And Now a Word From the Churlish

You won't believe what some lefty so-and-so's are saying about 9/11 ten years after (as quoted in Layton-besotted NOW Magazine):

"The war in Iraq and its costs are inseparable from the wars in Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia and elsewhere. The Department of Defence costs are hardly the whole story: Add costs for aid to the governments (such as they are) of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere. Add also the costs to care for the U.S. veterans of these wars. Add to that the costs of domestic security. Add also the interest we annually pay for the deficit spending that has financed the wars. In short, if all the wars were to end today, the costs already incurred would be from $3.2 to $3.9 trillion."

WINSLOW T. WHEELER, director, Straus Military Reform Project, Center for Defense Information

“The more we know about the Long War doctrine, the more we understand the need for a long peace movement. With peace voters making a critical difference in numerous electoral battlegrounds, however, Obama might plausibly announce a peace dividend in the trillions of dollars, and transfer those funds to conservation and America’s state and local crises. His answer to the Tea Party Republicans will have to be a Peace Party.”

TOM HAYDEN, Alternet

"After a decade of false alarms and fizzling terror plots, you’d think the media would be more skeptical of government warnings – and perhaps exercise a little restraint. But then in July came word of a new al Qaeda threat: terrorists who will sew explosives inside themselves. It was dubbed a ‘nightmare scenario.’ More cautious analysts pointed out the difficulties of pulling off such a stunt would be considerable. But in a seemingly endless war on terror, media caution and skepticism are still in short supply.”

PETER HART, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting

"It is too easy to forget that there are still almost 50,000 U.S. troops occupying Iraq. We are paying almost $50 billion this year for that war. Imagine what we could do with those funds: provide health care for 43 million children for two years. Or fund new green middle-class jobs for 3.4 million workers – including those thousands of soldiers we could bring home. President Obama, when he was a candidate, called it a ‘dumb war.’ The U.S. role has gotten smaller, but it sure isn’t over. And it hasn’t gotten any smarter."

PHYLLIS BENNIS, Institute for Policy Studies

Running for president, Obama flirted with the title of ‘the peace candidate.’ Once ensconced in the White House, however, he has been firmly in ‘conflict management’ mode. In his Nobel Prize speech, he emphasized that he would resort to the instruments of war to preserve the peace, and he has subsequently deployed such tools as intervention, escalation and targeted assassination. He believes that task forces and white papers and parboiled rhetoric can give the outward impression of adult supervision even as his administration expands the use of drones and the Joint Special Operations Command. The presidential superego is in charge of the speeches. The presidential id, meanwhile, is in charge of the arsenal.

JOHN FEFFER, Foreign Policy in Focus

"It is useful to bear in mind that the [9/11] crimes could have been even worse. Suppose that the attack had gone as far as bombing the White House, killing the president, imposing a brutal military dictatorship that killed thousands and tortured tens of thousands while establishing an international terror centre. That would have been a lot worse than 9/11. Unfortunately, it is not a thought experiment. I am referring to what in Latin America is often called “the first 9/11”: September 11, 1973, when the U.S. succeeded in overthrowing the democratic government of Salvador Allende in Chile with a military coup that placed General Pinochet’s brutal regime in office."

NOAM CHOMSKY, TomDispatch.com

"We are now enduring a parade of wistful, contemplative, self-regarding pundit ?meditations on The Meaning Of 9/11 10 Years Later or, far worse, self-righteous moralizing screeds about the nature of ‘evil.’ If I could impose one media rule, it would be that following every column or TV segment featuring commentators unloading their Where-I-Was-On-9/11-And-How-I-Felt tales, there would be similar recollections from parents in the Muslim world talking about how their children died due to pre-9/11 acts of the U.S. and its client states or post-9/11 American bombs, drones, checkpoint shootings and night raids."

GLENN GREENWALD, salon.com