David Brooks on "Keeping the Faith"

Ah - a David Brooks column in The New York Times this morning that didn't make me choke on my Colombian Supreme (that's non-designer coffee in the industrial-sized can, tyvm), talking about the Democrats and the Iowa caucuses, focusing on a 55-year-old progressive teacher who still wants to believe that a politician could actually become a force for good change.

The zinger - which you knew had to be in there - came at the end of the piece, where he states, "I'm struck by how oblivious this campaign has been to the consequences of 9/11."

Oblivious, David? Or just tired of seeing how the right has used and abused and corrupted 9/11 into an excuse to force through some of the worst policies put forth in an industrialized nation in the past two centuries?

Talk about oblivious and then explain why the White House squashed the efforts of the 9/11 investigatory panel, including their recent request to extend the inquiry? Bush insisted it was not needed for more than a year, then he tried to kill it by putting Henry "Never met a secret affecting all of the American people I would like to share" Kissinger in charge, then underfunding ($3 million for the 9/11 investigation compared with $50 million for the Columbia shuttle inquiry) it, and finally, making sure that they stonewalled every question the panel put to it.

Bush clearly saw - or his handlers clearly spelled it out for him - how 9/11 could make a lot of people rich, take a lot of seemingly guaranteed American rights away, and turn the event into something worse than all the years of the Cold War had ever been. Sadly, I'd argue easily now that what Bush and Company has done since 9/12/01 actually outweighs the horror of that beautiful, warm September 11th morning when nobody managed to stop a single damn plane from wreaking death and destruction.

There's a lot to answer for why four different planes could manage to strike in one way or another that day. But why let truthful facts get in the way when the US now says it has its "20th hijacker" (the third such claim, as I recall, first Massaoui and then Jose Padilla and now this new fellow) in custody and Bush so desperately needs to fuel hate and fear in order to win his reelection (wait.. he didn't quite get elected the first time).