9/11 Symbiosis

by digby

I’ve been getting a few admonistions from readers who are upset that I’m not suspending my anger to observe this day with solemnity and seriousness. But I’m not going to apologize for being angry. I was angry that day five years ago and I’m still angry.

You see, I knew — I knew — that bin Laden had just achieved a huge victory, perhaps a decisive one. This was not because of the attacks themselves or even the possibility of more in the future, which as horrible and dramatic as they are do not in themselves represent any kind of existential threat. This was because as an observer of the zeitgeist and the political scene for over 30 years at that point, I knew that our government and media would react to this event in exactly the way bin Laden hoped and that we would do to ourselves what the Islamic extremists could only dream of doing: turn the country into a permanent state of faux crisis — and enable the authoritarian right wing of this country, which was unfortunately in power at the time, to pursue a doomed military empire, create a powerful imperial presidency and build the American style police state they had longed for for decades. I knew that they would run with this “opportunity” and run with it they did.

It became a cliche and then a joke when people would say “the terrorists have won” but there is little doubt in my mind that they have achieved much of what they set out to do. Rather than being the object of sympathy and solidarity we were in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, the world now sees the United States as the terrorists do — a rogue superpower, untrustworthy and unpredictable. The irrational invasion of Iraq cemented an image in the minds of muslims and others that the US intends to steal valuable mid-east resources and wants a permanent presence in the region in order to subjugate its people.

The next generation of Americans is going to be left with a crippling economic burden from the twin effects of runaway spending on Iraq and an insane fiscal policy. Our society is being trained to believe we live in a perpetually fearful state of suspended animation, waiting for the ax to fall and increasingly sure that we must be willing to allow the government to do anything to maintain our precarious safety. (As long as we can keep shopping, of course.)

SCHNEIDER: One year after 9/11, 31 percent of Americans said they felt fear when they thought about the attacks. Five years after the attacks, that numbers is up to 44 percent.

One year after 9/11, nearly half the public expressed a desire for vengeance. Osama bin Laden is still out there. Only now are some of the terrorists being brought to trial.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We will continue to bring the world’s most dangerous terrorists to justice.

SCHNEIDER: The desire for vengeance is about the same five years later. Do Americans believe the country will ever completely return to normal? No, a view shared by more and more people. One year after 9/11, 54 percent felt the country would never get back to normal. Now, five years after the attacks, 70 percent believe the country will never return to normal.

Good work Osama. If you wanted to create terror, you seem to have succeeded. Or someone has on your behalf. There are those who seem intent upon wallowing in this “fear,” immersing themselves in it, rubbing it all over them and everybody else. And there’s no question why they want to do that. After all, terror doesn’t just benefit Al Qaeda, does it?

The conservative Center for Security Policy will begin airing a new television commercial criticizing those who might oppose [Bush’s proposed legislation on show trials for terror detainees].

Some in Congress think “that if we retreat our terrorist enemies will leave us alone,” says the ad that will run in Ohio, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Vermont and New York. “They say we should close Guantanamo, where captured foes are kept from waging war against us. … They seem to think we’ll be safer if we cut and run.”

With menacing music in the background, the commercial ends with an admonition: “Vote as if your life depended on it. Because it does.” via

And the Democrats, a day late and a dollar short when it comes to national security, have no choice but to feed into that sense of existential fear by nattering on about failed homeland security and accusing the president of feeble leadership because he hasn’t caught Osama bin Laden, thus reinforcing the notion that we are under seige. Not that they have any choice really. To do otherwise would be, as Tom Kean said yesterday on This Week, “heresy.”

So, in a very real sense, just as bin Laden depends upon the Republican party’s fear and loathing campaign to keep him relevant, the Republicans depend upon bin Laden to keep the terror on simmer. (Those tapes always dribble out just at the right moment, don’t they?) According to Ron Susskind’s book “The One Percent Solution” it is well known why in intelligence circles:

Deputy CIA director John E. McLaughlin noted at one meeting, “Bin Laden certainly did a nice favor today for the President.” Suskind quoted Jami Miscik, CIA deputy associate director for intelligence, as saying “Certainly, he would want Bush to keep doing what he’s doing for a few more years.

The problem is that this country simply cannot take an endless ginned-up “war” designed to benefit the Republican party and Islamic terrorists and neither can the rest of the world. We have big problems to face and we need allies and cooperation to deal with them. Right now we are actively making things worse by allowing our government to pursue terrorism policies that create more of it.

This week the administration is planning to force the congress to rubber stamp its heretofore illegal torture and detention regime. They are going to use some of the 9/11 families to demagogue this legislation as the only proper response to the WTC attacks and they are going to try to trap Democratic politicians into voting for it or risk being “Clelanded” in the coming campaign. You can already see the outlines of what we can expect to see in that ad I excerpted above.

This torture and detention regime is making our country less safe and less free by creating more terrorists and degrading the US Constitution, but rather than dismantling it the Republicans are going to institutionalize it. It is only the latest of many such foolish actions our government undertook since 9/11. The question is whether we will continue to allow them to do Osama bin Laden’s dirty work or if people of good sense will be able to resist their irrational warmongering and confront terrorists intelligently instead of giving them exactly what they want.

I’m not a big fan of Islamic fundamentalists myself. Like most fundamentalist religious fanatics, they are delusional, repressive, authoritarian tyrants and I have no desire for them to succeed in any way. I’m a liberal, after all. I’d really like to see the US government stop empowering them.

The fact that it is doing so makes me angry, I admit. On this day, of all days, especially.

*Note: I must admit that as much as I *knew* the Republicans would make the terrorist threat self-fulfilling by their overreaction, I never imagined that they would so boldly say things like this:

“We are used to a peacetime system in which Congress enacts the laws, the president enforces them, and the courts interpret them. In wartime, the gravity shifts to the executive branch.”

Uhm. No, actually it doesn’t. Not ever. And especially not when the war is a “war.”

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