Couldn’t Have Said It Better Myself

I try to write something original every day but today I’m going to cheat a little bit because Paul Krugman, a columnist for the New  York Times who usually writes about economic matters, wrote a column yesterday about 9/11 that so perfectly encapsulated my thoughts on the matter that I’m just going to reprint it here.  He titled it “The Years of Shame.”

Paul Krugman

Is it just me, or are the 9/11 commemorations oddly subdued?

Actually, I don’t think it’s me, and it’s not really that odd.

What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. The atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.

A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?

The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.

I’m not going to allow comments on this post, for obvious reasons.

 

The only difference between me and Krugman is that comments are not disabled.  Feel free.

 

3 Comments

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3 responses to “Couldn’t Have Said It Better Myself

  1. That was a brave thing for Krugman to say. Of course, as a socialist/liberal foreigner, I’m going to say that…

  2. A's avatar A

    The son of a friend of mine is a college freshman, studying poli-sci, and working for peanuts of the local grocery store – at which I also worked, almost 30 years ago. I asked him, on 9-11, what he thought of the “doings” surrounding 9-11 and he said he thought they were a little too… And I said, “Jingoistic?” He said they’re heading that way.

    Heading that way?? Either he doesn’t know the meaning of the word, or that’s the understatement of the day. When the NFL leads off every early game with a full-field flag, jets flying overhead, and “first second-place” American Idols singing the national anthem before each game, I think we’re a little beyond “heading that way.” But at least he wasn’t another blind “American” waving the flag like it was his dick on parade.

  3. dw's avatar dw

    I only heard a few seconds of Obama’s 9-11 speech, but what I heard was pure religion, as bad as Perry or Bachmann. It’s almost sickening.

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