9/11

I've probably said enough about 9/11 over the years. Long story short: My first-ever visit to New York City was a few weeks after the attacks. There was still smoke rising from the bowels of the World Trade Center. The makeshift memorials -- on fences around the perimeter, in subway stations -- were still fresh and full of living pain. 

Also: The city was still, unmistakably alive and vibrant.

I drove across country to get to New York that week, stopping in Shanksville along the way. It was the first time I'd driven so far by myself. I realized how big this country is. And how much New York differed from the world I'd grown up in. And I loved it. 

9/11 made me back away from the pacifism I'd grown up with, and in retrospect I think I was wrong to make that choice. The wars that grew out of the attacks have not created much safety, but they have increased the total amount of misery in the world. What a shame.

Time passes faster than you think. I was still young when 9/11 happened. I'm not now. That day is history. Before too long, it'll be ancient history. But it still feels like current events to me. Except for this part: Between 9/11, the Great Recession and now, this is the third time in my adult life where I've wondered if the world is coming to an end.

One of these days, I might be right.

The American war in Syria may end soon. When did it start?

Karl Rove is the reason we can't get along after big terror attacks

For a few years now there's been a fond hearkening back to the so-called "9/12 moment" — a memory of the last time the United States responded to a terror attack with something like unity. Now, whenever there's a man-made disaster, everybody retreats to their usual battle lines and starts throwing grenades.

 David French laments this today at National Review:

I can’t recall a better time to be an enemy of the United States. The message to the jihadist world is clear: Not only is it open season on Americans wherever they live, work, and play, but jihadist attacks will have the added strategic benefit of further dividing a polarized country.

So what happened? My guess: Politics, of course.

Sarah Palin, the Ground Zero mosque and the American presidency

More than most American leaders who might run for president someday, Sarah Palin has made a career of dividing "us" and "them." Most famously, she spent parts of the 2008 dismissing her opponents and their allies as residing somewhere outside the "real America" -- and while she apologized for it, her constant grievance-mongering suggests she sees the world, and this country, mostly in terms of its divisions.

Don't get me wrong: Other leaders can be "divisive." Palin is different: The divisions animate her.

I mention all of this because of a recent posting to her Facebook page, which features this title: "An Intolerable Mistake on Hallowed Ground." She is, of course, talking about the proposed mosque to be located 600 feet or so from Ground Zero in New York.

I agree with the sister of one of the 9/11 victims (and a New York resident) who said: “This is a place which is 600 feet from where almost 3,000 people were torn to pieces by Islamic extremists. I think that it is incredibly insensitive and audacious really for them to build a mosque, not only on that site, but to do it specifically so that they could be in proximity to where that atrocity happened.”

Palin cites a specific person associated with the proposed mosque whose statements about 9/11, she judges, are insufficiently sympathetic to the victims. But her concerns aren't quite so nuanced or specific -- witness this Tweet which asked all "peace-seeking Muslims" to avoid the provocation.

But it wasn't "peace-seeking Muslims" who flew the planes into the World Trade Center. It was 19 extremists -- people whose ideology unfortunately has broader support than we'd like, but whose views do not represent the vast majority of American Muslims. The truth is that more Muslims died on 9/11 as victims of the attack than as the aggressors. By implicitly lumping them in with criminals and vile murderers, Sarah Palin is suggesting that American Muslims cannot be full citizens of this country -- that they should have the "decency" to accept a "lesser-than" status that denies them the right to practice their religion as fully as their Christian neighbors.

American Muslims, in this view, aren't part of the community of Americans who mourned 9/11 -- they are more closely related to and allied with the transgressors. Not to put too fine a point on it: This isn't dissimilar from the "blood libel" that anti-Semites use to smear all Jews as killers of Jesus Christ. All bear a measure of guilt, regardless of their actions.

This is why Sarah Palin should never be our president. She simply cannot be the president of all Americans. Maybe few presidents ever are -- but they at least have the good sense to attempt it. Even George W. Bush recognized his duty in this regard.

Palin's statements on the mosque issue also point to another reason she should never be president: She cannot distinguish America's friends from its enemies. Her divisiveness would make her a poor president; her inability to make the right kinds of distinctions would make her a dangerous one.

UPDATE: Via Conor Friedersdorf's Twitter feed, this is simply ugly and evil.