…he’s decided to ‘make it go away’.

Okay, I know I said that the next thing was going to be another legislative analysis, but this is something that I feel strongly enough about that I need to do it – and right now.

Do you remember September 11, 2001?

I don’t mean in a ‘Well-of-Course’ or ‘A Day Which Will Live in Infamy’ sense – I mean, do YOU remember 9/11?

I was the Senior Investigations Analyst in the Special Investigations Unit of an Anti-Money Laundering Department at a VeryLargeBank, specializing in terrorist financing rings, when planes started hitting buildings – One of my guys said ‘a plane just hit the World Trade Center’, and I thought he was talking about a Cessna.

A few minutes later, when the second plane hit, we knew it was a deliberate attack – and when the third plane hit the Pentagon I knew two things: 1) No one would be going home or getting any sleep in the foreseeable future and 2) that it was ‘on’ for real – they’d finally brought it to us.

September 11th, 2001 was the day that everyone – not just the Sheepdogs – finally had to admit that there really are bad people out there who want to watch it all burn – people who want to see us all dead – men, women and children – because we are Americans.

There were a number of reasons that, as a people, that realization came as such a stark wake-up call.  Our intelligence-services and military might were too efficient and imposing, our economic power was too attractive and necessary and the promise of opportunity that America represented all combined to make a large-scale terrorist-strike inside the US an unattractive prospect, especially to the high (often-times governmental)-level players in the world of international terrorism who actually call the shots – and this condition had existed for so long that most people really did have the luxury of denying the possibility of such an attack coming to our shores.

Those days are gone – as December 7th, 1941 did generations past, September 11th 2001 brought home the very real fact that we are NOT immune from the depredations of others across the globe, we are NOT invulnerable and that our continued security as a nation requires our awareness and vigilance, because otherwise we CAN be struck, our people CAN be killed in the thousands and we CAN fall to foreign attack.

The PERSONAL horror of that day can fade, as the vivid memory of all pain eventually does – but that DATE and those IMAGES will continue to stand as the very real symbol of why we must remain watchful and to continue to root out and fight evil (no, I don’t shy from that word) wherever it hides, knowing - from very real experience - that to do otherwise will mean pain and death and mourning here at home when that evil next comes to us.

September 11th, 2001 stands as our focus-point for our vigilance, our strength, and our willingness to resist – a symbol paid-for in sacrifice, in loss – a symbol paid for in blood.

Except…

Apparently, our President has decided that the focus-point of September 11th has become…inconvenient.

from the American Spectator…

Obama’s Plan to Desecrate 9/11

Hopefully, my entire lead-in has served to demonstrate why “desecrate” is NOT just an exercise in hyperbole - though perhaps ‘erase’ would be better suited.

The main gist of that article is the overarching plan to use a combination of legislation, ‘community-action-groups’ and the embarrassingly–controlled Media in an attempt to draw the collective American consciousness away from the focus embodied in September 11th.

Some excerpts:

“The Obama White House is behind a cynical, coldly calculated political effort to erase the meaning of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks from the American psyche and convert Sept. 11 into a day of leftist celebration and statist idolatry.

This effort to reshape the American psyche has nothing to do with healing the nation and everything to do with easing the nation along in the ongoing radical transformation of America that President Obama promised during last year’s election campaign. The president signed into law a measure in April that designated Sept. 11 as a National Day of Service, but it’s not likely many lawmakers thought this meant that day was going to be turned into a celebration of ethanol, carbon emission controls, and radical community organizing.

Now at this point, you might think of this as just another well-intentioned, toss-off piece of legislation with a possible potential to be exploited by more radical fringe-groups… but even aside from the blatant act of ‘turning’ September 11th in to ‘something else’, the answer to that turns out to be “not so much”.

”The administration’s plans were outlined in an Aug. 11 White House-sponsored teleconference call run by Obama ally Lennox Yearwood, president of the Hip Hop Caucus, and Liv Havstad, the group’s senior vice president of strategic partnerships and programs.”

“On the Aug. 11 call, Yearwood and other leaders kept saying repeatedly that they wanted 9/11 to be used for something “positive,” “forward-leaning,” and “productive,” said a source with knowledge of the teleconference.

The plan is to turn a “day of fear” that helps Republicans into a day of activism called the National Day of Service that helps the left. In other words, nihilistic liberals are planning to drain 9/11 of all meaning.

“They think it needs to be taken back from the right,” said the source. “They’re taking that day and they’re breaking it because it gives Republicans an advantage. To them, that day is a fearful day.”

I’m going to step in here to point out that September 11th, like December 7th, represents a date and event that inspires feelings of patriotism and resolve for our own defense, security and continuing the Good Fight - and to further point out that these people feel that this connection is harmful to their own agendas…

…so what does that really say about them?

In the words of the Bard (Joe Walsh) “On the bottom, words are shallow – On the surface, talk is cheap – You can only judge the distance by the company you keep” - so who are these people, who feel that the pro-America, pro-self-reliance feelings that emerged after September 11th are ‘harmful’ to their goals?

Let’s check the company being kept:

“Groups on the call included: ACORN, AFL-CIO, Apollo Alliance, Community Action Partnership, Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, 80 Million Strong for Young American Jobs, Friends of the Earth, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, Mobilize.org, National Black Police Association, National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, National Council of Negro Women, National Wildlife Federation, RainbowPUSH Coalition, Urban League, and Young Democrats of America.”…

“With the help of the Obama administration, the coalition is launching a public relations campaign under the radar of the mainstream media — which remains almost uniformly terrified of criticizing the nation’s first black president — to try to change 9/11 from a day of reflection and remembrance to a day of activism, food banks, and community gardens.

And, like any other insidious illness, this movement is starting quietly and slowly – though they are, technically, talking about it – doubtless in the spirit of ‘transparency’ – so that there will be examples to point to later.

On Aug. 4, the White House offered a glimpse into its plans to desecrate 9/11 for political advantage. Jones appeared in a largely ignored 33-minute video posted on the official blog of the White House to discuss the administration’s plan to flush 9/11 down the memory hole just as it has tried to do by rechristening the Global War on Terror the “Overseas Contingency Operations.”

Of this National Day of Service, Jones says little (yes, that’s Van Jones – pdf here in case of WH memory-holing – Ron) except that it will be a great opportunity “for people to connect, to find other people in your peer group who are also passionate about repowering America but also greening up America and cleaning up America.”

And, also like an insidious illness – it’s started in more than one place.

On the same day, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, and Department of Energy Under Secretary Kristina Johnson and activists held a low-key press conference. At [the conference], Yearwood said the National Day of Service will be “the first milestone” of a larger effort called Green the Block that is attempting to convince Americans that the utopian fantasy of a so-called green economy is possible without turning the U.S. into a Third World country.

The lessons learned the focus gained and the American resolve that was rediscovered on September 11th are inconvenient obstacles to the agenda of this administration and its organized supporters, so now they are trying to slip a blade between the American people and the event that woke them up to the threats against their very way of life – hoping to lift that event off of our societal consciousness so that the American people will forget – will be distracted from the vigilance, the hard-eyed watchfulness that was the result of that day…

And I’m asking you not to let them – and I’m asking you to SHOW that you’re not letting them.

While the community-organizing groups, the Administration and – surely, eventually – the media try to turn September 11th into some recycling/volunteering/healthcare-campaigning/government-expansion kum-ba-ya-fest…

Fly your flag tomorrow.

If you don’t have one, get one - and display it in Remembrance and in Honor of all the people who died on that day in 2001…

…so that we, as a country, could have the scales lifted from our eyes and see our responsibilities again.

- Ron