Iraq After 20

Quick Thoughts

I’m on vacation overseas and didn’t plan on writing anything. That’s why my subscribers missed out on a newsletter this week. Yet, while reading the reactions to the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War, I felt the overwhelming need to say something short on the matter.

I literally grew up in the shadow of 9/11, just miles from downtown Manhattan where my mother worked in Tower One and my father was an NYPD detective. I can close my eyes and still remember the feeling I had that day when I found out my parents were alive and classmates I had known since I was four-years-old weren’t as lucky. Every street in my neighborhood is named after someone who didn’t make it home. I felt the anger of that day and the desire for justice and swift action.

It was from the ashes of those towers that Bush received his mandate to do almost anything he wanted. With a 90 percent approval rating, Bush could have secured our borders once and for all (as the 9/11 Commission recommended), he could have mandated that everyone in the country with an expired ID be found and deported, he could have slowed down legal immigration so the security state could do a better job at vetting everyone. Bush did nothing. He squandered everything.