NY Times 9-11 Editorial: Wrath for Bush Not Terrorists, No Thanks for Heroes

The New York Times's 9/11 editorial is no less despicable for being thoroughly predictable. 

On a day when we should be coming together, the Times does its best to tear us apart. On a day when the focus should be on the terrorists who threaten us and the brave people who have defended us against them, the Times trains all its bile on the Bush administration.

Annotated excerpts:

"Without ever having asked to be exempt from the demands of this new post-9/11 war, we were cut out. Everything would be paid for with the blood of other people’s children."

Other people's children?  Perhaps the children of the people who run and largely read the New York Times don't tend to enter the military and fight and die for their country.  But why would that be the fault of George Bush?

"That pinched view of our responsibility as citizens got us tax cuts we didn’t need and an invasion that never would have occurred if every voter’s sons and daughters were eligible for the draft."

Even on 9/11, the Times finds a way to argue for higher taxes.  And is the Times really advocating the reinstitution of the draft?  Wasn't it the Times's friends in the Democratic party - led by the Times's home-town congressman Charles Rangel - who scare-mongered the draft as a Bush plot just before the 2004 election?

"When we measure the possibilities created by 9/11 against what we have actually accomplished, it is clear that we have found one way after another to compound the tragedy. Listing the sins of the Bush administration may help to clarify how we got here, but it will not get us out. The country still hungers for something better, for evidence that our leaders also believe in ideas larger than their own political advancement."

But of course that doesn't stop the Times from carefully cataloguing precisely what it sees as those sins. Leaders who believe "in ideas larger than their own political advancement": you mean like those titans of statesmanship and vision, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid? 

"It would be miraculous if the best of our leaders did something larger — expressed grief and responsibility for the bad path down which we’ve gone, and promised to work together to turn us in a better direction. If that kind of coming together happened today, we could look back on Sept. 11, 2006, as more than a day for recalling bad memories and lost chances."

Not one word to remind us of the threat that faces us.  Not one word of thanks for those who on 9/11 and thereafter have laid down their lives to fight that threat.  For the New York Times, the real enemy isn't radical Islam, it's George W. Bush.

Mark Finkelstein lives in the liberal haven of Ithaca, NY. View webcasts of Mark's award-winning TV show 'Right Angle' here. Contact Mark at mark@gunhill.net