This article is significant, for its boldness and orginality, its ethical elevation, and the fact that it appears in what has heretofore been a left gatekeeper publication.
The Truth Can Move Us Forward
By Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich
September 10, 2008
America must move from the errant, retributive justice of 9/11 to a healing, restorative process of truth and reconciliation.
Before the Congress adjourns, I will bring forth a new proposal for the establishment of a National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation, which will have the power to compel testimony and gather official documents to reveal to the American people not only the underlying deception which has divided us, but in that process of truth seeking set our nation on a path of reconciliation.
We suffer in our remembrance of 9/11, because of the terrible loss
of innocent lives on that grim day. We also suffer because 9/11 was
seized as an opportunity to run a political agenda, which has set
America on a course of the destruction of another nation and the
destruction of our own Constitution. And we have become less secure as
a result of the warped practice of pursing peace through the exercise
of pre-emptive military strength.
It is not simply 9/11 that needs to be remembered. We also need to
remember the politicization of 9/11 and the polarizing narrative which
followed, locking us into endless conflict, a war on terror which has
wrought further terror worldwide and which has severely damaged our
standing worldwide as an honorable, compassionate nation. As we were
all victims of 9/11, so we have become victims of the interpretation of
9/11.
Our government's external response to 9/11 was to attack a nation
which did not attack us. Indeed on the first anniversary of 9/11, the
Bush Administration issued a well-publicized stern warning to Iraq,
which was part of a campaign to induce people to believe Iraq had
something to do with 9/11.
The deliberate, systematic connection of Iraq with 9/11 has led
America into a philosophical and moral cul-de-sac as over one million
Iraqis and over 4,155 US soldiers have died in a war that will cost
over $3 trillion. Additionally, soldiers from twenty-three other
countries have died in the Iraq war.
We attempt to unite Iraq by further dividing it. We talk about
restoring Iraq while taking steps to place control of its vast oil
wealth in the hands of US oil giants. And we intend to impose upon the
Iraqi people the cost of rebuilding a country our government ruined,
keeping a once-prosperous nation lashed to debt and poverty for a long,
long time. Iraq has paid for 9/11. We all continue to pay for 9/11.
The heartbreaking loss of the lives and injuries to America troops
further binds us to the Administration's illogic of the Iraq War: We
remember our troops' sacrifice by demanding more sacrifice; we support
our troops by continuing the war.
The dominant color of our new national security since 911 is
neither red, white nor blue. Every day is orange. Every day, reminders
of fear of 9/11 become banal. Yet we no longer hear the airport
announcements nor see the orange-colored warnings because they have
commonplace standards in our new national security state, as is the
Patriot Act, wiretapping, and a host of invasions of privacy and
diminution of civil liberties. The Constitution has been roundly
attacked by the very people who took an oath to defend it.
There is a powerful desire across America for change, not
necessarily from control by one political party to another, but a
change from living with lies to living with truth.
Over two dozen nations, facing peril within and without, deeply
divided by politics and war have travelled down a path of restoring
civil society through a formal process of reconciliation. At some point
within each of those countries it was understood that the way forward
is shown through the light of truth. This process is not without pain
because it requires a willingness to study evidence from which eyes had
been averted and ears had been closed. But in the process of truth and
reconciliation, nations found new strength, new resolve, and new
commitment.
The South African Truth and Reconciliation enabled that nation to
come to grips with its past through a public confessional, bringing
forward those who committed crimes and having the power to grant
amnesty for full disclosure of crimes against the people. Of course,
our path may necessarily be different: High US government officials
stand accused in impeachment petitions of violating national and
international law. Our continued existence as a democracy may depend
upon how thoroughly we seek the truth. I will call upon the America
people to join me in supporting this effort.
The truth can move us forward, as a unified whole, so that we can
one day become a re-United States. 9/11 is the day the world changed.
It is the day America embraced a metaphor of war. If we are open to
truth and reconciliation, we may one day be able, once again, to
embrace peace.
The 9/11 investigation must be reopened. 9-11 Truth groups
all around the country and the world have serious questions
about how the Twin Towers and Building 7 were actually brought
down.
Posted by: Emily Maloney | September 20, 2008 at 12:18 PM
I agree with Representative Kucinich's call for what I interpret as a new investigation into the attacks of 9-11, but I question which "two dozen" countries he is referring to that have "travelled down a path of restoring civil society through a formal process of reconciliation." South Africa is the only example he cites. What are the others? Were the leadership of those countries also involved in the murder of three thousand of their own citizens on their own soil, and then in blaming a group that was used as a casus belli by which attacks on sovereign nations that had nothing to do with the attacks could be justified, in order to mobilize their country for war and steal the resources of the targeted countries? I submit that there can be no "reconciliation" for the perpetrators of such crimes, only prosecution and punishment. If the Nazis found guilty at Nuremberg were hanged, the perpetrators of these crimes should also be hanged.
Posted by: James | September 20, 2008 at 06:19 PM
The FBI uses polygraphs to eliminate suspects.
google: we got nuked on 9/11
Posted by: David Howard | September 21, 2008 at 08:30 AM
Kuchinich's proposed 9/11 Truth and Reconciliation Commission would give up all accountability -- all justice--for the 9/11 mass murders and trade legal amnesty--legal forgiveness -- for truthful full disclosure by the real perpetrators Sept. 11. THIS MUST BE SOUNDLY REJECTED. We do NOT need to give up Justice to get Truth. The perpetrators would lie again anyway, and go Scot free in the process. Also, Kuchinich is proposing only that the new Commission have 'the power' to compel testimony, without any 'teeth' in the language REQUIRING it to do so. The 9/11 Commission ALREADY had that power, and chose not to use it. This commission probably wouldn't use that power either, but take 'gentlemen' on their 'word'.This is a Terrible idea.
Posted by: Barbara Honegger | September 22, 2008 at 01:07 PM