Friday, September 08, 2006
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Mr. President, please don't.  We don't need another 9/11 anniversary speech, you remind us of that horrible event pretty much on a daily basis.  In fact, you've used it to justify your every action to the point in my opinion that you've pretty much stripped the horror of that day of any sense of meaning beyond use as a well-worn political crutch. 

Try staying home as well.  Have a quiet contemplative ceremony at the National Cathedral or the White House; something with no political speeches and more respect for the fallen for a change.  FDR didn't go to Hawaii every Dec. 7th to give a speech at Pearl Harbor, nor did Lincoln make an annual jaunt to the South Carolina coast and memorialize the taking of Ft. Sumter... both men were far more preoccupied with actually winning wars over cheap public relations.  They recognized what you do not: it was not the events that started those wars themselves that were the defining moment of their times, but where we would be when the fighting ended.  I don't hear that from you, nor do I expect I ever will.  

RM