written for California Democratic Congressmember, Barbara Lee, who cast the sole vote after 9/11 against “Forever Wars, ” now on the need for the Afghan War Inquiry, Democracy Now Interview, September 10
rainwashed slogans
on the fortified wall
empty embassy
last Americans
a teen points his finger gun
at the moving plane
a man shifts body bags
from shoulder to shoulder
smoky night
9/11 on TV
a veteran murmurs
never forgive, never forget ...
FYI: Congressmember Barbara Lee closed her historic 9/11 speech with a plea for peace and diplomacy we all should remember:
"I have agonized over this vote. I came to grips with opposing this resolution during the very painful yet very beautiful memorial service. As a member of the clergy so eloquently said, 'As we act, let us not become the evil that we deplore.'"
Our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.
George W. Bush, Ground Zero Speech
We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side,...That’s the world these folks [terrorists] operate in, and so it’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal.
Dick Cheney, NBC’s Meet the Press, two days after George W. Bush's "Ground Zero Speech"
For more about "forever wars," "Sunday Reading: Casualties of the Forever Wars," The New Yorker, September 12 and "After 9/11, the U.S. Got Almost Everything Wrong: A mission to rid the world of “terror” and “evil” led America in tragic directions," Garrett M. Graff, The Atlantic, September 8
The Global War on Terrorism yielded two crucial triumphs: The core al-Qaeda group never again attacked the American homeland, and bin Laden, its leader, was hunted down and killed in a stunningly successful secret mission a decade after the attacks. But the U.S. defined its goals far more expansively, and by almost any other measure, the War on Terror has weakened the nation — leaving Americans more afraid, less free, more morally compromised, and more alone in the world. A day that initially created an unparalleled sense of unity among Americans has become the backdrop for ever-widening political polarization...
... the journalist Robert Draper writes in To Start a War, his new history of the Bush administration’s lies, obfuscations, and self-delusions that led from Afghanistan into Iraq, “In the after-shocks of 9/11, a reeling America found itself steadied by blunt-talking alpha males whose unflappable, crinkly-eyed certitude seemed the only antidote to nationwide panic.”
Added: This Brave New World, XXI
the Peace Bell tolls
in remembrance of lives lost
on September 11
the Taliban flag flutters
over the presidential palace
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