The day
September 11th shames me back to work on my blog. I can’t remain silent while the Republicans celebrate September 11th, the best thing that ever happened to them, for the fifth time. At the time of the attacks I was Co-Chair of the Socialist Party USA. My comments at the time, on behalf of the Party, were brief. Let’s see whether they still hold up.
The facts of what happened at the World Trade Center and at the Pentagon are not yet clear. Of course there is continuous media coverage of the disaster, repetition of rumors as fact, and wild speculation as to who might be responsible.We should spend the coming days mourning the dead. Instead, it’s safe to cynically predict that there will be swift, “decisive” military action by the Bush administration against some perceived enemy, any enemy, without regard for the evidence. As in the aftermath of the TWA Flight 800 disaster, there will be a flurry of “anti-terrorist” legislation that will restrict individual rights and punish foreigners. There will be a sudden bipartisan consensus on huge increases in military spending. None of these thoughtless reactions can work.
National security is not something that can be won by intimidation. Only peace with justice can be a secure peace. We will renew our own efforts to transform the United States into a country that has no enemies—not because our enemies have been vanquished, but because we are capable of getting along with our neighbors.
Well, it didn’t take Nostradamus to predict the war against Afghanistan and the Patriot Act. I’m bitterly satisfied to see the correctness of that “any enemy, without regard for the evidence” idea. I don’t know, maybe stretching that to cover the war in Iraq is overdoing it.
Today we will be treated to uncounted media events designed to make us remember the Republican version of history: that we have done nothing to provoke terrorist attack, that opposition to the war is pro-terrorist, and that our enemy is like Hitler, and that we should somehow feel simultaneously safer, and scared to death. These are the lies that have worked before. On the evidence they will work again in November.