking to become outraged: http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/blbushresume.htm)

The combination of these three men and the timing of the 9/11 attacks has proven to be a ‘perfect-enough storm’ for a shameful, disastrous and very dark chapter in the story of America.  The terribly sad irony is that they cloaked their greed with the U.S. flag and sold their fear-mongering scheme via paid “expert consultants” to the networks - and it was all about grabbing personal wealth and power and about helping their political and business friends to more of the same.  They ducked in and out with pockets’ full o’ cash and left everyone mesmerized, seeing stars and stripes and repeatedly mumbling the vow to never forget. 

9/11 makes some people want to cry for reasons of very personal loss.  It makes want to cry for the national sense of loss and for what we might have otherwise become by now.  The world really needed our story to continue as a heroic tale, instead of we’ve handed them something that reads like a rap sheet.