"It's gonna be September now for many years to come"

It's cloudy and gray outside my window. I understand that New Yorkers call cloudless sunny days "9/11 days;" the only reason I mention that is that one of my most distinct memories of Sept. 11, 2001, was how utterly, surrealistically blue the sky was (I was living in Annapolis at the time, and, as I recall, it was cloudless and sunny across the entire Eastern seaboard that day). And the reason I mention that is that I feel highly unqualified to offer any words of remembrance of 9/11; and even if I were qualified, I wouldn't say anything: Such is my temperament that I find the prohibition of mourning to be the most reverential act one can do for the dead.

But perhaps I should reflect, if not on 9/11 itself, then on what has haunted me most for the last five years: the reckless course our country has taken since then, beginning with the failure to capture Osama bin Laden, continuing with the invasion and occupation of a country that had nothing to do with the attack, and culminating in the current situation, where President Bush and the Republican Congress repeatedly wave the banner of terrorism in order to justify their unjust and unworkable policies. It appears to finally be losing its effect, but the fact is that we have had five years in which we could have seriously taken on al-Qaeda and improved relations with the Arab and Muslim world; and not only have those five years been wasted, but Bush and the Republican Congress have tossed this country down a hole in Iraq that may take five more years, if not five more decades, to crawl out of.

Matthew Yglesias writes:

It seems like these anniversaries should be apolitical. Like there ought to be some neutral zone from which to critique the administration's crass politicization of American pain and American memory. But it's not, I think, realistic. National myths, national anniversaries, national memory of big events is always political. It only starts to look apolitical if one side or another decisively wins the battle for interpretation.

It would be one thing if there were a consensus, not on every detail of an anti-terrorism policy, but at least on the broad contours of such a policy. What we have, however, is a drive for one-party rule masquerading as a policy. Dick Cheney's view is paradigmatic of the Republicans' strategy: Even criticizing current administration policy will cause us to lose Iraq (assuming it can even be saved in the first place); likewise with terrorism, taxes, energy policy, etc. The challenge of our time, then, is to refute the slander that opposition to the current government is opposition to America itself. We can only hope that refutation will come this November.

I began this post by linking to a poem, and perhaps it's best to close by citing another poem, this one by Leonard Cohen:

I used to be your favorite drunk
Good for one more laugh.
Then we both ran out of luck
And luck was all we had.
You put on a uniform
To fight the civil war
I tried to join but no one liked
The side I'm fighting for.

So let's drink to when it's over
And let's drink to when we meet
I'll be waiting on this corner
Where there used to be a street

It wasn't all that easy
When you upped and walked away
But I'll save that little story
For another rainy day
I know the burden's heavy
As you wheel it through the night
The guru says it's empty
But that doesn't mean it's light.

So let's drink to when it's over
And let's drink to when we meet
I'll be waiting on this corner
Where there used to be a street

You left me with the dishes
And a baby in the bath
And you're tight with the militia
And you wear their camouflage
Well I guess that makes us equal
But I want to march with you
It's just an extra to the sequel
To the old, Red, White & Blue

So let's drink to when it's over
And let's drink to when we meet
I'll be waiting on this corner
Where there used to be a street

It's gonna be September now
For many years to come
Many hearts adjusting
To that strict September drum
I see the ghost of culture
With numbers on his wrist
Salute some new conclusion
That all of us have missed.

So let's drink to when it's over
And let's drink to when we meet
I'll be waiting on this corner
Where there used to be a street.