Stop commemorating 9/11

Tom Englehardt's "Tear Down the Freedom Tower", posted on 8 September 2011, caught my eye because not many have had the courage to call this country out on its colossal and costly mistakes over the past decade. Englehardt and TomDispatch certainly have done so more often and with greater force than most, too. (I must admit, I think TomDispatch more often comes off as shrill rather than passionate, making it difficult to recommend the site to the less committed.)

Ask yourself this: ten years into the post-9/11 era, haven't we had enough of ourselves? If we have any respect for history or humanity or decency left, isn’t it time to rip the Band-Aid off the wound, to remove 9/11 from our collective consciousness? No more invocations of those attacks to explain otherwise inexplicable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and our oh-so-global war on terror. No more invocations of 9/11 to keep the Pentagon and the national security state flooded with money. No more invocations of 9/11 to justify every encroachment on liberty, every new step in the surveillance of Americans, every advance in pat-downs and wand-downs and strip downs that keeps fear high and the homeland security state afloat.

[links omitted from quoted text]

I thought my own thoughts on the subject were a little bitter, but they can't hold a candle to Englehardt's. Unlike me, he had the patience to distill his thoughts into a well-linked, wide-ranging review of what this nation wrought in the wake of the attacks. Did the tenth anniversary (or more accurately, its commemoration by the press and political class) leave you a little queasy, but you can't figure out why? Englehardt's piece may help you to understand.