Or so says The Penguin. He’s been saying all kinds of interesting things on Meet the Press lately, but his latest statement concerning “what the terrorists want” is borderline insane.

So you look at situation today in Afghanistan or even in Iraq, and you’ve got people who have doubts. They want to know whether or not if they stick their heads up, the United States, in fact, is going to be there to complete the mission. And those doubts are encouraged, obviously, when they see the kind of debate that we’ve had in the United States, suggestions, for example, that we should withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq, simply feed into that whole notion, validates the strategy of the terrorists.

And this was AFTER stating that Americans “don’t have the stomach for the fight.” Yes folks, that’s what Cheney is saying. We can’t even TALK about pulling the troops out of Iraq because that’s helping the terrorists.

The administration thinks blind obedience is the only route to victory. Dissent is being equated to helping the enemy. If that’s not Orwellian totalitarianism, I’d like to be told what is.

[tags]terrorism, iraq, war, afghanistan, cheney[/tags]

Five years. I remember where I was, as I’m sure most of us do. I remember actually thinking the world was crashing down around us, though I wasn’t in New York or DC. I think about where the country’s gone in the years between, and I get genuinely depressed.

I didn’t know anyone in the towers, nor on any of the planes. It’s for those people I have the most sympathy. They’ve been given no closure, they’ve had none of the vengeance upon the “evildoers” as they had been promised. Instead, their hearts were thrown about for purposes of politics, to have an agenda carried out that could only be done with their tragedy as a backdrop.

Hundreds of New York’s finest died when the towers fell, and today hundreds more, possibly thousands, are suffering respiratory damage thanks to the air at Ground Zero that no one felt like warning them about. The men responsible have not been brought to justice, and there appear to be no real attempts to do so.

As I write this, the president is preparing for his speech that will cut in the middle of the second half of “Path to 9/11″. Somewhere in between blaming Clinton for everything, Bush will get on television and tell us how terrible the event was, how much safer America is thanks to him, and how we must continue to be vigilant in his war on terror. No mention will be made of his inability to act prior, or his half-hearted attempts afterwards. Undoubtedly he will be surrounded by flags and cheering people to create a sense of heroism he in no way deserves.

This is a day not for mourning. This is a day for reflection. A day to reflect on where we are now, how we got there, and if we could truly call it progress. More than that, it’s a day to think into the future and to where we go now.

Do we continue to believe the words of a man who didn’t think the threat was real until it happened? Do we continue to believe that he has national security at heart when only a few months into the hunt for the perpetrator, he stopped the search so he could march off and fight the war HE wanted to fight?

As you go through your day today, think about the families and friends of those who died in the attacks. Think about the police and the firemen who risked, and lost, their lives to save them. And think about what has been done to honor the memories of their loved ones. Think about what’s happened since.

I hate to politicize a day like this, but there is always an element of politics to any tragedy. The important thing is to keep that in perspective. Don’t think about elections, parties, ideologies, who controls what. Just think about events. So many things have happened since 9/11 in the name of it. And yet so much was truly done in relation to it. Laws passed, wars fought, laws (sometimes the same as those passed) broken, all in the name of this one tragic event.

Yet our airplanes got no safer. Al Qaeda is not gone. Osama is still alive. The terrorists have not lost their numbers. Though I’m not a spiritual man, I don’t believe my soul would be able to rest as long as these remain true.

[tags]terrorism, 9/11, america, usa, politics[/tags]