In Memoriam -- September 11

The President makes remarks at the Pentagon:

Vice President Biden at Ground Zero:

... C-SPAN has video of the Shanksville, Pennsylvania, memorial ceremony. Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell begins speaking at about t 29:30 min. in; First Lady Laura Bush speaks at about 42:30 min. in; & First Lady Michelle Obama begins at about 55 min. in.

Los Angeles Times: "President Obama plans to mark the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks by attending a memorial service at the Pentagon, the White House said Tuesday. In addition, Vice President Biden will attend services at ground zero in New York, while Michelle Obama will be joined by former First Lady Laura Bush at the Flight 93 memorial near Shanksville, Pa., Robert Gibbs announced at his daily press briefing." Update: see videos in right column.

Verena Dobnik of the AP: "Politics threatened to overshadow a day of mourning Saturday ... amid a polarizing national debate over a planned mosque blocks from the site where Islamic extremists attacked America. Chants of thousands of sign-waving protesters both for and against the planned Islamic center were expected after — and perhaps during — a ceremony normally known for somber church bells ringing and a sad litany of families reading their lost loved ones' names." ...

... Washington Post: "Hundreds of supporters of the proposed Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero gathered Friday evening near the site in Lower Manhattan, where they lit candles, sang and prayed on the eve of the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks."

The New York Times has an excellent multimedia feature showing the plans & progress for Ground Zero. CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO GO TO THE TIMES INTERACTIVE SITE.

photo.     ... Here's the slideshow.

Ted Koppel, now of BBC News, in a Washington Post op-ed: "The goal of any organized terrorist attack is to goad a vastly more powerful enemy into an excessive response. And over the past nine years, the United States has blundered into the 9/11 snare with one overreaction after another.... Much of what [Osama bin Laden] has achieved we have done, and continue to do, to ourselves."

Secret Muslim Plot Exposed. Again. Jim Newell of Gawker: "A group led by the father of a Flight 93 victim will be running full-page ads this Friday and Saturday in a Shanksville-area newspaper ..." protesting that the Shanksville memorial, a work-in-progress, is really a Muslim crescent pointing at Mecca. Uh-huh. ...

    ... You know what else is going to be in the shape of the Islamic Crescent on 9/11? The Moon. -- Attaturk, Firedoglake

Meanwhile, at the Fuck Obama Xtravaganza (FOX) -- Media Matters: "Fox News is attacking President Obama's decision to attend a 9-11 memorial at the Pentagon rather than the World Trade Center site. However, former President George W. Bush routinely did not visit ground zero on past anniversaries of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and Vice President Joe Biden is attending a memorial at the World Trade Center site...."

The Commentariat -- September 11

Hundreds of thousands of Muslims perform the early morning Eid al-Fitr prayer in the Saudi holy city of Mecca on Friday, Sept. 10, as Muslilms around the world start celebrating the the three-day holiday that marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadan. AFP-Getty image. CLICK TO SEE LARGER IMAGE.

Having never met a 'Judeo-Christian,' I am always suspicious when that category of beliefs is invoked. -- Michael Sean Winters

Michael Sean Winters in the National Catholic Observer eloquently explains the many reasons that there is no valid comparison between the Cordoba Center & the Carmelite convent at Auschwitz (which Pope John Paul II, a Pole, ordered to be moved). Via Hertzberg....

... Rick Hertzberg of The New Yorker: if Cordoba House must be moved, the best place to move it would be to Ground Zero. Hear him out.

Paul Krugman & Robin Wells in the New York Review of Books on "... the origins of the 2008 crisis; ... the ongoing policy debates about the response to the crisis and its aftermath." (This article will have -- but doesn't yet -- a Part 2.) ...

We believe that the relative absence of proposals to deal with mass unemployment is a case of 'self-induced paralysis' — a phrase that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke used a decade ago, when he was a researcher criticizing policymakers from the outside. There is room for action, both monetary and fiscal. But politicians, government officials, and economists alike have suffered a failure of nerve — a failure for which millions of workers will pay a heavy price. -- Paul Krugman & Robin Wells ...

... Dana Milbank on the right's attacks on 20th-century British economist John Maynard Keynes. First of all, Milbank points out, many of the right's programs are Keynesian. "Or perhaps, more ominously, these Republicans know exactly what they are saying when they reject Keynesian intervention: that the government should do nothing to help the millions out of work or to rebuild confidence in the economy."

With so much of Keynesian theory universally embraced, Republican denunciation of him has a flat-earth feel to it. Will they next demand the abolition of NASA because it's "Galileo on steroids?" Shut down the National Institutes of Health for being a "Hippocratic mistake?" ... Demand a halt to public schools teaching from the "failed Darwinian playbook?" (Oh, wait. They did that last part already.) -- Dana Milbank

Brad Grow of the Washington Post: "A crackdown on reckless mortgage lenders by the Federal Housing Administration has failed to root out several executives with criminal records whose firms continue to do business with the agency in violation of federal law, according to government documents, court records and interviews.... Documents and interviews reveal that more than 34,000 home loans have been issued over the past two years by a dozen FHA-approved lenders that have employed people who were convicted of felonies, banned from the securities industry or previously worked for firms barred by the agency."

According to the AP's "Fact Check," "President Barack Obama told voters repeatedly during the health care debate that the overhaul legislation would bring down fast-rising health care costs and save them money. Now, he's hemming and hawing on that." ...

... BUT Michael Crowley of Time says the "fact-checkers" are ignoring some nuance, & the President has not been inconsistent.

Constitution v. Common Sense

Charles Blow of the New York Times is concerned that "Too much of the debate [over Islam in America] seems to be centered around the sensitivities of terrorists a world away.... But...," he writes, "we are a country in which the construction of a building and the destruction of a book are rights extended to all, even if opposed by most."

Over & above the false equivalency Blow tries to establish between building a cultural center & destroying a holy text, the Constant Weader thinks he misses the underlying point of the discussion:

So what you're saying, I guess, is that the "debate" over the Rev. Cap'n. Crunch and his Koran-torching plans is all about the Constitution.

No, it isn't. Nobody is saying the Koran burning is unconstitutional. It is a common-sense issue. Over in Afghanistan, we're busy bombing innocent Muslims & pretending it's all just an accident & besides, we're doing it for their own goods. Burning their holy book is not just blowing them to bits; it's blowing their fundamental(ist) principles to bits. It's worse than saying, "Kaboom! Whoops, sorry, you're just collateral damage." It means, "Everything about you is abhorrent." The latter is, of course, what many Americans, including the Rev. Cap'n. Crunch, believe.

We all thought it was laughable when George W. Bush, after shooting & bombing his way across two countries, said, "They hate us for our freedom." But, as with many stupid remarks, there is a grain of truth in that one. (a) They hate us because while we exercise our own freedoms, we impinge upon their's. Big-time. (b) They don't "get" our freedoms. The majority of Muslims live in countries where there's no such thing as a bill of rights or freedom of expression. If you want to do something stupid, the government says you can't. If you think of doing something stupid & know the government will lock you up or kill you for it, you don't do it. So the idea that the U.S. government can stand by & allow an American to do something stupid means to most Muslims that the government is cool with the stupid thing. Otherwise, they'd stop it.

Add to that -- few fundamentalists are smart. Some, like the Osama bin Laden gang, are shrewd. But, like the Ever-so-Rev. Jones, they are not good at nuance & they don't get irony. If you think you can explain the concepts underlying the bill of rights to the Taliban, just try it out on a few American high-school dropouts first. See how far you get.

Now, it's true that most American Christians would not put a target on your head if you burned a Bible in front of their church. But some would. They would especially do so if you were a Muslim or a Jew.

Similarly, most Muslims would not put a target on your head if you burned a copy of the Koran. They might despise you, they might feel sorry for you because you were so stupid, but they would let it go. The Muslims who stand up & take notice of stunts like those of Terry Jones are (a) folks who aren't very smart, & (b) folks who are whipped into frenzies by men with political agendas. Consider them the Muslim world's version of the tea party, if you will. It is completely unfair to paint Muslims with a broad brushstroke. Saying, "Muslims believe..." is as unfair as saying, "Americans torched the Koran." No, a couple of nuts did (or planned to do) that.

As for our own vaunted tolerance of bookburning, it was not so long ago that Poppy Bush came out in favor of a Constitutional amendment prohibiting the burning of the American flag. Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who is no dope, has said he thought the Constitution already allowed a law against flag-burning. George Stephanopoulos questioned Barack Obama's patriotism because Obama didn't include a flag pin in his campaign uniform. (Why is it all right, I wonder, to burn a cross but not the flag?) We are not a tolerant nation. We take inanimate symbols way too seriously & read way too much into them. So if uneducated Muslims do the same, this Biblical rejoinder should suffice: "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."