The phone rang around 7 a.m. It was a friend of my partner, telling us to turn on the TV. Apparently she also told Donna something about what had happened, because Donna got up looking nauseated and couldn't talk.
September 11, 2001 was a very, very bad day that led to very, very bad things. The US was still in a foul mood over the disputed 2000 presidential election. After September 11, George Bush got us into two disastrous wars that still aren't quite over. We destroyed Iraq for nothing - there were no weapons of mass destruction. We spent trillions that we didn't have, following Bush's tax cuts. The economy went into a tailspin. We lost enormous social and political capital worldwide.
Thousands of Americans and persons of other nationalities died on September 11, 2001. Hundreds of thousands have died since in our wars.
It was a very, very bad day.
And to make things even more depressing:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/opinion/the-bush-white-house-was-deaf-to-9-11-warnings.html?hp#commentsContainer
Thanks, Nicholas. I have not read that op-ed yet, but I'm aware that FBI agents warned their superiors about suspicious individuals training to fly large planes earlier that year - and were largely ignored - and that there were intelligence reports about Osama bin Laden's plans.
ReplyDelete