September 2011
Michael Leunig (Australian, b. 1945)
Commemoration
2011
“It begins with ideas. Something like September 11 demands a narrative to explain it. But narratives are tricky, and frequently self-serving. They can obscure as much as they explain. And so it was. For Western political elites, September 11 quickly became a story about our own virtue. You will be familiar with the lines: it was an attack on the very idea of freedom; we were attacked, not for anything we did, but for nothing more than who we are; because we’re – in President George Bush’s phrase “the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world.” The consequences of this are profound. If the attack has nothing to do with us, then there is nothing to be done in response except bomb the problem out of existence. It cannot be managed, contained, or in any other way ameliorated.”
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Waleed Aly writing in The Sunday Age newspaper, September 11, 2011, p. 13
Art Blart 