An Apologetic 9/11?

[Geee]

Pajamas Media:

Words not spoken

I listened carefully to the president’s commemorative speech and many of the other public statements from our elected officials. This year’s anniversary marked a somewhat new tone, tentative, near apologetic — as if the Ground Zero and Pentagon attacks were wholly tragic rather than solely due to the premeditated murdering of radical Islamic zealots.

We’ve come a way from the resolute pact with the departed that resonated from Ground Zero, when George Bush, in his finest moment, put his arm around retired firefighter Bob Beckwith, and announced to the world, “ I can hear you, the rest of the world hears you, and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.” As the national hysteria of 2008 wears off, I think some Americans will miss that, and come to see that the reductionist “fighting them over there rather than here,” “playing offense rather than defense” had something to it.

In contrast, even today December 7 brings up more Day of Infamy resoluteness than a sense of equivocation, as something inevitable or a lesson about America’s tolerance. Even Howard Zinn did not succeed in convincing America that we needed to pause and renew our allegiance to tolerance to avoid another 12/7.

No doubt this year’s hesitancy and gloom were brought on by the controversy over the so-called Ground Zero mosque, and the combined lunatic statements from the book-burning Pastor Jones, and the now veiled warnings about Islamic payback for our supposed illiberality from the omnipresent Imam Rauf (as he finagles to get his $100 million Islamic headquarters built at the only place he can continue to bask in the limelight of controversy).