9-6-06, 11:00 a.m.

All the major news outlets have made or are making the fifth year anniversary of the September 11, 2001 tragedy a major item for coverage. Time and US News and World Reports have made it their cover stories, and there will doubtless be similarly extensive treatment by radio, television, and newspapers.

And, of course, the Republican Party and the ultra-right will use the opportunity the anniversary provides to once again manipulate our emotions in the hopes of furthering their agenda less than two months before the mid-term elections.

But the ultra-right has no lock on the lessons of 9/11, and it is time for progressives to reclaim the legacy of that day, in much the same way that U2 performed 'Helter Skelter' in concert because, Bono said, 'Charles Manson stole this song [written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney]....and we're taking it back.'

Indeed, the Bush administration has used the legacy of September 11 so often during the prior five years that in the minds of too many the event has become synonymous with ultra-right policies, which they very much hope will be the case.

A search of the online documents via the White House Internet site showed 1,910 references to September 11. By contrast, President Franklin D. Roosevelt did not make the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese military a talking point in the majority of his speeches, policies or fireside chats -- although FDR, like Bush, was all too willing to suspend basic human rights; in Roosevelt's case, the forced relocation of Japanese-Americans to concentration camps.

Progressives are already more than well aware that the Bush administration and the ultra-right have used September 11 as a pretext not only for their disastrous military adventures in Iraq and the disregard of constitutional provisions domestically. While it is important to remind ourselves of the ultra-right's unabashed willingness to spin and twist for their own benefit, this will not in itself succeed in severing the legacy of 9/11 from the reactionary grasp.

The legacy of September 11 must be reclaimed by progressives because we don't want its repetition. We don't want its repetition because thousands of lives were lost, and thousands of families were shattered. And we don't want the repetition of constitutional protections, including the separations between the executive, legislative and judicial branches, hijacked by right-wing megalomaniacs.

The human dimension of September 11 is manifest. The men, women and children who perished in New York, Washington, DC and in a Pennsylvania field were going about their business. They were doing their jobs. It doesn't matter what their politics were; most firefighters with which I've been acquainted with during my lifetime tend toward being conservative, and this can probably be said without too much fear of contradiction of the personnel working at the Pentagon.

One would hope that the ability to empathize and sympathize with a family over a tragic loss of life would not be dependent on their politics. That is, unless you're someone like Ann Coulter, who attacked four 9/11 widows as 'The Witches of East Brunswick' in her book, 'Godless: The Church of Liberalism.' Coulter, who has been a relentless cheerleader for every ultra-right initiative spewing from the White House, wrote of these four widows, 'I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much.'

On the political side, it is useful to remember that the longstanding US policy of anti-Communism resulted in assistance being given Osama Bin Laden during his involvement in efforts to overthrow the Marxist government of Afghanistan during the 1970's and 1980's. That government was replaced by the Taliban.

The time has long since passed to bury the myth that anti-Communism is a cri de coeur for democracy. Behind this surface rationalization is the fact that anti-Communism has always served a class interest. Make no mistake, as President Bush is fond of saying, the class the ultra-right represents is as terrified today of working class power as it was when Karl Marx and Frederich Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto in 1948.

By its actions, the ultra-right has fully demonstrated their contempt for democracy, just as Ann Coulter showed her contempt of four women whose husbands died five years ago. From denigrating widows, to identifying a covert CIA operative whose husband exposed their lies about Iraq, to branding unions as furthering the efforts of terrorists, there isn't a stoop too low for the ultra-right.

The words of Boston attorney Joseph Welch to Senator Joseph McCarthy during the 'Army-McCarthy' hearings fifty years ago could easily be posed to the ultra-right today. 'Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel......You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency....Have you left no sense of decency?'

Only days after the 9/11 tragedy, AFL-CIO president John Sweeney said, ''America is a democratic and open society built upon universal values of freedom and human dignity. No act of terror will undermine those values.'

Acts of terror didn't undermine those values; the Bush administration and the ultra-right did. Their allotted moments of infamy, which far exceed the 15 minutes given for fame, are up.