Thoughts in a Haystack

BlueGal has organized a blogswarm over the anniversary of the Presidential Daily Briefing entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US" that occurred just a month before the 9/11 attacks. Presumably we are to blame Bush for not himself connecting the several hundred ... if not several thousand ... dots between bin Laden and Mohamed Atta and the rest.

I'm of the opinion that what Bush did or didn't do before 9/11 pales to insignificance compared to his failures afterward. Instead of using the opportunity to leverage Americans into a more closely knit society, to rally us to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and to call on all of us -- rich and poor and in between -- to sacrifice in aid of a renewed belief in the ideals for which this country was founded, he squandered the worldwide sympathy and good will the attacks engendered, turned the very words "nine-eleven" into partisan political buzzwords and set about dismantling -- rather than strengthening -- the Constitution that embodies American aspirations to be something worth the world emulating.

A much more instructive anniversary for today is the destruction of Hiroshima and its conflicted message of the power of American industrial ingenuity, the triumph, no matter how temporary, of democracy over truly evil tyranny, and the culmination of all that in final acts of horrible destruction. Larry Moran has an excellent post on Hiroshima at Sandwalk that is highly recommended reading.