Bunch of Damn Children

I was reading Tacitus today. While I am a liberal, I enjoy what Tacitus has to say. He usually presents himself as an independent thinker and someone who, while conservative, looks past the blather to understand what the core issues are. He's not one (usually) for vitriol or hype. Others amongst his crew are not so even-handed.

At any rate, Bird Dog sallies forth today with a lot of blather about the Sandy Berger thing. He links to a Hugh Hewitt piece that basically claims the 9/11 commission is a dodge to keep Clinton from getting into trouble over the attack. I try to ignore Bird Dog when I read Tacitus - he has precisely the sort of talking point and vitriol laden screeds that help no one but a partisan with deaf ears. This one really grates though.

Hey, Bird Dog, you want to know who is to blame for 9/11? Here's a very small portion of the list:

• Osama bin Laden - for planning and financing


• 19 hijackers - for doing it


• Bill Clinton - for not doing more to break this cycle earlier


• George W. Bush - for being so obsessed with Iraq and Star Wars


• The National Intelligence Apparatus - For being so f***ing turfy about their stuff that they can't coordinate a drinking binge in a distillery


• Congress - for being too damn cheap to invest in proper security


• Flying Public - for being in such a hurry that a five minute delay for screening was unacceptable to begin with

The list goes on - poorly thought policy by Israel, coddling governments in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, the Sudan and Pakistan. Oh it goes on and on. Ultimately we all have a part to play in the blame game for this. We are all accountable - we played politics with everything from school lunches to security and that got us there. We are so focused on our American exceptionalism that we refused to believe that someone might not see things the way we do and that got us there.

Grow up all of you. It is a collective guilt we bear for this tragedy. We all blew it in one way or another. And as far as I'm concerned, I could give a rat's ass less whose fault it is. I want it fixed. I watched my wife suffer the loss of her mother in the World Trade Center under awful, public circumstances while the pundits blathered (and still blather) on. I don't want more widows and orphans made while we look for ways to make each other look bad. I don't want another tragedy to come about because Hugh Hewitt is so busy making Bill Clinton look bad that he can't bring some of his will to bear on making us all safer. I don't want more deaths because Atrios is so busy making Dubya look like a fool or criminal that he can't bring his soapbox to bear in making us safer.

We are all in this together. I'm sick and tired of partisan ranting taking the place of reasonable dialogue and I am tired of people who are so puffed up on their own self-importance (myself included) that they cannot see beyond their own politics to a way for everyone to gain. This divisiveness is utter arrogance and stupidity in equal amounts.