The greatest casualty of 9/11: The America we knew

Shahid Buttar is the Executive Director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee.


Reflections on the 9/11 attacks are important and moving. But most overlook the enduring legacy of the attacks, in the form of the vastly greater damage done to American principles over the past decade. Whether in the context of surveillance, torture, or the congressional cowardice that has enabled them, our leaders have sullied the legacy of an America that once inspired the world.

Earlier this summer, when facing a crucial accountability moment for an agency that continues to abuse the rights of millions of Americans, members of Congress asked no tough questions, avoided controversy, and submitted to a White House proposal to entrench the FBI leadership—at the same time as they fought to the knuckles over issues that Congress created in the first place by spending the country into a fiscal black hole and absurdly cutting taxes in the midst of multiple wars.

Most astounding in all this is Congress's apparent abandonment of its own institutional interests. Even in the face of documented lies by the FBI's leadership to congressional committees and repeated proof that Congress, the press, and the public are hearing only tiny slices of the whole truth, Congress has failed to use its many tools to seek transparency and investigate executive abuses.

Credit ratings agencies, the debt ceiling, and AA+

So, apparently Standard and Poor's (S&P) downgraded the U.S. credit rating from AAA to AA+, the first time America has been listed as anything but AAA. Now, there are problems with this move - for one, S&P seems to have screwed up their calculations by at least $2 trillion. They are also the only credit rating agency to downgrade the U.S. to AA+. That being said, this may have an impact on the global financial markets come Monday. Those things are as stable as Charlie Sheen on a bender these days, and this will probably be yet another factor that messes with them (though I suspect the problems in China [where the government is attempting to control an economic growth slowdown], and Europe [where it seems likely that Greece will default, possibly leading Spain and Portugal to default as well], are really what is driving the markets tanking) come Monday. So, you know, panic! There are two points from all of this that I find interesting. One is the main critique from S&P re: the U.S. downgrade. The other is the credibility of credit rating agencies.

Skin color and the Oslo attacks

Breivik, the white, right-wing, Christian fundamentalist,
terrorist suspect in the Oslo attacks.

I wanted to direct you to a good article about the media's coverage of the tragedy in Oslo, in which a white, right-wing Christian terrorist killed 92+ people, including children in a youth camp swimming in the water while he was dressed as a policeman. You will probably never hear those words associated with him because, like Joseph Stack, Jared Lee Loughner, and many others, he is simply crazy and not a terrorist with that background. For the press, it seems only brown people can be labeled terrorists, and only with them can we make sweeping generalizations about their race, nationality, political ideology, or religion.

Lupe isn't a Fiasco

“I think I’m Malcom X, Martin Luther/ Add a King, Add a Jr.” –Lupe Fiasco Building Minds Faster (B.M.F.)

Recently, Lupe Fiasco has been catapulted to national media attention, not (just) for his music but his political commentary. Two weeks ago on an internet interview with CBS Fiasco said, “To me the biggest terrorist is Obama in the United States of America. I'm trying to fight the terrorism that's causing the other forms of terrorism. You know the root cause of terrorists is the stuff the U.S. government allows to happen. The foreign policies that we have in place in different countries that inspire people to become terrorists." While this set off a firestorm of angry comments and media attention about Lupe’s uncritical eye and virulent condemnation of the continuing trope of Barack Obama as a terrorist, most of these comments miss the mark. Lupe Fiasco, as his name signals, routinely finds himself in controversial positions that are both contradictory and illuminating at the same time. Lupe’s comments about Obama and politics, in a way, channel Malcolm X’s and Martin Luther King Jr’s political commentary.

In November of 1963, Malcolm X commented on President John F. Kennedy’s assassination by suggesting the violence that took Kennedy’s life were “chickens coming home to roost.” At this time, Kennedy was thought of as a friendly president to Black folks and ultimately this became a wedge comment that alienated him from many Black Americans who identified as politically progressives but found his comments irresponsible given the contentious political climate.

New Developments in Egypt

A short follow-up - as many of you know, our very first podcast was on the uprisings in the Middle East, particularly in Egypt. There have been a lot of developments on the ground there, most of which (not shockingly) have not been covered particularly well by the media. Our guest on that first show, Hesham Sallam, has a great write-up on what's going on right now. Hesham is a friend and colleague who is a PhD candidate at Georgetown, studies the persistence of authoritarian regimes, comparative Middle East politics, and is the co-editor of Jadaliyya, and online e-zine produced by the Arab Studies Institute. Give it a read on Jadaliya by clicking here.