THE REAL LINK BETWEEN IRAQ AND 9/11

Via Bad Attitudes, this from the Guardian:

Since 9/11, America has used its victimhood to demand a monopoly on the right to feel and to inflict pain.

The trouble is that the campaign’s message ends with that day also. September 11 has served not as a starting point from which to better understand the world but as an excuse not to understand it at all. It is a reference point that brooks no argument and needs no logic. No weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? “The next time, the smoking gun could be a mushroom cloud!” No United Nations authority? “We will never again wait for permission to defend our country.” No link between Saddam and al-Qaida? “They only have to be right once. We have to be right every time.”

This is the real link between Iraq and 9/11 — the rhetorical dissembling that renders victimhood not a point from which they might identify with and connect to the rest of humanity but a means to turn their back on humanity. They portray America’s pain as a result of 9/11 not only as unique in its expression but also superior in its intensity. [emphasis mine]