• Home
  • About
    • Straight Up
    • Jan Herman
    • Contact
  • AJBlogs
  • ArtsJournal

Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

9/11 AND THE ELECTION

September 11, 2004 by cmackie

On the third anniversary of 9/11, the
best way for Americans to honor the dead is to look to the future by realizing that
the upcoming presidential election will be a referendum not on the candidates for the White House
but on the conscience and convictions of the electorate itself.


Will there be no accountability on Abu
Ghraib
 from the Bush gang, for example, as has become apparent,
because voters do not have the moral spine to hold it responsible for the prevaricating
“miscalculations” in Iraq?


Will American voters accept — and by accepting, approve of — the gang’s “pattern of dishonesty” (Paul
Krugman’s term) in everything from character issues like the Maximum Leader’s sketchy
evasions about his own military service to policy issues like the cooked books of the
federal budget deficit?


American voters ought to heed the advice of former Secretary of Defense Harold Brown,
who participated in an investigation of the Abu Ghraib scandal that found a failure of
leadership from top to bottom in the chain of command. Although Brown refused to call
for the appropriate resignations of the top brass, as he should have, he said in Congressional testimony quoted Friday by the New York
Times that, as the Times paraphrased it, judgments about the conduct of the war in
Iraq, on Abu Ghraib and other matters, were up to voters to make.
(Italics added.)


“When it comes to overall performance, there’s another way of dealing with it, and that’s
called an election,” Brown said.


Do Americans realize that by not holding the Bush gang accountable for gross violations of
democratic principles of governance they would be condoning what has happened and blackening
their own reputation? That by giving the Bush gang “four more years” they would be stamping
their approval on the historic anomaly of the 2000 election, when the U.S. Supreme Court
mistakenly appointed an unelected president?


To elect the Bush gang, truly for the first time, would be tantamount to shrugging off the
American ideals for which the terrorists of 9/11 had such revulsion. It would be the worst way to
honor the nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania who died on
9/11.

Share on email
Email
Share on facebook
Facebook
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on reddit
Reddit

Filed Under: main

Jan Herman

When not listening to Bach or Cuban jazz pianist Chucho Valdes, or dancing to salsa, I like to play jazz piano -- but only in the privacy of my own mind.
Another strange fact... Read More…

About

My Books

Several books of poems have been published in recent years by Moloko Print, Statdlichter Presse, Phantom Outlaw Editions, and Cold Turkey … [Read More...]

Straight Up

The agenda is just what it says: news of arts, media & culture delivered with attitude. Or as Rock Hudson once said in a movie: "Man is the only … [Read More...]

Contact me

We're cutting down on spam. Please fill in this form. … [Read More...]

Archives

Blogroll

Abstract City
AC Institute
ACKER AWARDS New York
All Things Allen Ginsberg
Antiwar.com
arkivmusic.com
Artbook&
Arts & Letters Daily

Befunky
Bellaart
Blogcritics
Booknotes
Bright Lights Film Journal

C-SPAN
Noam Chomsky
Consortium News
Cost of War
Council on Foreign Relations
Crooks and Liars
Cultural Daily

The Daily Howler
Dark Roasted Blend
DCReport
Deep L
Democracy Now!

Tim Ellis: Comedy
Eschaton

Film Threat
Robert Fisk
Flixnosh (David Elliott’s movie menu)
Fluxlist Europe

Good Reads
The Guardian
GUERNICA: A Magazine of Art & Politics

Herman (Literary) Archive, Northwestern Univ. Library
The Huffington Post

Inter Press Service News Agency
The Intercept
Internet Archive (WayBackMachine)
Internet Movie Database (IMDb)
Doug Ireland
IT: International Times, The Magazine of Resistance

Jacketmagazine
Clive James

Kanopy (stream free movies, via participating library or university)
Henry Kisor
Paul Krugman

Lannan Foundation
Los Angeles Times

Metacritic
Mimeo Mimeo
Moloko Print
Movie Geeks United (MGU)
MGU: The Kubrick Series

National Security Archive
The New York Times
NO!art

Osborne & Conant
The Overgrown Path

Poets House
Political Irony
Poynter

Quanta Magazine

Rain Taxi
The Raw Story
RealityStudio.org
Bill Reed
Rhizome
Rwanda Project

Salon
Senses of Cinema
Seven Stories Press
Slate
Stadtlichter Presse
Studs Terkel
The Synergic Theater

Talking Points Memo (TPM)
TalkLeft
The 3rd Page
Third Mind Books
Times Square Cam
The Tin Man
t r u t h o u t

Ubu Web

Vox

The Wall Street Journal
Wikigate
Wikipedia
The Washington Post
The Wayback Machine (Internet Archive)
World Catalogue
World Newspapers, Magazines & News Sites

The XD Agency

Share on email
Email
Share on facebook
Facebook
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on reddit
Reddit
This blog published under a Creative Commons license

an ArtsJournal blog

Copyright © 2025 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in