Life before and since The Day That Rod Was There

No matter which way he was heading, or what he was actually doing, on The Day That Rod Was There, he was definitely doing something.

Has it really been fifteen years?

Rod's recent post, Life Before 9/11, made me suddenly realize that it really has been fifteen years today since The Day That Rod Was There.

And as that realization dawned on me, I began to look up slightly, into the middle distance, stroked my chin thoughtfully, and, as harp music from somewhere began to ripple and the background became all flashback swirly, I suddenly found myself magically transported back into Kathleen's marvelous record of the many subtly different first person accounts of The Day That Rod Was There:

Hey everyone, let's not forget: the fifth anniversary of The Day That Rod Was There is coming up on 9/11. Of course, whether The Day That Rod Was There was also The Day That Rod Saw The Towers Fall Before His Own Eyes depends if you are reading Rod from March 2006 ("I stood on the far side of the bridge watching the tower collapse) and April 2006 ("having been a New Yorker on 9/11, and seen the south WTC tower collapse in front of my own eyes") or the Rod from 2002 ("Though I didn't see it with my own eyes, others did.") Good thing he had that handy reporter's notebook he kept writing in so he could record what he was seeing before his own eyes [cough] .... or maybe just hearing? .... But hey, details, details. What's important is that 9/11 is The Day That Rod Was There. Not that he would give you the chance to forget:

9/8/06, Beliefnet Crunchy Con blog: "I'm sitting here at my desk in downtown Dallas, almost five years and half a country away from 9/11, but I can still remember exactly how it sounded when the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed. I was standing on the Brooklyn Bridge, just about to run off and into Manhattan, and had just told a colleague that the towers wouldn't fall. Suddenly, the south tower fell. It fell with a faraway roar that sounded exactly like what it was: a Niagara of dust and glass."

8/06, Beliefnet: " All 9/11 did was show who they really were when put to the test. It happened to me, in my own small way. I was a columnist for the New York Post that morning, and hustled from my waterfront apartment across the Brooklyn Bridge, notebook in hand, to cover the catastrophe. I made it as far as the Manhattan side of the bridge before I ran into a Post colleague. “Don’t go down there,” she said. “Those things are going to fall.”“Oh come on, they’re not going to fall,” I said, genuinely disbelieving her. “That’s the World Trade Center.” Moments later, down came the south tower. I staggered backward, and held on to her to keep my knees from buckling. I scrawled these words on my reporter’s notebook, which I still have: “the building isn’t there it’s gone.”

5/1/06 Beliefnet: "I remember that morning, rushing from my apartment on the Brooklyn waterfront across the Brooklyn Bridge toward the fires in lower Manhattan. Every step of the way I was in denial about what was happening in front of me. Halfway across the bridge, a man with a portable radio shouted to the crowd, "They've hit the Pentagon!" And I thought, "You jerk, quit scaring us with false rumors." On the other side of the bridge, a colleague of mine from the New York Post told me not to go down there, that those buildings were going to fall. I told her don't be silly. Within a minute or so, down came the south tower.

4/17/06, Beliefnet: "I realize in bitter retrospect that, having been a New Yorker on 9/11, and seen the south WTC tower collapse in front of my own eyes, I wanted vengeance."

3/29/06 NRO Crunchy Con blog: I’ve told the story before, so I won’t go into it in detail again, but I will never forget as long as I live the experience of that morning. When I walked out my front door on the Brooklyn waterfront and saw the towers burning, I ran for the Brooklyn Bridge, to get over to the site to cover the story. Within the hour, I stood on the far side of the bridge watching the south tower collapse. Seconds before it came down, a NYPost colleague told me not to go down there, that those things were going to fall. I looked at her with total sincerity and conviction, and said, “Come on, that’s the World Trade Center, they’re not going to fall." Nothing that ever happened to me was as traumatic as what followed”

7/05 Dallas Morning News: Over and over that morning, even as I ran with my reporter's notebook across the Brooklyn Bridge toward the burning towers, I effectively denied what was happening, literally disbelieving my own eyes. When I made it to the Manhattan side of the bridge and was about to go down into the city, I ran into a journalist colleague. "Don't go down there," she said. "Those things are going to fall." "They're not going to fall," I told her with utter confidence. "C'mon, that's the World Trade Center." Seconds later, there was a terrible roar, and down came the South Tower,..."

9/04, National Review Online, the Corner: "POSTCARD FROM THE PAST [Rod Dreher] A friend forwarded to me today the e-mail I'd sent to some friends that morning three years ago. It's startling to me to read this now. Notice the date and time stamp. I'd just walked in out of the conflagration: Subject: Unbelievable Date: Tuesday, September 11, 2001 10:09 AM I'm not going to tie up the phone lines long, but I wanted to tell you that we're okay. My dad phoned this morning to say, "The World Trade Center is on fire. Go look out your front door." You can see them clearly across the harbor from our front door. "Oh my God! Julie come see!" I said. I ran down to grab my reporter's bag, knowing I'd have to go over to the fire. At that point, we didn't know what caused the fire. Then, while downstairs, I heard a tremendous explosion and screams. I ran out to the street. "A plane just hit the second tower!" a man screamed. I knew the subways would be out, so I decided to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge to get to the scene....I made it to the last pillar of the Brooklyn Bridge before going into downtown. I ran into a colleague of mine. She said, "We better not go over there. Those towers are going to blow up. One minute later, the south tower fell in on itself. I nearly fainted. It ... well, I can't describe it now. I'm too shaken. Everybody on the bridge screamed. Some collapsed in tears. A woman started to vomit. My knees went weak, and a huge plume of soot and smoke barrelled toward us. I decided to turn around and go home."

National Review 3/03: "And there was one of the towers, billowing smoke and paper, which was being carried by the wind right over our house in Brooklyn. While I was downstairs gathering my notepad so I could run across the bridge to cover the fire, I heard the explosion of the second plane hitting. It shook our building. I opened the door, saw the second tower burning, kissed Julie goodbye, and told her, "I'm going to get as close as I can. ...There was an exodus of workers crossing the bridge out of Manhattan. I stopped to talk to some of them. They were gasping and sobbing, talking about having seen people jumping to their deaths from the upper floors. I have never seen that kind of trauma in anyone. They were very nearly in shock. I am fortunate that I stopped to talk to them, because I had plenty of time to have made it to the south tower. As it was, I was standing on the bridge watching the fire, about to begin my descent into Manhattan, when the south tower collapsed. My knees nearly buckled. I was sure I had just seen tens of thousands of people die. I turned back toward home, because there was no getting into Manhattan now."

National Review 9/02: " Nor shall I forget the sound of my voice telling a New York Post colleague I was trying to coax to follow me off the Brooklyn Bridge and into lower Manhattan, "Oh, come on, they're not going to fall." I believed it. Thirty seconds later, the south tower fell. Though I didn't see it with my own eyes, others did..."

Crisis Magazine, 11/01: "I live on the Brooklyn waterfront, just across the harbor from lower Manhattan. On that horrible morning on September 11, my father phoned me from Louisiana to tell me to look out my front door, the World Trade Center was on fire. It was, and I ran down to the basement to grab my reporter’s pad. Then I heard the explosion from the second crash and scrambled upstairs and out my front door. A stunned and cursing plumber from the hospital next door screamed, "It was a passenger plane!" He must have that wrong, I thought. But he wasn’t wrong. None of us was conditioned to understand what was happening. Twenty minutes later, I was hustling across the Brooklyn Bridge toward the calamity—wending my way through the exodus out of the city—when a man with a radio screamed, "They’ve hit the Pentagon!" That can’t be true, I thought; it’s too cinematic. I am a professional movie critic, and I tend to think of movies as simile and metaphor. Don’t most of us? The movies are our common language, the only interpretative framework any of us have for a disaster this spectacular. And as we all know—or knew until recently—real life isn’t like the movies. Eight minutes later, I watched the first tower come tumbling down in a cataclysm of flame, concrete, and glass"

As the man himself says, read the whole thing.

Tragic as the events of 9/11 were, though, what can we learn from narratives like this going forward?

Why, that, like life itself, many narratives ultimately end up being fluid, protean, anecdotal butterflies tossed by the mind's tormented winds of desire for a really good, knock-'em-dead line or maybe a tasty snack. As Heraclitus of Ephesus himself pointed out some 2,500 years ago, "τὰ ὄντα ἰέναι τε πάντα καὶ μένειν οὐδέν" - "no man ever steps in the same Benedict Option twice, for it's not the same Benedict Option and he's not the same man".

So, as we solemnly commemorate the horrors and the losses of fifteen years ago, let us at the same time try to take away at least one optimistic sliver of hope that maybe, finally, we have learned a lesson about powerful narratives and those that tell them.

It Takes One

It's painful for me to read hand-wringing like this article about how military action is problematic for the image people have of President Obama and his poor, wittle wegacy. Excerpt:

But make no mistake: Obama’s escalation of airstrikes and the use of U.S. personnel to help “degrade and destroy” the extremist Sunni group represents a major setback for a commander in chief whose early international appeal was built on a pledge to remove the United States from “permanent war footing.”

“How did this group that came in determined to remedy the Bush administration’s overreach . . . end up embroiled in a far more open-ended conflict that has just as far-reaching consequences?” said Rosa Brooks, a former Obama administration official who served at the Pentagon from 2009 to 2011. “This is a legacy issue for him.”

Trying to be "not like Bush"—or not like anybody else for that matter—is not a successful strategy for leadership. Unfortunately that was a successful campaign strategy for getting Obama elected, and it's hard for Democrats to see the difference.

There is actually a great deal more hubris in thinking you can quit fighting a war somewhere and that will suddenly bring peace, love and a big legacy prize as an added bonus than in thinking that you better start fighting when your enemies attack you like President Bush did. That's how all this started, lest we forget. We had war declared on us.

An illustration comes to mind. I took my four oldest kids to see Indians when we got stomped by Detroit 12-1 on Labor Day. I was explaining to my 10-year-old son that the pitcher, Corey Kluber, would get credit for the loss. He responded, "I think it's the Detroit Tigers' fault that the Indians lost." He had a point. Osama Bin Laden declared war when he attacked the United States on September 11, 2001, not George W. Bush. This is not a "tango"; it only takes one to instigate a war.

Instead of responding to polls showing "war weariness" on the part of the public, I would like to see our leaders confronting the real issue. That issue is that the war against Islamic Jihad is going to require that the populace increase their fortitude and their resilience to defeat these enemies however long it takes. Wars are won or lost. If you leave, if you take your ball and go home, well, that's a loss.

Another Little Review of The Little Way of Ruthie Leming

An Amazon reviewer, M. Heiss, recently read and reviewed the Little Way of Ruthie Leming. I was alerted to her review (I know she is female from reading her other reviews) through her positive comment on my review of the book. She states "Thanks for your brilliant review. Wish mine were half so lucid. If I had read your review, I would not have bothered writing my own." I responded assuring her that her review is as good as mine. In fact I think it is much better, and I'm glad she didn't read my review if that really would have suppressed the expression of her opinion. Here it is in its entirety:

A book that doesn't know what it wants to be.
by M. Heiss

Since when are we classifying cathartic musings as biography? This book is not a biography -- slap a "Self-Help" label on this thing.

The book is a mess. I'm sure the author was a mess, given the circumstances. And writing about a messy situation when you're an emotional mess results in, well... a book like this.

Rod Dreher gives you the obligatory 3 parts:

1) Introductions — get to know the family's personalities, the conflicts, the author's response to 9-11 (wait, what?), and the community norms in small-town Louisiana.
2) The diagnosis as a rallying cry — Everybody's personality shines in this section. LOTS and LOTS of spiritual awakening. And LOTS more. And then some MORE.
3) Resolution — no surprises. More catharsis. More spiritualism.

From the title and word of mouth, I thought this would be a book about Ruthie Leming's fight with cancer. Instead, this book was about the author's fight with/against his family and himself. Who wins? Not the reader.

A few things are obvious to me after reading this, and the evidence presented is heartening. The first is that this person probably would have been a "Contra-Crunchy" had she known and cared about the conversation back in 2006. It seems like she had been unfamiliar with Rod Dreher's other writings and his, um, unique stylistic idiosyncrasies before reading The Little Way of Ruthie Leming. She has a normal reaction to seeing bull crap proffered as filet mignon. Her remark "the author's response to 9-11 (wait, what?)" succinctly sums up Kathleen's and our own reactions to his ever-evolving 9/11 narratives.

The other encouraging aspect comes from her beginning sentence — "Since when are we classifying cathartic musings as biography?" This insight demonstrates that there is critical thinking going on in the world, and that at least some of those critical thinkers can and do express their thoughts with great precision. Another thing she pegs is the spiritualism present in the book. Dreher fans might object to this word since most traditional Christians shun attempts to contact the spirit world, and Rod Dreher has always touted his traditional Christian belief and practice in each new church he bounces into every few years. His apologists need to read Dreher's short story A Ghost in the Family if they don't have the time or desire to read The Little Way of Ruthie Leming. That should shut them up if they still don't want to admit that he's into spiritualism.

Speaking of A Ghost in the Family, I was thinking of doing a long form review of this gem of inadvertent comedy here on the blog back in June. But I was too busy at the time. I was planning to also include the background information of how Rod knew Father Termini and his Ghostbuster friends. Maybe another time.

If you think Ms. Heiss's review is helpful in any way, please go over and give it a YES vote. It's already got a down vote; I don't know who possibly could have down-dinged it within minutes of it being posted. But so far it's batting .500.

Occupy's Blood Lust

From Scott Heiferman, Founder of Meetup: "9/11 & us"

I got this email from Scott Heiferman who got the idea for Meetup.com shortly after 9/11/01, as he explains.

Fellow Meetuppers,

I don't write to our whole community often, but this week is special because it's the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and many people don't know that Meetup is a 9/11 baby.

Let me tell you the Meetup story. I was living a couple miles from the Twin Towers, and I was the kind of person who thought local community doesn't matter much if we've got the internet and tv. The only time I thought about my neighbors was when I hoped they wouldn't bother me.

When the towers fell, I found myself talking to more neighbors in the days after 9/11 than ever before. People said hello to neighbors (next-door and across the city) who they'd normally ignore. People were looking after each other, helping each other, and meeting up with each other. You know, being neighborly.

A lot of people were thinking that maybe 9/11 could bring people together in a lasting way. So the idea for Meetup was
born: Could we use the internet to get off the internet -- and grow local communities?

We didn't know if it would work. Most people thought it was a crazy idea -- especially because terrorism is designed to make people distrust one another.

A small team came together, and we launched Meetup 9 months after 9/11.

Today, almost 10 years and 10 million Meetuppers later, it's working. Every day, thousands of Meetups happen. Moms Meetups, Small Business Meetups, Fitness Meetups... a wild variety of 100,000 Meetup Groups with not much in common -- except one thing.

Every Meetup starts with people simply saying hello to neighbors. And what often happens next is still amazing to me.
They grow businesses and bands together, they teach and motivate each other, they babysit each other's kids and find other ways to work together. They have fun and find solace together. They make friends and form powerful community. It's powerful stuff.

It's a wonderful revolution in local community, and it's thanks to everyone who shows up.

Meetups aren't about 9/11, but they may not be happening if it weren't for 9/11.

9/11 didn't make us too scared to go outside or talk to strangers. 9/11 didn't rip us apart. No, we're building new community together!!!!

The towers fell, but we rise up. And we're just getting started with these Meetups.

Scott Heiferman (on behalf of 80 people at Meetup HQ) Co-Founder & CEO, Meetup New York City September 2011

The Blue Mass on 9/11

This is a good article about the Blue Mass which was celebrated at my parish on Saturday, 9/11. The priest gave a great homily about 9/11 which was straightforward, patriotic and of course very Catholic. The article points out that it is becoming common to celebrate the Blue Mass on 9/11 for obvious aptness.

Here's an excerpt from the article.

A Blue Mass is traditionally held to honor law enforcement officers, particularly those who have died in the line of duty or otherwise demonstrated a heroic commitment to their work for the community. Fr. Thomas Dade, a Washington, D.C. priest who founded the Catholic Police and Firemen's Society, began the tradition in 1934 of celebrating an annual Mass for emergency workers, who always attend in uniform.

Fr. Dade's tradition has since spread throughout the nation. Because hundreds of police and rescue workers were killed at the World Trade Center on September 11, the date is becoming an increasingly common one on which to celebrate the Blue Mass.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester in New York will hold a Mass to “pray in a special way for all firefighters and first responders, and for all those who lost their lives at the World Trade Center tragedy nine years ago,” on September 11, 2010 at 4 p.m., with Bishop Matthew Clark as the celebrant.

In other news, an ultra-traditional Catholic friend-of-a-friend who somehow got my email address sent me a 1500-word email (I counted the words using MS-Word statistics, so I'm not exaggerating) about how the 9/11 attacks were the actions of an "out of control criminal government" and the official narrative about Islamic terrorism was merely a fable "spun by the cabal of American CORPORATE Media." I almost sent him this link, but decide to use my time better. My encounters with Trutherism have let me conclude that the best Gospel reference under which to file it is Mark 9:29, "This kind can go out by nothing, but by prayer and fasting."

Bud horses honor victims of 9/11

Keep America Safe on Ground Zero Mosque: "Use some good sense"

Here is a video featuring some of the people that Nancy Pelosi wants to investigate.

I'm giving some money to Keep America Safe, so let me say this to Speaker Pelosi: INVESTIGATE ME, NANCY.

Phil Orenstein's Open Letter to Mayor Michael Bloomberg Regarding the Ground Zero Mosque

Source. Here's the complete text:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg
City Hall
New York, NY 10007

Dear Mayor Bloomberg,

This letter is addressed to the mayor as well as to all public elected officials in New York City to recognize the only reasonable action to take for the City of New York and for all the people of America. In the name of righteousness and common sense, I demand that you to speak out in opposition to the proposed mosque, the 13-story Islamic Cultural Center called the Cordoba House, just a stone’s throw away from Ground Zero where the former World Trade Towers crumbled into dust on September 11, 2001 along with nearly 3000 New Yorkers.

The opening date for the Ground Zero mosque is September 11, 2011, the 10 year anniversary of the horrific terrorist attack which is seared into the memory of all Americans and directly touches the lives of every New Yorker through friends, family or co-workers who perished on that day. As long as we have memory that sustains us, we will never forget the horrific tragedy, and we emphatically oppose the construction of any mosque on the hallowed grounds where our fellow New Yorkers and loved ones were murdered in the horrific plot by 19 Muslim terrorist hijackers. This is not a freedom of religion issue. It is an issue of speaking out in name of righteousness. We have no objections to the construction of mosques. But why at Ground Zero? By the same token, who would allow the symbolic ignominy of a Shinto shrine commemorating Emperor Hirohito at Pearl Harbor with the opening day of December 7th?

The proposed mosque, a joint venture of the Cordoba Initiative and the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA), is presided over by its founder, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf who paid $4.85 million for the building in December 2009. His bogus claim that the money came from New York Muslim contributors needs to be investigated. Where did the $4.85 million come from and above all who is footing the bill for the projected $100 million cost of the project? According to a New York Post report, the founding organizations have accounted for only a fraction of the projected costs and it’s likely that wealthy Saudi benefactors will pick up the tab. The 2009 financial statement of Rauf’s organization, ASMA, shows that they received large donations from foreign sources, including $576,312 from Qatar, a nation notorious for funding international terrorism.

As mayor of the greatest city in the U.S., you as well as all public elected officials need to take a stand as Mayor Rudy Giuliani did in 2001. He rejected the $10 million donation for September 11th relief efforts from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal after the prince suggested that United States’ foreign policies contributed to the 9-11 attacks, in a statement warning that the United States "must address some of the issues that led to such a criminal attack." Imam Rauf, with his deceptively “moderate” demeanor, also made a similar assertion about one week before the Saudi prince. On the CBS News broadcast of 60 Minutes on September 30, 2001, Rauf said: “…United States policies were an accessory to the crime that happened…Because we have been accessory to a lot of innocent lives dying in the world. In fact, in the most direct sense Osama bin-Laden is made in the U.S.A."

Imam Rauf will predictably follow in the radical tradition of his father, Dr. Muhammad Abdul Rauf and his Islamic expansionist plans for building mosques and Islamic centers in New York City. Dr. Rauf senior built the Islamic Cultural Center on 96th St. purchasing prime Manhattan real estate and completing the massive project with funding from 46 Islamic nations including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Libya. Is it any wonder why Imam Rauf is hiding the funding sources for the purchase of the building for the mosque at Ground Zero? It is unconscionable that the Ground Zero mosque will have similar funding sources, including Saudi Arabia, which produced 15 of the 19 terrorist hijackers, and continues to finance jihad operations world-wide.

The greatest insult to the memories of our fellow New Yorkers who perished on 9/11 is the scandal that after 10 years, Ground Zero remains a gaping hole in the ground while construction for the new World Trade Center is being pushed back many more years and perhaps decades. Now a 13-story mosque at Ground Zero whose imam blames America for the terrorist attacks, will be completed within one year.

I call on the mayor of the great City of New York and all our elected officials to take a public stand and end this national disgrace. Terminate plans at once for the construction of the Ground Zero mosque.

Sincerely,

Phil Orenstein

Nothing here with which to disagree, nothing to add. Except... well, wouldn't it be ironic if the Islamists do build their big mosque and somebody sort of blows it up with a bomb or a missile or something? Just saying.

Is Bin Laden in Iran?

I don't know how much truth is in this article or the film it mentions, Feathered Cocaine, but it certainly is a fascinating read. It has that dark, otherworldly feel to it, and rightly so.

Krauthammer on the Van Jones Resignation

To describe 9/11 Truthers, I said "bizzaro world", Charles Krauthammer says "hallucinatory alternative reality". Same difference, OK? Great piece.

In the White House no more. Why? He's gone for one reason and one reason only. You can't sign a petition demanding not one but four investigations of the charge that the Bush administration deliberately allowed 9/11 — i.e., collaborated in the worst massacre ever perpetrated on American soil — and be permitted in polite society, let alone have a high-level job in the White House.

Unlike the other stuff (see above), this is no trivial matter. It's beyond radicalism, beyond partisanship. It takes us into the realm of political psychosis, a malignant paranoia that, unlike the Marxist posturing, is not amusing. It's dangerous. In America, movements and parties are required to police their extremes. Bill Buckley did that with Birchers. Liberals need to do that with "truthers."

You can no more have a truther in the White House than you can have a Holocaust denier — a person who creates a hallucinatory alternative reality in the service of a fathomless malice.

But reality doesn't daunt Jones' defenders.

One Obama administration source told ABC that Jones hadn't read the 2004 petition carefully enough, an excuse echoed by Howard Dean.

Carefully enough? It demanded the investigation of charges "that people within the current (Bush) administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war."

Where is the confusing fine print? Where is the syntactical complexity? Where is the perplexing ambiguity? An eighth-grader could tell you exactly what it means. A Yale Law School graduate could not?

Fine print, right.

9/11: Bizarro World Editions

Well, it wouldn't be a real anniversary of 9/11 without hearing from the wacko contingent. So now we turn to this sophmoric blog post by a self-described "laid-off blogger" who asks the question:

How does a plane crash harmlessly into the farmland of Pennsylvania after some apparent "struggle" in the cockpit?

Wowwww... I'd never thought of that! We'll ignore the clumsy and imprudent use of the word harmless for a incident with 44 fatalities. Has this guy ever been on a plane? He should look out the window the next time and he'll see a lot of uninhabited land.

There is a lot of other stuff in his piece which might sound brilliant when posited in a barber shop full of unemployed and retired pontificators who think Bush is still President, or in a bar full of, shall we say, overly exuberant people on Friday night around 11:45pm. But it is wisest to never publish this material, and this example is a good reminder. The problem is that what happened on flight 93 is so well-documented at this point. The Black Box is public. And one could find many other examples of good material, and a good starting point would be here (1), to use as ammunition against those who for one reason or another fail to grasp that some people hate America due to their own belief systems. Our difficulty or our failure to understand or relate to these belief systems is hardly a basis for belief more compelling than hard evidence. It is always a good idea to have such information at hand if you're optimistic and believe as I do that we still may find cures for both cancer and "trutherism".

Near the end, an attempt is made to persuade his readers that it doesn't really matter what happened, let's just enjoy life and be grateful for what we have, yada yada yada. So it really doesn't matter, I guess, whether or not some shadow conspiracy inside the U.S. Government offed its own citizens and the war against Islamic extremists is completely farcical. Just give us some good ol' fashioned construction jobs and a couple cases of beer and we're set to sail.

His concluding paragraph throws a bone to those "that feel they deserve more answers and in-fact deserve the truth" by stating that the truth should be provided to them. He may as well have said that an explanation should be given to the "truthers" which satisfies their own criteria for an acceptable narrative of events. I'm not sure why they'd need that, and I don't know who he thinks could deliver it to them. They've thrown out the 9/11 Commission Report and the many articles debunking their theories. If they are so smart, they should just be content with their own Bizarro World version of events. Back in post-9/11 2001, before the rotten egg of "trutherism" was even being incubated, I personally talked to a liberal guy who claimed that he knew 9/11 was going to happen. And I worked with a conservative guy who actually said that if he had been in New York City on 9/11, "things would have gone down differently." What—would you have reached up and grabbed the planes, bringing them safely to the ground with your bare hands? So the history of 9/11 Bizarro cartoons go back to 9/12. Last thing I knew, both these geniuses were unemployed.

-----
Notes:

1 - 01/03/2019: I replaced a dead link with a better written debunking of the "truther" position with regard to the 9/11 attacks. The author, Jay Chambers, presents the case patiently as it has been done many times. Hopefully people will abandon their fantasies in favor of what is likely, however uncomfortable it makes them feel. We are at war.

2 - 01/03/2019: I did find a link to debunking material on Popular Mechanics's site. Why they don't update dead links to redirect to new locations is beyond me, but they are one of many "glossy" companies who fail at this.

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Barone: Obama's Convenient Fantasies

Lots of good points in Barone's piece yesterday.

Liberal columnists have been attacking Republicans because some of their voters are "birthers," believers in the absurd charge that Barack Obama was not born in Hawaii and thus is not a natural-born U.S. citizen. But they have failed to identify any "birther" that occupied a position in the Republican firmament comparable to that of "truther" [Van] Jones in the Obama administration.

Reminds me of Mark Steyn's comment on Hugh Hewitt's show yesterday about those ACORN employees caught in a sting where they are giving out advice on how to file taxes for a prostitution ring and other money-laundering secrets. Steyn said something like "They talk about the right wing having a lunatic fringe, but here is the American left's lunatic mainstream." I'm paraphrasing, but that was the gist.

If there were money to be made in green jobs, private investors would be creating them already. In fact, big corporations like General Electric are scrambling to position themselves as green companies, gaming legislation and regulations so they can make profits by doing so. Big business is ready to create green jobs -- if government subsidizes them. But the idea that green jobs will replace all the lost carbon-emitting jobs is magical thinking.

I have a good friend who truly believes that wind, hydroelectric and ethanol could be making everyone millions of dollars, providing jobs, getting us off foreign oil (sorry, Canada) and saving the Earth. But "these corporations" are too stupid to take advantage of these huge money-making opportunities. I've tried to reason with him, explaining that there are some smart people who actually work for some of "there corporations" who are exceptionally good at finding ways to make more money... but... well... (sigh).

There is an element of convenient fantasy as well in Obama's health care statements to date. We are going to save money by spending money. We are going to solve our fiscal problems with a program that will increase the national debt by $1 trillion over a decade. We are going to guarantee you can keep your current insurance with a bill that encourages your employer to stop offering it.

Another sigh is in order, I suppose. Anyway, I love how he ends: "No-enemies-to-the-left and convenient fantasies may work in Chicago. They don't work so well when your constituency is the whole United States." I surely hope not. But Obama sure is giving it the good ol' college professor try.

H/T Rerum Novarum.

Fouad Ajami on 9/11, Obama and Afghanistan

Fouad Ajami's WSJ article is a good way to kick off our 9/11 readings. Excerpt:

No Arabs had been emotionally invested in Mullah Omar and the Taliban, but the ruler in Baghdad was a favored son of that Arab nation. The decapitation of his regime was a cautionary tale for his Arab brethren. Grant George W. Bush his due. He drew a line when the world of the Arabs was truly in the wind and played upon by powerful temptations. Mr. Obama and his advisers need not pay heroic tribute to the men and women who labored before them. But they have so maligned their predecessors and their motives that the appeal to 9/11 rings hollow and contrived. In those years behind us, American liberalism distanced itself from American patriotism, and the damage is there to see.

While denying that somehow the Afghanistan war "is" Vietnam—good for Mr. Ajami—he does offer parallels.

This is LBJ in 1964, from a definitive history by A.J. Langguth, "Our Vietnam," published in 2000: "I just don't think it is worth fighting for, and I don't think we can get out. It's just the biggest damn mess." He would prosecute what he called that "bitch of a war" with a premonition that it could wreck his Great Society programs. He knew America's mood. "I don't think the people of the country know much about Vietnam, and I think they care a hell of a lot less." Yet, he took the plunge, he would try to "cheat"—guns and butter at the same time, the war in Asia and the domestic agenda of civil rights and the Great Society. History was merciless. It begot a monumental tragedy in a land of no consequences to American security.

Wars are great clarifiers. Barack Obama's trumpet is uncertain. His call to arms in Afghanistan does not stir. He fears failure in Afghanistan, and nothing more. Having disowned Iraq, kept its cause at a distance, he is forced to fight the war in Afghanistan. So he equivocates and plays for time. Forever the campaigner, he has his eye on the public mood, the steel that his predecessor showed in 2007 when all was in the balance in Iraq is not evident in Mr. Obama.

Steel is useful in warfare, or so I've heard.