The 11th day of the 9th month of the 17th year.

The 17th year since the disaster of 9-11 occurred. Today, of course, will be a day of remembrances and memorials to the 3000 Americans who perished on that day, and the many more both in and out of the service who perished as a result of that day and the actions taken afterward. The timeline of American progress stopped on that particular day, and the slow, steady slide, into the current gloomy age began on the 11th day of September in the first official year of the 21st century.

Now, according to the conventional wisdom of the age, I am supposed to remember the fallen and then cheer the country on to renewed resolve in the endless war that the opening of the 21st century bequeathed to us. At the same time, I am supposed to ignore the 20-20 vision of hindsight that clearly shows the damage we did to ourselves as a nation because of our reaction the events of that particular day. 

There is only one problem. I can’t just ignore the damage that was done, particularly the way the day was hijacked by certain members of a President’s administration, a course of action that led to the biggest foreign policy disaster of the last 50 years and wastage of 4,497 American lives in Iraq-all sacrificed for nothing.

Yes, you read that right- all sacrificed for nothing. Mr. Pierce explains why:

With the intelligence all pointing toward bin Laden, Rumsfeld ordered the military to begin working on strike plans. And at 2:40 p.m., the notes quote Rumsfeld as saying he wanted “best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H.”–meaning Saddam Hussein–”at the same time. Not only UBL”–the initials used to identify Osama bin Laden. 

Now, nearly one year later, there is still very little evidence Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. But if these notes are accurate, that didn’t matter to Rumsfeld. “Go massive,” the notes quote him as saying. “Sweep it all up. Things related and not.”

Things related.

And not.

While most people were thinking and praying for friends and relatives in New York City, and just generally walking around stunned and hurting, there were people in government already planning to use the attacks as an opportunity to carry out the imperial projects about which they’d been dreaming for decades. (, the attacks as a chance to put in place authoritarian measures that had been gathering dust on the shelf since COINTELPRO was exposed in 1971.)

For all practical purposes, the Iraq War, with all its terrible consequences, intended and unintended, was launched on September 11, 2001. Four planes that morning. A country’s grief and pain was hijacked later that day.

I firmly believe that most of the current problems of the world, and of the United States can be directly traced to March 19, 2003. And March 19, 2003, can be directly traced to September 11th, 2001.

And ever since that day, the United States has been involved in a war that is going to go on and on and on and on, probably for the rest of my life. The war is sucking away the resources of our nation at a time it desperately needs them. On these pages and others has been argued back and forth the pros and cons of that war repeatedly. Follow the tags for the post and you can get a sense of how I felt back in 2006 and I how I still feel now. Go to other pages and you can read odes to our “victory” in Iraq and how with just more time – after the longest war in US history – American will “win” in Afghanistan.

Except, we won’t. The only way we could have won was not to play.

Especially with the current charlatan who acts as President.

But it’s too late for that. And unlike in the 70’s, the impeachment of a President will not save us from a war that will go on and on and on.

American has gotten it’s revenge for 9-11 many times over. Well over 500,000 people have died as a result of that one event.

As I wrote in two different posts in different years, 

I will always remember and will never forget. But in doing so, it also means that I will never forget what came in its aftermath, much of which was- to put it bluntly-misdirected effort, in response to a unique event, the likes of which most of us had never seen before.

It is important, therefore, to look at 9-11 for what it is, a deliberate act of cold-blooded murder. The fact that it is so,  does not, however, provide a blanket absolution for the myriad of flawed events that followed in its wake.  We have extracted our vengeance for that horrible day a 100 times over.  The cost of doing so has been huge-and we will debate the wisdom of those subsequent decisions for years.

Guys like Dick Cheney, and George Bush and others-believe the horror of 9-11 gives them a pass on responsibility for flawed decision making subsequent to the event. I say no. The rat holes of the wars that have been pursued in the years following, and the very avoidable -and equally tragic-costs, cannot be just wiped away just because we were the victims on a particular day.

We can though, remember that day with honor- and vow to move forward into a better future than what those murderers tried to inflict upon us. All of our worlds changed that day-and I for one wish that day could be undone.  I want my world of September 10, 2011 back. But its never coming back.

There is a line in a Tom Clancy novel, Red Storm Rising that goes something like this:
“The whole world seemed like it had caught fire, and because of them[the hijackers] the world literally would.”

I want my world back. My world of September 10th back. 

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