Supposedly, there’s a silver lining behind horrific events that enables us to become stronger and better people. We have an ability to learn from tragedies, to pick up the pieces, to unite and regroup, and to evaluate our weaknesses and implement improvements. My question pertaining to 9/11 is, have we? It appears that instead of allowing 9/11 to unite us, we’ve allowed our government to divide us. Six years after the worst attack on American soil, we’re far from a safer country than we were then.

Sadly, we’ve been led astray from our attackers to a country that did not attack us. The loss on 9/11 has been used to implement a culture of fear, aka War On Terror. The Bush administration's elevation of these three words into a national mantra since the horrific events of 9/11 has had a pernicious impact on American democracy, on America's psyche and on U.S. standing in the world. Using this phrase has actually undermined our ability to effectively confront the real challenges we face from fanatics who may use terrorism against us. The possibilities of future attacks will always be, regardless of the outcome in Iraq. I hope that if we ever experience such tragedy again, it’ll be with competent leadership. We truly missed a great opportunity after 9/11. It could have resulted in a truly global solidarity against extremism and terrorism. Instead, we were sold on a culture of fear in order for the Bush administration to pursue its goals in removing Saddam (plus, it certainly helped out with his reelection). We gave up our search for Bin Laden as we all know that nabbing OBL would bring on more demands not to stay the course in Iraq. It’s just too easy for the Bush/Chaney team to pull the OBL boogieman out of the closet when needed to defend their prewar hyping of bogus WMD and the nonexistent Saddam connection. Nothing calms the peasants more than a good dose of fear. A global alliance of moderates, including Muslim ones, engaged in a deliberate campaign both to extirpate the specific terrorist networks and to terminate the political conflicts that spawn terrorism would have been more productive than a demagogically proclaimed and largely solitary U.S. "war on terror" against "Islamo-fascism."  But so, the public was sold on “mushroom cloud” fear mongering, terrorist in our taxi cabs, and  State of the Union Addresses to distort the truth. The attacks on 9/11 could have been our wake up call and made us a stronger and a more secure nation. Instead, our leaders steered us down a long and dangerous path with little chance of turning things around. They’ve burned the bridge that could have made us stronger.

As we reflect today on where we are, I encourage you to consider our future leaders. Do we really want to reelect the same lockstep representatives? As always, your comments are welcome, even if you disagree.

Andy