September 9, 2006
"It's all fair pulling, `pull devil pull baker', some one has to get
the worst of it. Now it's us, now it's them, that gets took or rubbed out,
and no more about it. -- Boldrewood
Is there anything more repugnant than hearing bin-Laden's taunting words so close to the anniversary of the 9-11 attacks? I don't mean the latest video he sent Bush to amp up the president's fear and smear campaign. I'm not thinking of the grainy shots of bin-Laden greeting his accomplices out in the open air of his mountain refuge.
The taunting words I'm thinking of came from Bush himself as he continued to revive and re-animate the demoted specter he called his "prime suspect" in 2001. "I want justice," Bush had said. "And there's an old poster out West… I recall, that said, 'Wanted, Dead or Alive.'" Six months later, bin-Laden had been cornered at Tora Bora, and then, allowed to escape into the mountains.
"I don't know where he is," Bush sputtered when asked why he hadn't yet been caught. I-I'll repeat what I said. I am truly not that concerned about him."
Five years later, and Bush has found new cause for concern. His party is poised to lose their majority in the House and, possibly, in the Senate. Voter opposition to Bush's occupation in Iraq has pulled his republicans down in the polls and threatens to take away the power that has helped him commit the troops to Iraq and keep them there.
Bush wants a replay of the unified state of angst and anxiety that Americans felt in the wake of the 9-11 attacks. He'd like another chance to stand on the rubble of the Trade Towers with all of the humanity scattered underneath and bullhorn his way back into the nation's confidence.
Bush has been practicing his new confidence game this past week with a series of speeches in which, as the explainer-in-chief, he was methodical and zealous in his elevation of Osama bin-Laden as he carefully recited the most offensive and threatening of the terrorist's statements and dispatches. Right after he began his second speech, Bush chose the moment after he had remarked on the "flood of painful memories" and the "horror of watching planes fly into the World Trade Center", to amplify bin-Laden's gloating that the attack was "an unparalleled and magnificent feat of valor, unmatched by any in humankind."
It was strange to hear Bush mention bin-Laden. Bush rarely mentioned the terrorist since his claim of indifference, if at all. In fact, the Senate unanimously passed a Democratic amendment this week which restored the bin-Laden unit responsible for tracking him down that Bush had shut down with no alternative offered at all.
In Bush's updated, 'National Strategy for Combating Terrorism' that he references in his speech (which mentions bin-Laden only once in a reference to his 'privileged upbringing'), there's a passage about terrorist's "increasingly sophisticated use of the Internet and media" to "spread their propaganda."
"To counter terrorist use of the Internet as a virtual sanctuary," the report reads, "we will discredit terrorist propaganda by promoting truthful and peaceful messages."
Aside from the laugh of the Bush regime using 'truthful and peaceful messages', there is a dishonest and dangerous game behind his speaking tour. The speeches have been marked by their effort to divide Americans into patriots who support his terror policies; and traitors who resist his imperious assaults on our civil liberties, diversion of forces and resources to Iraq, and his failure to catch the perpetrators defined in the authorization that he claims gives him the power to ignore laws and the Constitution.
Dredging up all of the offensive rhetoric from bin-Laden is designed to re-inflate those emotions which made Americans weak in the face of his consolidation of power. Bush's reaction to the terrorist attacks on 9-11 was a mix of defiance and rhetoric in his defense of the 'freedom' that he said the attackers wanted to 'destroy'.
"They hate our freedoms - our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other," he declared in an address to a joint session of Congress.
In his statement at the signing of the "anti-terrorism," Patriot Act, in October 2001, six weeks after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, President Bush claimed that the measure would counter the threat of enemies that "recognize no barrier of morality and have no conscience." He sought to assure that the measure "upheld and respected the civil liberties guaranteed by our Constitution." He ends his statement with a pledge to enforce the law with "all of the urgency of a nation at war."
However, the President neglected to tell us which war he was referring to. The anti-terrorism measure was cobbled together in a few short months to take political advantage of the urge in Congress for a legislative response to the terrorist attacks, despite the president's claim that the bill was "carefully drafted and considered." It was a direct assault on the liberty, privacy, and free expression of all Americans.
That document flowered into a myriad of adjustments that would take advantage of the administration's season-all of 'national security' that they and their cohorts in Congress sprinkled on every stalled piece of legislation that could be remotely tied to their 'war on terror'. But, their transparent politicking with their new anti-terror tools had nothing at all to do with catching the perpetrators they said were responsible for the 9-11 attacks. Their hunt faltered and their Iraq diversion blew up in their faces.
No amount of saber-rattling at Iran, showdowns with North Korea, or escalation of troops in Iraq to further prop up the crumbling Maliki regime would substitute for bringing bin-Laden to justice. Five years on the loose has made the terrorist into an inspiration for others who have been provoked by the mindless collateral killings by the U.S. in Bush's dual Mideast occupations.
Yet, Bush has decided to elevate bin-Laden even more in his speeches and remembrances leading up to the 9-11 commemorations. In Bush's
radio address for Sunday, he speaks of a 'solemn occasion' and proceeds to muddy it up with more of bin-Laden's taunts. The president advances the terrorist's call for a Caliphate as he bids us to "hear the words" of the terrorist.
"Osama bin Laden has called the 9/11 attacks, "A great step toward the unity of Muslims and establishing the righteous Caliphate," Bush explains. "Al Qaeda and its allies reject any possibility of coexistence with those they call "infidels." Hear the words of Osama bin Laden," Bush says.
Bush and bin-Laden are partners in their respective protection schemes. Both use the extreme violent reactions of the other to justify their self-appointed roles as saviors and protectors of their followers. Both are counting on their words to elicit fear, but, Bush is bin-Laden's surrogate in this latest promotion.
The president spoke of "vigilance" at the end of his radio address. I couldn't let that word go without reflecting on what vigilance means to me, and should mean for all Americans as they reflect on the tragedy of 9-11 and the catastrophe of responses that followed.
Abraham Lincoln spoke of our responsibility to vigilance: "While the people retain their virtue and vigilance," he said, "no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government in the short space of four years.
Through our virtue and our vigilance we must, in our respect for democracy, value and protect the right to vote. With our full participation in the voting process we promote respect for our nation and each other, and help ensure an equal chance for representation for all of our citizens in the deliberations of our government. Our vote is the instrument of our collective conscience and our warrant to the realization of our freedom, our liberty, and our well-being.
Through our virtue and our vigilance we must continue to advocate and petition our government to work for peace - here in the United States and around the world - with our voices, with our written appeals and protests, and with our actions. Our appeals should be wrapped in our determination to hold this administration accountable for stoking the flames of fear that flashed from the tragedies of 9-11.
At Edwardsville, Illinois, on September 11, 1858, Lincoln said, "What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence is not our frowning battlements, our bristling seacoast, the guns of our war steamers, or the strength of our gallant and disciplined army. These are not the reliance against the resumption of tyranny in our fair land. All of them may be turned against our liberties without making us stronger or weaker for the struggle."
"Our reliance is in the love of liberty, which God has planted in our bosoms. Our defense is the preservation of the spirit, which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere." Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your down doors. Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage," Lincoln warned, and you prepare your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of others, you have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you."
This government and this administration have become accustomed to trampling, and bondage. And we have allowed them to skirt accountability for their sly justifications for their attacks on our civil liberties, demagogic appeals to patriotism and to our nationalism, and the mortgaging of ours and our children's future toil and tribute to the subsidizing of both of the Bush president's bloody and costly wars of opportunity.
Bush should not be allowed to dictate our future to us, using the voice of this terrorist's violence.
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