[Mb-civic] Cruel September - Jim Hoagland - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Cruel September
And a Fear-Driven White House

By Jim Hoagland
Thursday, September 15, 2005; Page A33

I nominated September as the true "cruelest month" in a column a year 
ago. I cited Sept. 11, the start of World War II and other disasters to 
support that anthropocentric notion. I did not foresee that Hurricane 
Katrina would make me accidentally clairvoyant.

The coincidence of the storm's tragic aftermath and a subdued national 
remembrance this week of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, is a 
telling one. That timing helps expose a widening gap between the Bush 
administration's priorities and the public's apparent assessment of the 
nation's needs and dangers.
Unfortunately, the White House has contributed mightily to this 
perception gap. Bush officials alternately reassure the public about the 
global war on terrorism with calming words and deeds and then startle 
them with abrupt warnings. Beneath both courses of action lies an 
overriding anxiety that al Qaeda will strike the American homeland again 
-- and on their watch.

So, rather than attending in large numbers ceremonies honoring the 
victims of Sept. 11, Americans who have not been asked to pay taxes to 
support the war on terrorism or to make other direct sacrifices spent 
last Sunday biking with the kids, writing out tuition checks or watching 
pro football games. The administration's mind-set of virtual undeclared 
emergency does little to counter the all too human determination to 
return to normal as quickly as possible.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/14/AR2005091402620.html?nav=hcmodule
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