Towering Lies and Hypocrisy: The White House’s 9/11 Approach to “Remembering and Recovering”

 

 

As the 10th anniversary of September 11th approaches, Americans are receiving much guidance on how to feel, think, and act on that day. Nationalism is  order of the day. For the U.S. to carry on its “war on terror” – really a war of terror for empire – it needs all Americans to fall into lock step with the guidelines for 9/11 commemmoration the Obama administration last week issued recently.

 

Two documents, which were also provided to the New York Times and reported on in an article, White House Issues Guides On Sept. 11th Observances were released to government agencies inside the U.S., and overseas. Both the documents stress that while remembering those who died that day, Americans should also be cautioned about the possibility of other attacks and that resilience is key in recovering from loss.

 

These documents are shot through with the towering imperialist twins, HYPOCRISY and LIES, all designed to make people in this country forget that “the other” in other lands are human beings, while the U.S. continues to wage this murderous and monstrous war of terror. Here’s what the documents have to say about resiliency and recovery:

“Resilience takes many forms, including the dedication and courage to move forward,” according to the guidelines for foreign audiences. “While we must never forget those who we lost, we must do more than simply remember them —we must sustain our resilience and remain united to prevent new attacks and new victims.

 

"At the same time, Obama administration officials caution that public commemorations here should not cast the United States as the sole victim of terrorism, an argument underscored by killings and maimings from extremist attacks overseas. Some senior administration officials involved in the discussions noted that the tone set on this Sept. 11 should be shaped by a recognition that the outpouring of worldwide support for the United States in the weeks after the attacks turned to anger at some American policies adopted in the name of fighting terror — on detention, on interrogation, and the decision to invade Iraq.”

Let’s read between the lines here. “What do they mean when they say resilience takes many forms?” or that “we must sustain our resilience and remain united to prevent new attacks and new victims”?

 

Well, I think we, as well as people across the globe are being told that in order to be resilient and recover from an attack or prevent one, the U.S. must be allowed to invade and occupy countries at will. However the documents don’t mention that little boys in Afghanistan gathering firewood to keep their homes warm will be gunned down by Apache helicopters, as happened in March of this year – in order for us to recover.

 

Nor does it suggest that these little boys were victims of terror. You won’t hear their names read in any “commemoration ceremony”. In fact from the New York Times article itself I can’t tell that these documents mention Afghanistan at all. But if you read this quote again, some senior administration officials involved in the discussions noted that the tone set on this Sept. 11 should be shaped by a recognition that the outpouring of worldwide support for the United States in the weeks after the attacks turned to anger at some American policies adopted in the name of fighting terror — on detention, on interrogation, and the decision to invade Iraq , we could conclude that the Obama administration is trying to recapture the glory days of the campaign trail when Obama called Iraq the “dumb war” and Afghanistan the “good war”. Yeah those were good times…never mind there are  thousands of troops as well as military “contractors” (better known as mercenaries) still over there in Iraq.

 

While we’re on the topic of Iraq… I’m at a loss as to how shooting a handcuffed 3 year old Iraqi child in the head is suppose to help one recover from an attack or prevent one as happened in 2006 and was recently revealed in a released cable by Wikileaks.

 

Then there is the matter of the senior White House officials mentioning in these documents that U.S. government realization that its use of “detention and interrogation” (note they’re careful not to say torture here), which in addition to its invasion of  Iraq turned worldwide support of the U.S. into anger at the U.S. It’s as if they’re trying to apologize for a small gaffe.

 

This is also very interesting considering that Obama has yet to close Guantanamo and that he refuses to prosecute Bush era officials for the war crime of torture. It’s as if they want to gloss that over and want to pretend that indefinite detention and torture by the U.S. isn’t happening… but the treatment of alleged whistleblower, Private Bradley Manning, at Quantico for 10 months should be an indicator that the U.S. is indeed still using torture. Meanwhile those Bush era war criminals – you remember, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell Rice and Co. –  are peddling their books, doing public speaking, and even teaching “Constitutional Law”. People like to claim political expediency as a reason that Obama won’t prosecute Bush era officials.

 

An article in Revolution Newspaper quite rightly points out that “The carnage caused by the 9-11 attacks in the U.S. has been multiplied perhaps a hundred-fold by the response to that horror.” The article highlights the crimes of the illegitimate and immoral wars/occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, the widening of the war on terror into Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, torture and indefinite detention, and the political repression here in the states to squelch any wide public dissent to the imperialist aims of the U.S.

 

I think it’s time for the people of this country to recognize that fear is not resilience and that a people cannot recover from the trauma of 9/11 while it stands silently and idly by as its leaders inflict traumas through war crimes in their name a thousand times over on sections of humanity across the globe. It’s time to put to rest those towering twins: hypocrisy and lies. Remember those who were killed, lost their homes, lost loved ones, were detained and tortured in your name in these U.S. wars/occupations as well as those 3,000 who died 10 years ago. Join World Can’t Wait in a creative memorial to them online now and in NYC this weekend.

 

Then a month from now on the 10th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan join us and thousands of others to demand an end to the U.S. War of Terror on the World. Recover your conscience and let your morality be resilient.