9/11

9/11, American jihad, Lawfare, War on Terror

Capt. Burke Died on 9/11 at the Hands of ‘Enemy Combatants’

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Last Friday, the Wall Street Journal wagered that the 2 to 1 ruling by a Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals panel in Al-Marri v. Wright will be overturned on appeal. Their thinking is Judges Motz and Gregory were creative when they ruled Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri cannot be held as an enemy combatant because he had not “set foot in the soil “alongside” the forces of an enemy state, — i.e., Iraq or Afghanistan.” This morning, in the Wall Street Journal’s letter to the editor section, 9/11 family member Mike Burke weighed in with this:

In response to your June 14 editorial “Al Qaeda’s American Harbor”:

It is reassuring to know that, under the ruling by the Fourth Circuit court, if a Mohammid Atta were apprehended today, before he could murder several thousand people, he would be properly freed and, I’m sure, the authorities who seized him appropriately castigated. Thankfully, the Fourth Circuit is there to protect our civil liberties and protect our right to die at the hands of terrorists who are not “enemy combatants.”

Interestingly, the silence from those who for years have lambasted the Bush administration over 9/11 is deafening. It makes one wonder if the demand for accountability was to ensure national security or to put a head on a plate.

The morning of Sept. 11, 2001, my brother, FDNY Capt. Billy Burke of Engine Co. 21, called from his firehouse to his family and friends in New York, before the second plane hit, to warn them, “We are under terrorist attack!” To refer to them as “terrorists” was highly politically incorrect in regard to those who flew the planes that “hit” the towers (the poor “wretched” and “have nots,” as Bill Clinton’s assistant secretary of state called them at Yale a few days after).

Regrettably, he did not have time to consider their “combatant” status. Well, at least he didn’t call them “enemy combatants.” That sort of designation would be in violation of the spirit of the $500 million, eight-acre 9/11 “memorial” at the WTC site that won’t mention the attacks (or “terrorists”) — so that it will avoid “telling us what to think.” An hour later, when on the 27th floor of WTC 1 and aware of the collapse of WTC 2, my brother ordered the successful evacuation of his men and that of Engine 24 and the civilians they helped save.

Capt. Billy Burke perished with Ed Beya, a quadriplegic and Abe Zelmanowitz, his friend, who would not leave Ed’s side. He had an idea of what duty demanded of him — not nuance, not ambivalence, not legal technicalities. Just like Abe Zelmanowitz, he would follow it or not.

I suppose my brother would not have made a very good judge or “memorialist.” However, like his 407 New York Fire Department brothers and two sisters and the millions who throughout history have given their lives for justice before him, it is people like him whom civilization counts on.

Michael Burke
Bronx, N.Y.

Well said, Mike.

Editor — Mr. Burke has not forgotten. His mentioning “two sisters” is evidence that his draft to the WSJ pointed out that 60 New York City and Port Authority police officers perished among those 407. I suspect a WSJ editor omitted them for the sake of brevity.

9/11, Political wind, War on Terror

Fun facts about the NY Times’ experts in the War on Terror

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I was reading yesterday about Sunday’s debate between the Democratic Party’s candidates for President. All but one blames Bush for our being, in their “expert” opinions, less safe here. While none of the candidates could recall a successful terrorist attack here since 9/11, the New York Times childed Senator Clinton for saying, “we are safer than we were,” even though she added, “we are not yet safe enough.” They did not argue with her or take any of the candidates to task for not saying how they would prevent terrorist attacks from happening here in the future. Instead, the Times brought out their big guns, their own experts:

The question of whether the nation is safer than it was before the Sept. 11 attacks is debated passionately among policy makers and security experts. A survey of more than 100 foreign policy experts, conducted in February by Foreign Policy magazine, for instance, found that three-quarters believed that the United States was losing the war on terror.

As is their practice when revealing America’s national secrets, the Times did not name “three-quarters” of those among the “more than 100 foreign policy experts” who think we are “losing the war on terror” yet they did name who surveyed them. The Foreign Policy magazine is:

“…a bimonthly American magazine founded in 1970 by Samuel P. Huntington and Warren Demian Manshel. It is published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C. Its topics include global politics, economics, integration and ideas.”

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is:

“…a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing cooperation between nations and promoting active international engagement by the United States. Founded in 1910 by Andrew Carnegie, its work is nonpartisan and dedicated to achieving practical results.”

Here are some fun facts about the past and present presidents of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. After all, if even the survey takers remain anonymous, how can we judge if there was bias involved when “more than 100” anonymous “security experts” are touted by the New York Times:

Nicholas Murray Butler (1925-1945):

“Butler was president of Columbia University from 1902 to 1945.
…
“Anti-Semitism was common in American education during Butler’s day, and it may be argued that his personal dislike of Jews, and discriminatory policies against them, were no worse than average for that time. Nonetheless, Butler often considered Jews as a whole to be aggressive and vulgar … For many years of his presidency, Columbia had a strict quota limiting the number of Jews who could attend. In 1928, the Board of Trustees authorized the creation of “Seth Low Junior College” in Brooklyn as a way to deal with the number of Jewish (and Italian) applicants. If Columbia College, the university’s prestigious undergraduate school, had already admitted its modest quota of Jews for the year, other Jewish applicants would be shunted to Seth Low. Among Seth Low’s alumni were Boston Celtics coach Red Auerbach and noted science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, who wrote of how he ended up at Seth Low … When Seth Low folded in 1938, its remaining students were absorbed into the Columbia College undergraduate population. However, when they graduated, they received the stigma of a Bachelor of Science degree, and not the normal Bachelor of Arts—which is exactly what happened to Asimov.”

Alger Hiss (1946-1949):

“…was a U.S. State Department official involved in the establishment of the United Nations. He was accused of being a Soviet spy in 1948 and convicted of perjury in connection with this charge in 1950.

Joseph E. Johnson (1950-1971):

Although he served as a consultant at numerous international conferences, and was an alternate U.S. delegate to the United Nations General Assembly in 1969, he is perhaps best remembered for his role on the U.N. Conciliation Commission for Palestine in 1961. As part of the commission Johnson was named a special envoy, and traveled throughout the Middle East, meeting with various governments in search of a means of providing Palestinian refugees with a homeland of their own. Johnson’s final report recommended that refugees who were forced out of their homes by the 1948 war be allowed to return to their former homes in Israel. However, neither side accepted Johnson’s proposals.

Jessica T. Mathews (?-current):

As we mark the fourth anniversary of Bush’s catastrophic war in Iraq, a round of blaming is sure to ensue along with counts of U.S. soldiers killed and wounded, money spent, dreams dashed, and the like. What we should also do is celebrate the people who opposed the war from the beginning. In the face of severe opprobrium and intimidation, a sizable number of Americans saw the charade for what it was and rued the oncoming disaster. They should be cheered, time and again.
…
The public intellectuals and activists who took a strong stand: Medea Benjamin, Howard Zinn, Tom Hayden, Jesse Jackson, Noam Chomsky, Leslie Cagan, John Cavannagh, Michael Klare, Scott Ritter, Ben Cohen, Jessica T. Mathews, Tom Andrews, James Carroll, and Jonathan Schell, just to start the list of honorees. Throw in the U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference and nearly every major religious organization to the left of the Christian Right.

Careful, Senator Clinton; the New York Times cannot endorse you unless you actually win the Democratic Party’s nomination. Dancing towards the middle this far before the primaries will continue to cause them to wheel out their “experts” to survey those who will disagree with you.

Now wasn’t that fun?