It’s painful to see George Bush on this day for obvious reasons. But credit where credit is due. He used the occasion well to address the country we’ve become 20 years later.
Clinton and Obama were there. Trump was not.
But he did weigh in, in his usual classy, dignified manner:
What else would we expect from him?
Bruce Bartlett points to a Guardian analysis of the costs of our “forever” war on terror:
While Washington bickers about what, if anything, has been achieved after 20 years and nearly $5tn spent on “forever wars”, there is one clear winner: the US defense industry.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, the American military relied to an unprecedented degree on private contractors for support in virtually all areas of war operations. Contractors supplied trucks, planes, fuel, helicopters, ships, drones, weapons and munitions as well as support services from catering and construction to IT and logistics. The number of contractors on the ground outnumbered US troops most years of the conflicts. By the summer of 2020, the US had 22,562 contractor personnel in Afghanistan – roughly twice the number of American troops.
And no one ever asks, “How do you plan to pay for it?” Funny, that.
The gravy train for the defense industry was also fueled by the way the wars were budgeted and paid for. Congress used “emergency” and “contingency” funding that circumvented the normal budget process. For the first decade of the conflict, the US used emergency appropriations, which are typically reserved for one-off crises such as floods and hurricanes. Detailed spending oversight was minimal. And because this type of spending is excluded from budget projections and deficit estimates, it enabled everyone to sustain the pretense that the wars would be over shortly.
The result was what former defense secretary Robert Gates termed a “culture of endless money” inside the Pentagon. The defense department made the operational decisions; managed the bidding process for contractors; awarded the contracts (largely using non-competitive bids); and kept at least 10% of the wartime funding in classified accounts.
Of course, $2.2 trillion of the eight is future spending obligations, so….
Why we can’t have nice things, Chapter ∞.
Whether it is school vouchers, public-private partnerships, infrastructure privatization, or forever wars, always ask yourselves who stands to profit. The public good, when it is even invoked anymore, is often a front.
On this 20th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, CNN’s landing page is filled with remembrances. “Everyone knows where they were on 9/11,” reads one headline. How it changed our lives forever, etc.
George W. Bush had taken the White House in a bitter presidential contest on the narrowest of margins and a controversial Supreme Court decision.
We had won the Cold War a decade earlier. With the U.S.S.R. gone, the Pentagon spent the 1990s wondering where to redirect its focus. Then the Trade Towers came down.
After that, the madness. I wrote in 2009:
A flood of post-September 11 articles asked how the attacks happened, what we would do next, and why terrorists hate us. One savvy pundit asked, Would America keep its head?
We invaded Iraq on trumped-up intelligence. We conducted illegal surveillance on our own citizens. We imprisoned people without charge, here and abroad. We rendered prisoners for torture and tortured others ourselves in violation of international law. All the while, millions of staunch, law-and-order conservatives supported and defended it, and still do. Vigorously.
Did America keep its head? Uh, no.
“Twenty years on, [America] is at war with itself, its democracy threatened from within in a way Osama bin Laden never managed,” Stephen Collinson writes this morning at CNN. “But even he would be surprised to observe the bitter internal estrangement he helped to unleash.”
For the record, here again is where I was on 9/11:
On Monday, September 10, 2001, I flew into Boston on what was the oddest flight I’d ever been on.
I was working field support at a paper mill in northern New Hampshire. We were installing a gas turbine generator and co-generation boiler. The next morning, the ex-Navy boilerman working with me, an old Hoosier, got a call at the construction trailer from his wife. She said a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I thought she was the victim of an Internet hoax. She wasn’t. But it was impossible to get on the Internet to check. The Net was choked. Most work stopped on the site as pipefitters and carpenters huddled around radios. Other crew coming up from Atlanta got set down in Norfolk and had to rent a car to get to New England. The site boss was from Stockholm. Relatives called from Sweden to make sure he was all right. In Groveton, NH he couldn’t have been more all right. We couldn’t say the same for New Yorkers.
In my hotel that night, I heard the hijacked flights had originated from Boston. I watched the TV coverage and called my parents in Charlotte. I told my dad about my odd experience the day before.
I boarded early in Atlanta and was in the right window seat (27F) watching people come down the aisle, wondering who’s going to be sitting next to me for the next two-plus hours. This 20-something guy with a heavy five-o’clock shadow stood out as he made his way down the aisle. His clothes I later described as “European K-Mart.” What was odd was it was a bag-lunch flight. He had no lunch. And no carry on. Not a backpack. Not a laptop. Nothing. He looked like he was boarding a bus, not a flight. The man settled into the middle seat in the row behind me, only to get dislodged by another passenger when it turned out he was in the wrong row. He got up, moved forward, and sat down next to me. He looked stressed out. He immediately leaned back, put a pillow behind his head, and closed his eyes. He looked, I don’t know, Lebanese. He waved away the flight attendant when she offered drinks. Never looked at a magazine. Nothing. He never said a word.
It was the weirdest feeling (and unusual for me), but on my way to Boston on September 10, 2001 I thought if there’s a terrorist on this flight, this is the guy. Then the next morning happened.
On Wednesday or Thursday, the FBI called the construction trailer. My dad had phoned it in. The agent wanted a full description, flight number, seat number, etc. When did I see him last? Had anyone met him getting off the plane? (I’d seen him last walking alone through baggage claim.) Oddest thing was, somewhere over Cape Cod as we banked towards Logan, the man took the pillow from behind his head, placed it in his hands, chest high, palms up, and lowered his forehead onto it for a few minutes. O-kay. But that was it. We landed and he disappeared.
Some poor college student probably got a visit from the FBI because of that call. It was a crazy couple of weeks.
I was on a two-week rotation, so flights being cancelled was not an immediate problem. Ten days later, Logan International Airport looked like the airport of the living dead. The Hertz shuttle cruised by one darkened, deserted terminal after another before letting me off. The flight monitors at the top of the escalator well were all dark except for two. Only a handful of flights were moving. The terminal was crawling with guns. Machine guns. Boston PD. SWAT. National Guard. INS agents with sidearms.
Even weirder was getting on the plane and seeing how glad the flight crews were to have anybody flying. Only a handful boarded.
Hi. Welcome to Delta. Can I help you find your seat? Oh, sit anywhere you want. What are you drinking? I’ll bring you two. (She did, complimentary.)
On arrival in Atlanta, nothing. One MARTA cop with a pistol.
Collinson draws a line from 9/11 to Bush’s “disaster in Iraq” to the election of the country’s first Black president and to the xenophobia and white nationalist backlash that brought Donald Trump to office.
“It’s hard to draw a direct line from the reaction to 9/11 to Trump, but he weaponized the illiberal policies and attitudes that flourished in those years,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a New York University history professor. “He takes all those seeds disseminated in those years and he puts them in a package of authoritarian-style politics.”
America’s confidence was shaken to its core by the 9/11 attacks. An enemy half a world away had — with no nation, no army, no nuclear weapons — attacked “icons of US political, economic and military power” armed only with box cutters and murderous purpose.
America lost its mind and lost its way.
Lacking a TV or radio at hand, my first reaction that terrible day was to suspect the news was an internet hoax.
Twenty years on, the very kind of propaganda our Cold War parents warned “commies” would use to undermine America conservative nihilists deploy with abandon. With Russian help. Conservatives once accused liberals of moral relativism. Now truth itself is malleable. Spreading internet hoaxes is good, clean fun for the whole conservative family, and Trump supporters are fine with that. So are their political leaders.
Twenty years on, our democracy’s foundations are under attack from within. Republicans seeing their base shrink steadily have in the last decade have stepped up their campaign to undermine faith in American elections, in its institutions, and in the rule of law itself. They have become a law unto themselves. The only laws they accept are their own. The only election outcomes they accept are ones they win.
Twenty years on, the Republicans’ leader is a man so insecure in his own skin that he obsessively uses words like strongly to describe his actions and fears looking as weak as he knows he is. His acolytes advertise their insecurities with Trumpish strongly-brag. Twenty strong men, indeed!
Two words describe this disgraceful statement from the retired sergeant above: Timothy McVeigh. McVeigh was also a sergeant and war veteran.
Bin Laden smiles from his watery grave.
Little brother …
Little sister:
I’ll admit it. I’m angry at anti-vaxxers and anti maskers. They are messing up our lives and plans. Yet only their anger is covered by the media? We get stories about how our officials are “frustrated” and “saddened” by their failure to get vaccinated. Where are the stories of our anger toward these “vaccine deniers and right wing loonies”?
I don’t want to be like the right wing, screaming and threatening those who aren’t wearing masks or getting a vaccine. And I don’t want to inappropriately use the law like they have been doing with their Texas abortion ban. But I’m pissed and I want people punished for the harm they are causing.
What can I do to satisfy my need for an emotional catharsis without becoming a screaming banshee?
I’ve been watching Unforgotten, a British murder mystery show about police solving crimes that happened 40, 30 or 20 years ago. It’s excellent.
In the UK they call these cases historic crimes. Because they happened so long ago sometimes the person who committed the crime is dead. An arrest can’t deter a dead person.
While the detectives try to solve the crimes, we see the stories of the pain the victims’ family have suffered over the years. We learn all the ways people were damaged and when it comes time for justice, the detective asks the question: “What helps the families now?”
The lead, played by Nicola Walker, wants to solve the case. But unlike other murder mystery shows, she doesn’t talk about finding out who did it for “closure.” She wants to punish the people who did the crime.
Does punishment of the killers help the families now?
I want to find who caused a pain that’s very much alive today–who took his life, who took hers–and I want to punish them.
DCI Cassie Stuart, Unforgotten, written by Chris Lang
On the Majority Report a few weeks ago Emma Vigeland and Matt Lech were talking about enforcement and punishment of those breaking public health laws. Matt said we should avoid going after individuals who didn’t get vaccinated who then infected someone in your family.
I listened to this and noted the difference between “punching down” at individuals and “punching up” at those whose intentional actions have led to infections of large groups of people.
On another episode of Majority Report I called in to discuss enforcement and punishment when Brandon Sutton made an excellent point. He pointed out how historically law enforcement in America it is often unequally applied. POC are incarcerated. Rich white people aren’t.
Also, incarceration during a pandemic is a bad idea. But that’s not the only way to enforce the law.
For example, citing and arresting suppliers of fake or stolen vaccine cards and individuals who buy and use them is a good thing to do. Both of these types of stories need to be publicized.
Even Fox “News” ran the stories of arrests of fake vaccination cards being supplied and used by individuals because breaking the law has consequences. Showing the arrests to the target audience can act as a deterrent. But arrests only happen if the laws are enforced. No one is arrested for failing to follow a recommendation.
I think that the federal government should spend resources NOW to arrest people for violating public health laws.
My logical Vulcan side thinks enforcing public health laws will deter others from breaking them.
I think publicizing the charging and sentencing of people who break public health laws helps prevent future deaths.
Most people change their behavior when they see and/or experience personally the negative consequences to breaking the law
My human side hopes that enforcing public health laws will scare people into not breaking the law. Fear should act as a deterrent, because most people fear being arrested.
I want to hear them cry about how they learned their lesson and wish they wore a mask or got vaccinated. I believe that most people would get the point from watching that and get vaccinated.
But I’ll admit my human side also wants people who intentionally broke laws to feel pain similar to the pain and suffering they caused others. As user Crathsor said on Reddit about Americans, “We don’t care about justice nearly as much as we care about retribution.”
Yep. There it is. I realize that I want others to be afraid, to feel pain, to suffer & be punished for their lawbreaking. I’m hoping that the fear, pain, suffering and punishment will act as a deterrent and a motivator.
I need to acknowledge I want people punished for intentionally acting in ways that harmed others and broke the law doing it. But since I don’t want to end up like them, using anger to satisfies a desire for retribution, I tried to figure out how to not fall into gleeful retribution.
To do that I’m doing these four things.
I feel anger when there are no consequences for people intentionally harming others. I always endeavor to help the families first, but seeing appropriate consequences for the people breaking public health laws helps me by giving me some sense of peace. What is the chant? No justice, no peace? So let’s be specific:
An example of me seeking consequences for those breaking public health laws is my push to prosecute Trump and those in his campaign who intentionally helped spread COVID during their rallies.
Trump’s rally in Tulsa happened in June of 2020. In today’s news cycle that’s an historic crime.
It led to pain and suffering for Oklahoma families and 100’s of thousands of others. If you want to see the individuals who suffered and died from COVID in Oklahoma read this great series, Oklahomans’ We’ve Lost from Frontier.
The people in Trump’s campaign who committed those violations of public health laws in Tulsa are still alive. Would an arrest now act as a deterrent to others? Would it stop future superspreader rallies? I hope so.
On August 21, 2021 President Donald Trump held the largest political rally in Alabama history. The U.S. Secret Service estimated the crowd at 45,000 people, according to Deputy Chad Whaley of the Cullman County sheriff’s office.
As of September 9th 2021 an average of 83 cases per day were reported in Cullman County, a 61 percent increase from the average two weeks ago. New York Times COVID tracking Alabama Since the beginning of the pandemic, at least 1 in 6 residents have been infected, a total of 13,118 reported cases. Right now, Cullman County is at an extremely high risk for unvaccinated people.
While the detectives in Unforgotten were trying to solve an old crime we saw the pain the victims’ family suffered over the years. It showed how people were damaged by the perpetrators of the crime. The lead detective acknowledged her desire for punishment, and asked the question: “What helps the families now?”
We on the left need to push to enforce public health laws.
Especially in cases of people whose actions have a big impact on large numbers of people. The government didn’t pursue these lawbreakers in the past, so people knew there would be no consequences.
The cases need to be big. The arrests publicized. That acts as an early deterrent. The prosecutor needs to show the intentions of the lawbreakers clearly and the harm that was done. Legal cases take a long time to play out and when they are completed successfully the results need to be promoted, big time.
This is about sending a message to people breaking public health laws right now. If you break the law you will be in the Federal Government’s crosshairs. You will be arrested and tried. If you are found guilty, you will be punished.
Would these cases make me feel better when there are consequences for people who intentionally harmed others? Yes! I’ll admit it. It’s not just about me, but when I take actions I look for ways to focus my anger constructively. I ask myself these four questions:
“What is my goal?”
To prevent future deaths.
“Who do I want to punish?”
Intentional violators, especially those whose actions impact large numbers of people
“Who do I want to help?”
The families of those who suffered. Innocents who might suffer in the future.
“What can I do now?”
Encourage the enforcement of public health laws.
A Republican Senate candidate:
She’s running against Arkansas GOP Senator John Boozman. From her website:
Jan Morgan is a Christian, wife, mother, National Conservative Commentator, and NRA, USCCA and State Police Certified Firearms Instructor. Jan and her husband Bob, own an Indoor Gun Range/Firearms Training facility in Hot Springs, Arkansas, where they have trained over forty-thousand law abiding Americans in personal self-defense.
Since 2016 Jan has served as the National Spokesperson of Citizens for Trump, one of the largest grassroots organizations in America supporting Donald J. Trump. For two years, Jan was on Fox Business and other national TV and radio and print media outlets defending President Trump and the America first agenda.
For 27 years, Jan was an award winning investigative TV journalist, working for several network affiliates, with a specialty in exposing waste, fraud, and abuse in government. During her 27 years as a television news anchor and reporter, her work won Associated Press awards in spot news, documentary, and best continuing coverage. Her most recent documentary, “Rampant InJustice” gained national attention for exposing the unconstitutional para-military raids by the Justice Department under Eric Holder and President Obama’s administration.
In addition, Jan has been a heavily sought after public speaker and fighter on the 2nd Amendment front, fighting for gun rights and speaking at rallies and events in 25 states, which led to her being affectionately referred to as the 1st Lady of the 2nd Amendment.
Jan was one of only two women chosen to speak to the massive Virginia Lobby Day rally when Democrats threatened to destroy the gun rights of citizens of Virginia. She was also a speaker in New York before a crowd of over 9,000 people on the day legislators were voting to destroy the gun rights of New Yorkers with The Safe Act.Her conservative voice generated a following of over 1.5 million fans on social media which earned her the award, “The Voice of the Conservative Voter” by the Texas GOP, and “Conservative Rockstar” by Red, White, and Blue News.
Over the past 15 years, Jan has written articles for a number of conservative outlets including Breitbart, Daily Caller, and Patriot Update.
Jan is the national founder of 2AWomen, the fastest growing national organization of women with chapters in every state, dedicated to grassroots level efforts to confront and defeat any state level attempt to restrict the gun rights of Americans. 2AWomen is the national counter to anti-gun radicals “Moms Demand Action.”
There’s more about her love for guns and Jesus. Here’s her pitch to defeat Boozman:
“A strong majority of Arkansans voted for President Donald J. Trump, and while Arkansans want integrity in our election system, our Senators failed President Trump and the American people when we needed them most. Instead of fighting against NeverTrumpers like Mitch McConnell in the swamp, and fighting FOR election integrity, John Boozman is blaming Donald Trump for January 6th. It’s unacceptable, and it’s time for him to go.”
She seems nice.
It would appear that wildly extremist, Donald Trump loving, gun-toting women are the new face of the GOP. However, she’s not the only challenger to the traitor John Boozman (who voted to acquit Trump in the impeachment and voted to block the January 6th Commission.)
It looks like he was at the insurrection. Perfect. And he’s also a gun nut:
Second Amendment: Tanks? Why not? The right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental right to keep an overbearing government in check.
I don’t know how many of these radicals will make it into congress next years but it’s a fair bet than in deep red states some of them will. Ted Cruz will end up looking like a restrained elder statesman by comparison.
President Joe Biden gave a gift to every major company in America by forcing them to mandate vaccines or stringently test their employees for Covid. Their reaction to the new rule: glee.
Corporate America had been trying to navigate two competing pandemic realities: Companies are desperately trying to get back to business as usual, and mandating vaccines is among the best ways to accomplish that. But a labor shortage had tied their hands, as businesses have been worried that forcing people to get the shot would send some desperately needed employees and potential new hires packing.Some state and local governments had imposed various vaccine mandates, others had outright banned them — and all the while vaccines have also become politically charged.
All that made universal corporate vaccine mandates difficult for employers. But Biden solved that problem for them this week.
[…]
Corporate America welcomed the news — most notably the Business Roundtable, an influential group of huge American companies led by Joshua Bolten, former chief of staff to President George W. Bush.
“Business Roundtable welcomes the Biden Administration’s continued vigilance in the fight against Covid,” Bolten said in a statement. “America’s business leaders know how critical vaccination and testing are in defeating the pandemic.”Although the National Association of Manufacturers said it hoped the order would not disrupt their operations, the business group largely embraced Biden’s new rule.
“Getting all eligible Americans vaccinated will, first and foremost, reduce hospitalizations and save lives,” said National Association of Manufacturers CEO Jay Timmons in a statement. “But it is also an economic imperative in that our recovery and quality of life depend on our ability to end this pandemic.”
Even the Chamber of Commerce, a frequent foe of Democrats like Biden, said it would work to encourage its members to get on board with the new rule “to ensure that employers have the resources, guidance, and flexibility necessary to ensure the safety of their employees and customers and comply with public health requirements.
“The Consumer Brands Association, a consortium of 2,000 packaged goods brands, also praised the effort to vaccinate as many Americans as possible: “We look forward to working with the administration to increase vaccination rates of essential workers throughout the country,” said the trade group’s CEO Geoff Freeman in a statement.
These groups might want to lean on their friends in the Republican Party because they didn’t get the memo. They are right now doing their best impression of Linda Blair in the Exorcist, so totally out of control one wonders if they aren’t consciously trying to foment another insurrection. I guess they are hoping the Supreme Court saves them so they don’t have to choose between their donors and their voters.
Keep in mind that this is also a way for those who are unvaccinated due to peer pressure to get the shot while remaining true to their tribe. They need their jobs, there’s nothing they can do about it. There are a few who will quit rather than betray the cult, of course, but I’d guess most will just comply with their company’s mandate and move along.
I would assume that the administration did some outreach before they instituted this plan and got positive feedback. The GOPers should probably check in with their moneybags before they go too far with their hysterical backlash.
The Daily Beast reports on the Trump-Bolsonaro bromance:
Following Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election, and after the bloody Jan. 6 riot that Trump instigated, the 45th U.S. president immediately lost many of his ties to world leaders he once called “friends.” However, Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, who has modeled himself in Trump’s image, sought to keep the bromance alive.
That’s something former President Trump, months after officially departing the White House, hasn’t forgotten, and has expressed some interest in returning the favor.
This summer, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, Trump told confidants that he’s open to publicly endorsing Bolsonaro’s reelection, potentially at a mega-rally in Brazil where he and Bolsonaro could appear together side-by-side, to rail against what they each deem undesired election outcomes. Bolsonaro, who is widely expected to decisively fail in his reelection bid next year, has been preemptively spreading groundless claims of election “fraud,” a strategy jarringly reminiscent of Trump’s failed coup in the United States.
I very much doubt that Trump will tie himself to a losing campaign like that. He’ll find an excuse not to do it. But the closeness of the two camps is still disconcerting. It represents the Trumpification of more than just this country but also the international far right.
That’s been Steve Bannon’s project from the beginning. I don’t know whether it has any staying power but it’s concerning nonetheless. It’s hard to say that Trump is an anomaly when there are others out there.
CNN is telling me right now that the people of California are really “pissed off” (Dana Bash) and the same dynamics are in place that were there when Arnold Schwarzenegger ran in 2003.
I’m sorry, but no. Most Californians may be pissed off but they don’t blame the governor and sure as hell aren’t going to replace him with an obnoxious, phony like Larry Elder:
Momentum has turned strongly against the effort to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom with just days to go before voting ends, a change that comes after a deluge of political ads and support from leading Democrats who have slammed the effort as a Republican power grab.
According to a UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll cosponsored by the Los Angeles Times released Friday, 60.1% of likely voters surveyed oppose recalling Newsom compared with 38.5% in favor of ousting the governor. Fewer than 2% of likely voters remained undecided or declined to answer, suggesting the issue is largely settled in the minds of California voters.
The findings, which were gathered by pollsters between Aug. 30 and Sept. 6, align with results from a batch of recent independent polls, all of which showed a decisive advantage for Newsom as the Sept. 14 recall election approaches.ADVERTISING
A poll by the Berkeley institute just six weeks ago found that likely voters’ opinions were almost evenly split, a vulnerability for Newsom that at the time appeared to be driven mostly by the indifference many Democrats expressed about the recall.
Since then, Newsom’s campaign worked feverishly to redefine the recall campaign as a referendum on “Trumpism,” an effort aided greatly by the emergence of conservative talk show host Larry Elder, a loyalist to President Trump, as the clear favorite to become California’s next governor if the recall is successful.
“In the early going it was probably more about whether they liked Newsom or not. It was personalized,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the poll. “By attacking his challenger, which is Elder, and framing it as ‘Look at what you’ll get if you vote for this guy’ … I think that really won the day.”
The poll found that 65% of likely voters — and 89% of likely Democratic voters and 64% of independent voters — thought electing a conservative Republican governor would threaten the state’s well-established progressive policies on climate change, immigration, healthcare and abortion.
“It’s changed the whole dynamic of the vote,” DiCamillo said. “It’s raised fear among voters and I think that fear has increased the engagement of Democrats.”
Juan Rodriguez, manager for Newsom’s anti-recall campaign, said he was not surprised by the increasing opposition to the recall. Along with a massive get-out-the-vote effort, the campaign enlisted help from Democratic Party heavyweights to urge Californians to scuttle the recall, including former President Obama, Vice President Kamala Harris and Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota along with independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
The anti-recall campaign also spent tens of millions of dollars on television and social media ads blasting the recall as an underhanded attempt by Republicans to nullify Newsom’s election in 2018, a strategy backed by the national Republican Party, former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich and conservative media outlets such as Fox News and Newsmax, Rodriguez said.
“I think you’re now seeing Democrats so fired up because they know what this recall really is about,” he said.
Yes, Californians are still dealing with the pandemic, housing prices are insane, the yearly fires are terrifying and the homeless crisis is acute. These are big problems. But because the Republicans have shown themselves to be radical incompetents on both the national and state level for decades now — and are routinely running unqualified D-list celebrities for high office — Californians have decided not to put them in charge. Imagine that.
Here’s hoping that Democrats continue to fill out their ballots in the last week or show up at the polls on the 15th to make sure these Republicans understand that they aren’t going to put up with these undemocratic tactics in their state. Nothing would galvanize the Republican base more than if blue California succumbed to their bullshit.
As we commemorate the 20th anniversary of 9/11 this weekend it’s hard not to think of how different everything would have been over these past two decades if it had never happened. The attacks changed America in some fundamental ways and I’m not sure we’ve ever fully grappled with it. Our government responded in a primitive, unthinking way and unearthed an enduring weakness in our national character that continues to haunt us to this day.
We should have known that when Dick Cheney, the vice president at the time, appeared on television just days after the attacks and announced that the country would have to go to “the dark side” and “use any means at our disposal” that we were going down an immoral path that would lead us to an ignominious end. And it did.
Spencer Ackerman, author of “Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump” makes the case in his book that the ongoing war on terror primed the country for MAGA nihilism and violence by demonizing Muslims and “the decadent left” which Trump successfully capitalized on in his run in 2016. I think there’s something to that.
Trump instinctively understood the undercurrent of racist violence that was electrified when he “took off the gloves” and he used it to great effect, spending hours on the campaign trail repeating lurid details of alleged deviant criminality by immigrants and insisting that torture works, gleefully promising to do more of it with descriptive detail. One of his greatest hits was endorsing an apocryphal story about General Blackjack Pershing dipping bullets in pig’s blood before he summarily executed Muslim prisoners in the first World War. His campaign was drenched in violent rhetoric and yet somehow the fact that he had read the polls and determined that the “forever wars” were unpopular — and unwittingly appropriated the isolationist slogan of the pre-WWII era, “American First” — he got a reputation as some kind of anti-war pacifist. Recall that New York Times writer Maureen Dowd even characterized him as “Donald the Dove” in one notorious column.
His followers, of course, never believed it. Trump was a bloodthirsty leader, and they knew one when they saw one. He was just going to wage his war at home — and that suited them just fine.
As it turned out, this left Trump with a conundrum as president. He actually saw himself as a great warrior leader but he couldn’t pull the trigger on a big military adventure. I always suspected that it was because he was justifiably insecure about which way to turn and relied on his 2016 promise to keep from having to test himself in that way. Instead he talked loudly and carried a small stick. At one point in 2019 during a joint appearance with the Prime Minister of Pakistan, he said:
“If we wanted to fight a war in Afghanistan and win it, I could win that war in a week. I just don’t want to kill 10 million people. I have plans on Afghanistan that, if I wanted to win that war, Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the Earth. It would be gone. It would be over in — literally, in 10 days. And I don’t want to do — I don’t want to go that route.”
For all his chillingly inane bluster, he clearly didn’t have a firm grip on national security and foreign policy, consistently falling back on stale bromides about trade and antagonizing allies he knew were no threat while kissing up to tyrants and dictators. He constantly fought with his military advisers, seeing them as “losers” who didn’t know how to win wars, but never really had the nerve to do what he always threatened to do which was unleash the full might of the U.S. military. (Thank God!)
Now that he is out of office, ensconced in temporary exile at one of his resort palaces, anticipating his full return to campaigning, he is busily re-writing the story of his presidency to fit the current facts. Early in the process he took credit for negotiating the withdrawal with the Taliban and insisted that Biden was dragging his feet. In April, he said, “Getting out of Afghanistan is a wonderful and positive thing to do. I planned to withdraw on May 1st, and we should keep as close to that schedule as possible.” He boasted two months later, “I started the process. All the troops are coming back home. They couldn’t stop the process.”
Then during the chaotic final days in Kabul last month, he frantically shifted his posture.
As Trump saw the right revert to its warmongering ways, he saw the opportunity to airbrush his involvement and pretend that he had the war “won” until Biden surrendered. He said that the situation was not acceptable and demanded that President Biden “resign in disgrace for what he has allowed to happen to Afghanistan.” Babbling incessantly about the mostly defunct military equipment left behind, he declared that if the Taliban didn’t return it, “we should either go in with unequivocal Military force and get it, or at least bomb the hell out of it.”
Now, during this week of commemoration of 9/11 and the beginning of that misbegotten war from which we have finally, painfully, withdrawn military troops, Trump has outdone himself.
On the occasion of the removal of the statue of Robert E. Lee from the capital of Virginia, he managed to thread together his grotesquely racist impulses, his embarrassing ignorance of history and his incompetent national security and foreign policy leadership all in one stunningly stupid statement:
“Robert E. Lee is considered by many Generals to be the greatest strategist of them all. President Lincoln wanted him to command the North, in which case the war would have been over in one day. Robert E. Lee instead chose the other side because of his great love of Virginia, and except for Gettysburg, would have won the war … If only we had Robert E. Lee to command our troops in Afghanistan, that disaster would have ended in a complete and total victory many years ago. What an embarrassment we are suffering because we don’t have the genius of a Robert E. Lee!”
That is the very stable genius who has the entire Republican party on its knees begging for his favor.
I don’t know if Spencer Ackerman is correct to say that the War on Terror “produced” Donald Trump. But it certainly did rouse some of the violent, lizard brain racism and ignorance that’s never very far from the surface of our culture. And nobody in this country better personifies that violent, lizard brain racism and ignorance than Donald Trump.