Bush Ads using 9/11

Time to change the subject.

I've been following the controversy over Bush's use of 9/11 imagery in his campaign ads, and I really don't get the objections. Let me preface this by saying that I can imagine some uses of 9/11 that would cross the line, but talking about 9/11 and using short, non-graphic images as part of a re-election campaign is totally in-bounds. However much I might disagree with decisions he has made, Bush has the right to run on what he perceives his record to be. If that includes his supposed leadership post-9/11, then so be it. As many have noted, if he didn't do that, he'd be the first president not to use his leadership of an ongoing war as a campaign issue.

What's bothering me more, however, is the way the objectors are couching their objections - specifically, the claim that 9/11 is a "national tragedy" and should not be "politicized." As Col. Potter might say: "Horsehockey!!" Although it's a "tragedy" in the dictionary sense, using that language drains the event of any moral dimension, as if it were just another example of "shit happens." The reality is that 9/11 was an act of mass murder and that mass murder was a politically-motivated act (again, whatever one thinks of what Bush has done since). To say that it is a tragedy that we can't even discuss but in tones of reverent wallowing in collective grief enables us to avoid asking the really tough questions about why it happened, how to prevent a repeat performance, and what if anything we should do to those who did it. It can't not be politicized - it was a political act. And, therefore, political actors in the US have every right to use it as part of their campaigns, within reason of course.

The attempt to stop reasonable discussion and use of 9/11 in favor of our collective self-pity is just one more sign of the "Oprahization" of American discourse, political and otherwise.