9/11/01 and 3/19/03

Today, the fifth anniversary of 9/11, was for me, a very confusing, conflicted day of reflection.  Part of that was watching Keith Olberman.  He played clips of Cheney lying on Meet the Press and Russert catching him.  He played Matt Lauer confronting the President this morning on the torture issue...In the Oval Office.

The press is beginning to wake up from the slumber it's been in for all of these years.

Then I watched the conclusion of The Path to 9/11 on ABC. 

I will say this about the movie:  There were undeniably parts of it that were pure bullshit.  There was clearly an attempt to make the Clinton Administration look more at fault than the Bush Administration.  But, with that said, it was riveting television and was very well filmed. 

In the middle of the 2+ hour Part 2, ABC stopped the movie for the President's 9/11 anniversary speech.  He spent 20 minutes turning a speech about 9/11 into a speech on his failed War in Iraq.

Then, the last section of movie played.  I watched as our government's helplessness on that day was resurrected in vivid docudrama.

At the end, the movie quoted the 9/11 Commission Report's finding that we have done little to make this country less vulnerable to terrorist attack today than it was on 9/11/01.

By this time, I needed some nice, soft music.

9/11/01 is the date this country's path irrevocably changed.  But we, as a nation and as a people did not change that day.  When we woke up on Sept 12th, we were not different people.  We were the same people trying to make sense of a horrific tragedy.

The date we changed was 3/9/03.  The date we invaded Iraq.  The date we lost our soul.  We cheered our troops on as if we were watching a football game.  We accepted our President's explanations as if they made sense.  We did not ask questions.  We did not require proof.  We became the aggressors.

Now, we are not a nation wounded by a cowardly attack.  We are a nation wounded by a foolish war we could have avoided.  We have shown that we are no better than the ones we call our enemies.

The anniversary of 9/11/01 lays in the shadow of 3/9/03.  These events have been forever intertwined.  We cannot mourn the one without experiencing the frustration and pain of the other.