Ho Hum; Four Years After 9/11
By Vincent Fiore (09/11/05)
While the flood waters are pumped out of the condemned city of New Orleans, lost to the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina is the upcoming anniversary of an event which was wholly man-made, and of singular importance: September 11, 2001.
As the forth anniversary of that brutal and horrific day approaches, the politicians--mostly Democrats--and the old media, are preoccupied once again with the hunting of George W. Bush.
Not that I didn’t expect it, mind you, for let’s face it: “If a tree were to fall in the forest, with no one around to hear, does it make a sound?” We can leave that for academia and the philosophers to debate, but what would assuredly follow, and be dutifully reported, is that Bush himself cut it down.
But for all intent purposes, that’s where we stand in these “Divided States” today. After 9/11, 2001, we had the members of Congress signing “God Bless America” on the steps of the Capitol. Today, a few days after the largest and possibly deadliest catastrophe to take place since 9/11, we have:
* Political officeholders like Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu (D), saying: “If one person criticizes our sheriffs, or says one more thing, including the president of the United States, he will hear from me…I might likely have to punch him.”
(www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/9/4/101101.shtml)
* Howard Dean, DNC Chairman and the face of the Democratic Party, speaking to the members of the National Baptist Convention, said: “We must ... come to terms with the ugly truth that skin color, age and economics played a deadly role in who survived and who did not.” (www.breitbart.com/news/2005/09/07/D8CFNMPG0.html)
* Hollywood’s finest, like Sean Penn, trying to stage a publicity stunt by going to New Orleans to “rescue children,” but “sadly,” came up short, as his boat sprang a leak. Rumors “abound” that Penn’s personal photographer’s tripod may have been the culprit.
Either that, or his pointed, yet empty head.
(www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,16494464%5E1702,00.html)
* Prominent black personalities, like Oprah Winfrey stating: “This makes me so mad. This should not have happened. I think we all - this country owes these people an apology.” (www.nytimes.com/2005/09/07/arts/television/07opra.html)
* Black rapper Kayne West, saying of America and its president: “They've given them permission to go down and shoot us. George Bush doesn't care about black people.”
* Black activist Randall Robinson, incredibly, stating that “black hurricane victims in New Orleans have begun eating corpses to survive.” Robinson also claims to “have finally come to see my country for what it really is, a monstrous fraud.” (Robinson has since retracted the claims of black cannibalism.)
(www.huffingtonpost.com/randall-robinson/new-orleans_b_6643.html)
* Black leaders like Jesse Jackson, speaking about Hurricane Katrina, and calling Bush “incompetent,” saying that racism is partly to blame. Jackson criticized “the historic indifference to the pain of poor people and black people” in this country. (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050902/ap_on_re_us/katrina_jackson_hk4)
* Al Sharpton, another black leader, was reported saying: “I feel that, if it was in another area, with another economic strata and racial makeup, that President Bush would have run out of Crawford a lot quicker and FEMA would have found its way in a lot sooner.”
(www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9173374/)
Am I picking on our black brothers and sisters here? You bet your sensitivity training manuals I am. Frankly, as an American first, and a “white” American second, I would ask all of you “black Americans” if that is how you wish to be viewed--as a separate entity for the media and the rest of America--to look at as a continually put-upon people, subject to the whims of “the white man.” Please, get a grip on yourself, and think about what you say.
The Caucasian equivalent of such racial and muddle-headed thinking would go something like: “I have seen nothing but white people doing the rescuing and donating on your behalf” or “Governor Blanco is white, so you are right, and she must be to blame.” Whoops. She’s a Democrat, so that’s just not possible.
Are the above statements as absurd when you actually say them, much less read them? Of course, they are. But what the heck, race hustlers do it all the time, and the mainstream media just print it anyway as if it’s monolithic, unimpeachable fact.
And speaking of the facts, many have been learned in recent days, and will be learned in the weeks to come. It is becoming increasingly clear that the biggest disaster besides Hurricane Katrina is the state and local government branches of Louisiana, which, among other things:
* Did not follow their own evacuation plan.
(http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/HurricaneKatrina/story?id=1102467&page=1)
* Did not inform FEMA officials as to the severity of the situation until 9/1, nearly three days after the Hurricane. (www.washingtontimes.com/national/20050905-120743-9482r.htm)
* Warned the City of New Orleans residents that “In the event of a major hurricane, you're on your own.” (http://drudgereport.com/flash3kt.htm)
* Resisted the personal efforts of President Bush to nationalize relief efforts.
(http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0509/05/ltm.01.html)
* Blocked the Red Cross from delivering lifesaving food and water to the New Orleans Superdome. (http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/9/7/235423.shtml)
The human and economic loss that has transfixed the nation’s attention since Hurricane Katrina laid waste to the Gulf Coast, has been hijacked in other troubling directions.
To think that an actual dialogue is being established among the old media, unthinking black leaders, and partisan-poisoned Democrats that a white Republican president would calculatedly turn his back upon black Americans after such a cataclysmic event…? Well, that is more than any person of sanity could hold to.
I condemn all who would think such thoughts, and I call on those who are unbalanced by those thoughts to dismiss them. Those who would engage in such political harlotry and undisguised power-seeking do it on the backs of the right and good in this country.
A close friend who was filled with concern over the recent hurricane destruction and the coming anniversary of 9/11, asked me: “How can we defeat terrorism, and stop another 9/11 from occurring again, when we cannot even come together in our own country without politicizing any and all events, so much so that we accuse each other of murder by neglect?”
I could not answer in any way that wholly satisfied her, and could not help but think of a saying voiced by the late British playwright, George Bernard Shaw: “We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.”
Sunday is the forth anniversary of 9/11, and to some, it is merely an afterthought. Can the nation afford to engage in such profligate hate every time God, nature, or terrorism asserts itself into our lives?
So far, the playwright seems prophetic as we forget our recent history involving the solidarity of 9/11, thereby dooming America to repeat it.
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