Nation Pauses to Reflect on September 11 — Progressives Mount Pathetic Political Attacks on Bush Administration

I spent the day teaching. Normally each year on September 11, and the day before or after, so that all my classes benefit from the discussion, I recall where I was that morning and how the terrorists attacked us. Although there were ceremonies around the country today, it seems that each year the nation is more detached from the day's events and 9/11 feels more like a plain old historical milestone. This is especially true for young people. If some of my students are 17 or 18-year-old freshmen then they were 6 or 7-year-olds in 2001. I always pull up on the projection screen the first chapter of The 9/11 Commission Report, "We Have Some Planes." Reviewing just a few paragraphs, using the example of American Airlines Flight 11, students are introduced to the shocking efficiency of the 19 terrorists on that clear late-summer day. Sometimes we have a lot of discussion. This year students seemed to have less knowledge of this history, and also less opinion of the war on terror. I try to impart the ways that the country has changed over these last few years, and that young people today are the generation of Americans living in the shadow of the largest attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor.

I thus tend to discuss September 11 as a matter of the civic culture. I don't talk politics. The attacks mean different things to different people, and I personally try to put myself in the shoes of the fallen, their families, and of the first responders. Unlike past years, there wasn't much of a dramatic build-up to the 2012 anniversary. But reading around the horn on my breaks and during office hours, it was amazing --- if not shocking, though I'm inured to it by now --- to see how intensely politicized the day became. Progressives really went after President Bush, of all people, and his administration. In Groundhog Day-like redundancy, the left replayed the old canard that the Bush administration failed to prevent the attacks and that the response to 9/11 was inept and morally bankrupt. Yeah, I know. Where have we heard those things before? Martin Longman at Booman Tribune really got off on some kind of supreme arrogance, to the effect that since he knew people --- that neighbors and co-workers suffered --- he had some elevated understanding of events. It's the moral fallacy of hubris --- again. Booman took the whole "I knew people who suffered" meme to the sickly opportunistic conclusion that we shouldn't politicize the day, unless of course it was to attack the hated Bush regime. So trite. So small. And so typical for the hate-addled progressives of the antiwar left. See, "Thoughts for 9/11." President Obama comes in for criticism too, conveniently, but since it was Bush in power at the time, clearly that's the "leadership" Booman decries.

And don't miss idiot Robert "Che" Farley piling on at Lawyers, Guns and Money. Read it at the link for the context, but slamming the Bush administration, our Patterson School national security "expert" writes: "...who knew that putting a staggeringly inept man surrounded by frauds, liars, and sociopaths into the White House could lead to bad things?"

Perfessor Farley is responding to Kurt Eichenwald's essay at today's New York Times, "The Bush White House Was Deaf to 9/11 Warnings." Folks can read it at the link. How pathetic. NewBusters has this, "On 9-11 Anniversary, New York Times Op-Ed Blames Bush." Plus Abe Greenwald offers a must read piece at Commentary, "Nobody Was Prepared for 9/11."

And don't forget Greenwald's classic piece from last year at Commentary, "What We Got Right in the War on Terror."

Plus, from this morning's Los Angeles Times, "9/11 -- 11 years later: A nation pauses to reflect and mourn anew."

BONUS: At American Glob, "Liberals Stupidly Believe Foreign Policy Is Obama’s Secret Weapon."