Another one from the vault, ‘Celebrating Murder’ was my overall impression of the GOP national convention that year, as 9/11 was the star of the show from beginning to end. Giuliani was featured, and within his speech were eleven shout-outs to 9/11. Not expecting the debates to play on the event as heavily as they were during the ’04 convention, though when it is brought up, I’d bet a dollar to a donut that the themes of this piece will be just as relevant now and at the GOP convention in 2008 as they were then. It is a staple of what I like to call the “Coke vs. Pepsi” construct that Republicans will never abandon when describing the world we live in to voters. The simplicity of it allows the right-wing to say the same exact thing on Iraq and terrorism in general, thereby requiring minimal shifts in language along the way that never break out of the basic construct. Relevant to my examination of General Patraeus’ field manual, notice how the GOP candidates in future months will avoid presenting the need for “well-informed, culturally astute leaders” that they also avoided in 2004, yet the ultimate goal of base GOP voters will be urging their candidates to achieve (victory in Iraq), according to Patraeus, is reliant on the opposite of a simple “Coke vs. Pepsi” construct, which I don’t doubt will be as much as any Republican candidate offers. (Original Post)
Since the twin towers have fallen, there’s been a consistent approach taken by political strategists and speech writers for the Bush administration to condition each of us to accept two specific non-truths about what is happening in the world today. In lieu of the direction our government has taken in response to the attacks, as well as the words spoken at the republican national convention, it has now become quite transparent. Motive was determined early on to be a word to steer clear of at all costs, and to this day has not factored into the president’s rhetoric in any sort of a logical way. The second non-truth is that the Arab world contains two types of people, terrorists and the oppressed. The terrorists are indistinguishable and not driven by anything but hatred for our way of life. This is the package that has been presented throughout, and tragically it has led to a turn of events such as that in time our nation will have to learn again the forgotten lessons of our own history. An unwillingness to proceed through necessary steps essential to understanding the nature of our opposition has once again allowed politics to triumph over legitimate authority.
Motive is one of the three primary elements, along with method and opportunity, required for a law enforcement investigator or prosecutor to establish a prime suspect in a criminal case. It is literally the natural starting point for humans to determine culpability when they have been done wrong. In his speech at the convention on Monday, John McCain stated, “We were united. First in sorrow and anger – then in the recognition we were attacked not for a wrong we had done, but for who we are.” Osama Bin Laden claimed responsibility for the attacks shortly after the towers fell. America’s history with this man is a historically common occurrence as our government over the years has repeatedly used an individual or group to carry out our initiatives abroad, only to turn its back once assistance was no longer necessary. Would the republicans have us believe that Osama closed his eyes and arbitrarily spun a globe one day to determine who’s planes he would hijack? The perpetrator admitted to his crime, yet motive has remained a political interpretation that has directed us from bringing him to justice and instead down a path reminiscent of similar mistakes that sent us to war in Vietnam.
Before and during the Vietnam war the citizens of this country were consistently fed big talk about the communist threat in the world and what it would mean to our country’s survival should we not take the fight to the enemy in the name of preserving democracy and freedom abroad. The public rallied behind this ideal of saving the world, and was reminded quite often of the surprise existence of Russian missiles on the island of Cuba in 1962. The reality of an act such as that of the Russians with no motive other than a desire to destroy us based on who we were, allowed for the politicization of our future actions abroad for the sake of preventing communism from taking over everything we know and hold dear. It was this dynamic that allowed for the leaders of that time to justify irrational decisions and garner the support of the people based on a false premise that communist extremism on another side of the globe was our solemn obligation to combat and rectify in the name of democracy and freedom.
The enemy in today’s scenario is the ‘terrorist’, and besides the fact that they reside in a certain part of the world and use religion to recruit their members, there isn’t much that is said by our leaders about these people. The same can be said for the entire region in which they come from. This is by design, as throughout the childhoods of baby-boomers, the same amount of background knowledge was provided about communists. By diluting the chance of Americans to identify in any way with the people we’re sent off to kill and liberate, the social impact of our actions is not felt in a personal way by those who don’t experience it first hand. By reminding us of the 9/11 attacks as often as possible, republicans manage to ensure that hatred and ignorance is never overcome by logic or reason. Our classification of the entire population of that region being either ‘terrorist’ or ‘oppressed’ suits the political needs of this administration, and in doing so prompts each of us to turn our backs on our own history of prejudice and why we outlawed it.
It’s not until after the last bullet has been fired and the last bomb has been dropped, that the American public becomes aware of the realities their government strategically kept from them. Not until the end do we come to the realization that we all do it the same way. In the late 80’s programs were initiated with students from both Russia and the United States writing pen-pal letters to one another and traveling in groups to visit each others’ country. What the children of both countries realized was that they had much more in common with each other than they’d ever been told. Soldiers returning from Germany after WW2 often spoke of when the enemy had conceded victory, and that they realized during the time spent with them how similar they were to the average German soldier. The idea that it was not the soldiers they were fighting that whole time, but the government who put them up to it, resonated as a lesson learned about the absolute power of government and the amount of damage it could cause with its words.
It has happened again, and the words of the republicans are being broadcast across the nation during these days of the convention. The concept of motive has been slain and buried by these politicians, while truth of what that motive caused in death and destruction is replayed for us over and over again. Republicans are shamefully exploiting the most horrific moment of our recent history, while incorporating absolutely nothing of what we learned from WW2, Vietnam or the Cold War in their leadership or decision-making. For the sake of being able to say that he ‘wasn’t a one-termer’, President Bush has turned back the hands of time and confirmed the opinion a lot of people around the world already had of our country. At this point there seems to be nothing he or the republicans would not be willing to mortgage for four more years. This charade of attacks and non-truths in New York City is truly a low point in our history. Judging from the amount of times Giuliani referred to 9/11 in his speech (11), it’s a celebration of a murder, with the perpetrator still on the loose.