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April 27, 2006

Manipulated out

The new movie Flight 93 opens this Friday. When I first saw the previews on TV--I found them a little disturbing. It felt like someone was picking at a scab that I thought had healed.

A lot of people lost personal friends and loved ones on 9/11. I didn't. The conventional wisdom seems to be that if someone close to you didn't die then you don't have the same kind of stake in what took place. I believe that this is the reason that so many of us really haven't healed. We didn't lose a loved one..but we lost our country. Or at least what we thought was our country.

Which brings me to this morning's Wall Street Journal Featured Opinion Article by David Beamer, father of Flight 93 passenger Todd Beamer.

Beamer lost his child on September 11. Its a painful, gut-wrenching kind of loss, I'm sure. But Beamer allowed himself to be used this morning to proffer old, misleading rhetoric. He's set up to stir the coals of national grief because his son became the poster child for part of our tragedy:

There are those who question the timing of this project and the painful memories it evokes. Clearly, the film portrays the reality of the attack on our homeland and its terrible consequences. Often we attend movies to escape reality and fantasize a bit. In this case and at this time, it is appropriate to get a dose of reality about this war and the real enemy we face. It is not too soon for this story to be told, seen and heard. But it is too soon for us to become complacent. It is too soon for us to think of this war in only national terms. We need to be mindful that this enemy, who made those holes in our landscape and caused the deaths of some 3,000 of our fellow free people, has a vision to personally kill or convert each and every one of us. This film reminds us that this war is personal. This enemy is on a fanatical mission to take away our lives and liberty--the liberty that has been secured for us by those whose names are on those walls in Battery Park and so many other walls and stones throughout this nation. This enemy seeks to take away the free will that our Creator has endowed in us. Patrick Henry got it right some 231 years ago. Living without liberty is not living at all.

These passages tie my stomach into knots.

A dose of reality? As if those who've lost loved ones in Iraq haven't had those doses? The nightly reminders on the news of the deaths of our soldiers and Iraqis/Afghanis aren't doses of reality? The families pictured on the local news, burying their loved ones don't count? The constant manipulation from the Bush Administration and the newspeak pundit corps aren't enough?

The enemy that we faced on 9/11 has nothing to do with Iraq. This underhanded and sneaky attempt to tug at the heart strings of those who would feel compassion for the Beamers is so manipulative that I can scarcely articulate it.

I'm very sorry for David Beamer's loss...but is he sorry for mine? We lost much of our national soul on 9/11. The Bush Administration has worked to manipulate that loss with fear and nationalism. Our citizens have demonstrated that they're willing to abandon freedom and give up liberty--both for ourselves and for those who had nothing to do with flying planes into buildings that day.

I want people to see Flight 93, too. But I hope they view it with disgust at our leaders. The perpetrators aren't brought to justice. The deaths of our countrymen have been used to manipulate our society into a needless war. The basic foundations of freedom have been eroded to shift power to society's wealthy and elite--while taking it from the rest of us.

I'm weary of the manipulations and exhausted by the rhetoric. I'm an American who just wants her country back. Stop trying to tug at my heartstrings.

Posted by Carla at April 27, 2006 08:56 AM

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