The following editorial was made by Keith Olbermann on his MSNBC show,
"Countdown" tonight on the 5th anniversary of 9/11. It is the most
powerfully courageous speech I've heard by a network newsperson since
the Vietnam War era:
This hole in the ground
Half a lifetime ago, I worked in this now-empty space. And for 40
days after the attacks, I worked here again, trying to make sense of
what happened, and was yet to happen, as a reporter.
All the time, I knew that the very air I breathed contained the remains
of thousands of people, including four of my friends, two in the planes
and -- as I discovered from those "missing posters" seared still into
my soul -- two more in the Towers.
And I knew too, that this was the pyre for hundreds of New York
policemen and firemen, of whom my family can claim half a dozen or
more, as our ancestors.
I belabor this to emphasize that, for me this was, and is, and always
shall be, personal.
And anyone who claims that I and others like me are "soft,"or have
"forgotten" the lessons of what happened here is at best a grasping,
opportunistic, dilettante and at worst, an idiot whether he is a
commentator, or a Vice President, or a President.
However, of all the things those of us who were here five years ago
could have forecast -- of all the nightmares that unfolded before our
eyes, and the others that unfolded only in our minds -- none of us
could have predicted this.
Five years later this space is still empty.
Five years later there is no memorial to the dead.
Five years later there is no building rising to show with proud
defiance that we would not have our America wrung from us, by cowards
and criminals.
Five years later this country's wound is still open.
Five years later this country's mass grave is still unmarked.
Five years later this is still just a background for a photo-op.
It is beyond shameful.
At the dedication of the Gettysburg Memorial -- barely four months
after the last soldier staggered from another Pennsylvania field -- Mr.
Lincoln said, "we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot
hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here,
have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract."
Lincoln used those words to immortalize their sacrifice.
Today our leaders could use those same words to rationalize their
reprehensible inaction. "We cannot dedicate, we can not consecrate, we
can not hallow this ground." So we won't.
Instead they bicker and buck pass. They thwart private efforts, and
jostle to claim credit for initiatives that go nowhere. They spend the
money on irrelevant wars, and elaborate self-congratulations, and
buying off columnists to write how good a job they're doing instead of
doing any job at all.
Five years later, Mr. Bush, we are still fighting the terrorists on
these streets. And look carefully, sir, on these 16 empty acres. The
terrorists are clearly, still winning.
And, in a crime against every victim here and every patriotic sentiment
you mouthed but did not enact, you have done nothing about it.
And there is something worse still than this vast gaping hole in this
city, and in the fabric of our nation. There is its symbolism of the
promise unfulfilled, the urgent oath, reduced to lazy execution.
The only positive on 9/11 and the days and weeks that so slowly and
painfully followed it was the unanimous humanity, here, and throughout
the country. The government, the President in particular, was given
every possible measure of support.
Those who did not belong to his party -- tabled that.
Those who doubted the mechanics of his election -- ignored that.
Those who wondered of his qualifications -- forgot that.
History teaches us that nearly unanimous support of a government cannot
be taken away from that government by its critics. It can only be
squandered by those who use it not to heal a nation's wounds, but to
take political advantage.
Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being
American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did
the media. Nor did the people.
The President -- and those around him -- did that.
They promised bi-partisanship, and then showed that to them,
"bi-partisanship" meant that their party would rule and the rest would
have to follow, or be branded, with ever-escalating hysteria, as
morally or intellectually confused, as appeasers, as those who, in the
Vice President's words yesterday, "validate the strategy of the
terrorists."
They promised protection, and then showed that to them "protection"
meant going to war against a despot whose hand they had once shaken, a
despot who we now learn from our own Senate Intelligence Committee,
hated al-Qaida as much as we did.
The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a
war, on the false premise that it had 'something to do' with 9/11 is
"lying by implication."
The impolite phrase is "impeachable offense."
Not once in now five years has this President ever offered to assume
responsibility for the failures that led to this empty space, and to
this, the current, curdled, version of our beloved country.
Still, there is a last snapping flame from a final candle of respect
and fairness: even his most virulent critics have never suggested he
alone bears the full brunt of the blame for 9/11.
Half the time, in fact, this President has been so gently treated, that
he has seemed not even to be the man most responsible for anything in
his own administration.
Yet what is happening this very night?
A mini-series, created, influenced -- possibly financed by -- the most
radical and cold of domestic political Machiavellis, continues to be
televised into our homes.
The documented truths of the last fifteen years are replaced by
bald-faced lies; the talking points of the current regime parroted; the
whole sorry story blurred, by spin, to make the party out of office
seem vacillating and impotent, and the party in office, seem like the
only option.
How dare you, Mr. President, after taking cynical advantage of the
unanimity and love, and transmuting it into fraudulent war and needless
death, after monstrously transforming it into fear and suspicion and
turning that fear into the campaign slogan of three elections? How
dare you -- or those around you -- ever "spin" 9/11?
Just as the terrorists have succeeded -- are still succeeding -- as
long as there is no memorial and no construction here at Ground Zero.
So, too, have they succeeded, and are still succeeding as long as this
government uses 9/11 as a wedge to pit Americans against Americans.
This is an odd point to cite a television program, especially one from
March of 1960. But as Disney's continuing sell-out of the truth (and
this country) suggests, even television programs can be powerful
things.
And long ago, a series called "The Twilight Zone" broadcast a riveting
episode entitled "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street."
In brief: a meteor sparks rumors of an invasion by extra-terrestrials
disguised as humans. The electricity goes out. A neighbor pleads for
calm. Suddenly his car -- and only his car -- starts. Someone suggests
he must be the alien. Then another man's lights go on. As charges and
suspicion and panic overtake the street, guns are inevitably produced.
An "alien" is shot -- but he turns out to be just another neighbor,
returning from going for help. The camera pulls back to a near-by
hill, where two extra-terrestrials are seen manipulating a small device
that can jam electricity. The veteran tells his novice that there's no
need to actually attack, that you just turn off a few of the human
machines and then, "they pick the most dangerous enemy they can find,
and it's themselves."
And then, in perhaps his finest piece of writing, Rod Serling sums it
up with words of remarkable prescience, given where we find ourselves
tonight: "The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and
explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts,
attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men.
"For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a
thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its
own -- for the children, and the children yet unborn."
When those who dissent are told time and time again -- as we will be,
if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public
chorus -- that he is preserving our freedom, but that if we use any of
it, we are somehow un-American...When we are scolded, that if we merely
question, we have "forgotten the lessons of 9/11"... look into this
empty space behind me and the bi-partisanship upon which this
administration also did not build, and tell me:
Who has left this hole in the ground?
We have not forgotten, Mr. President.
You have.
May this country forgive you.
And not to belittle anyone's feeling, but, yes, this was an attack on the entire country, but you have to be here in NYC or at the Pentagon to understand that this was more than that. We knew the people that were in there, and many of us might have been in there ourselves, had been there in the past, and looked at those buildings out our offices, our schoolrooms, when we went for a drive. For us, the skyline of NYC and particularly Manhattan is ever present within our view directly or within a short distance.
Last night, I stood in my yard at midnight and saw the beams of light from "Tribute in Lights" directly to the east. They gradually faded into the cloudless sky, and the mixed emotions I felt at seeing them, from my home, are troubling and hard to explain. Not to denegrate anyone, but a tourist from Nebraska is not and never will share how that is. It's like walking through a cemetary reading names and dates on the stones of strangers, versus stumbling upon that of someone you knew. We all knew somebody there. We all lost somebody there. And we lost our innocence and safety there as well.
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