How Long?

In the wake of this past weekend's 911 memorials, Lawrence Martin asks a question which some might consider heresy:

How long is America going to be held hostage to what happened that day? How long, owing to our modern dial-a-threat form of so-called warfare, is it going to bleed the U.S. Treasury, ratchet down its liberties and humiliate its citizenry by undressing them in order to get on an airplane.

What happened ten years ago was a body blow to the United States. But so was the attack on Pearl Harbor. Perhaps what is different is that the Second World War came to an end. This war seems to have no end.

Regardless, Martin writes,

Leaders have a choice. Given that terror can never be fully eradicated, they can establish a climate that inflates the threat with all its corrosive consequences, or establish a climate that puts the threat in a realistic perspective that allows the country to move forward.

But the paranoia continues to grow. Americans -- and Canadians -- keep watching their backs. Stephen Harper plans to reintroduce terror legislation which expired in 2007. The truth is that paranoia pays political dividends. It doesn't matter that, in North America, more people have died from snowmobile accidents since 2001 than died on September11th. Fear stifles opposition.

The danger is there. But we are cowering because we lack perspective.

Ten Years Later

This weekend, as we remember what happened ten years ago, our first thoughts should -- of course -- be for those who died at the World Trade Center. Many met horrible deaths. Those whose careful planning caused those deaths illustrate humanity at its most depraved.

But what followed -- the demonization of Islam and the trumped up invasion of Iraq -- illustrate the shameless cupidity of our present elites. And it is surely no accident that the man who personifies that cupidity -- Dick Cheney -- is now profiting from that cataclysm.

Over at truth-out.org, William Rivers Pitt writes that Mr. Cheney is "the ultimate American terrorist:"

If there were any justice to be found in this deranged country, Dick Cheney would have penned his pestiferous, self-serving little memoir by the light of a bare bulb inside the cell of a federal prison. If there were any justice to be found, Mr. Cheney would be forced to contend with the "Son of Sam Law," which, according to World Law Direct, "refers to a type of law designed to keep criminals from profiting from their crimes, often by selling their stories to publishers. Such laws often authorize the state to seize money earned from such a deal and use it to compensate the criminal's victims."

Rivers reminds his readers that this is not the first time that Cheney has profited from a human catastrophe:

He'll make a few bucks off the [book], which he can bank next to the obscene millions he gained through his nefarious Halliburton war profiteering. He was still getting paid by Halliburton while in office. Remember that? They called it a "deferred retirement benefit," an annual check with six zeroes to the left of the decimal, and all the while Cheney was steering your tax dollars into Halliburton's coffers with a blizzard of bald-faced lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Cheney has no regrets. He still thinks the invasion of Iraq was a noble mission. And he makes no apologies for the "enhanced interrogation techniques" he advocated so vociferously. And remember, too, that this arm chair warrior succeeded in avoiding military service in Vietnam because, at the time he had "other priorities."

What happened on September 11th, was a tragedy of horrific proportions. But what followed was folly -- of even more horrific proportions.