We’re going to go out on a limb here and guess that when Bush delivers his speech on the second anniversary of 9/11, he’ll once again point to Iraq as a victory in the war on terror. We won’t belabor the notion that what’s happening in Iraq right now is hardly a victory. We will remind everyone that the Bush administration never could produce evidence that Iraq supported al Qaeda, which is why it propagated the falsehood of an imminent threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.
We’re ready to bet that he’ll bring up Iraq in the context of the war on terror in part because he’s done it before, apparently working on the premise that a lie repeated often enough will eventually be accepted as truth. Sadly, the lie is also becoming truth in reality, as the conditions in Iraq create more willing volunteers for terrorist organizations every day.
He’ll also point to Iraq because he has little else to point to: Afghanistan is a mess, and many of the leaders of al Qaeda, including Osama bin Laden, are still at large.
As he has before, he’ll call for sacrifice. He’ll urge us to stay the course his administration has contrived for us. He may even use this opportunity to once again ask us to acquiesce to the Patriot Act. And he’ll do it all in memory of the victims of 9/11.
He could have given them any number of legacies: vengeance against the people actually responsible for the attacks; a country that is truly safer and more secure; progress in international relations grown out of the goodwill of the nations who rallied around us after the tragedy. Instead, he’s creating a legacy of failure and deliberate, cynical misdirection.
They deserve a more worthy memorial.
