I have refrained from writing anything on 9/11. Mostly I have not felt like I had a lot that was sufficiently original to contribute and/or various thoughts that I have are insufficiently developed at the moment.
However, one thing that struck me in reading the comment thread on Doug Mataconis’ post on Paul Krugman’s 9/11 comment was the accusation in a couple of comments that people were “politicizing” 9/11.
The thing that strikes me about that is that 9/11 is an event that is likely impossible to discuss without politicizing it to one degree or another. The event itself was inherently political and, more importantly for discussions of the event, any discussion of US reaction to 9/11 is inherently political.
What one thinks of Bush, Giuliani, “enhanced interrogations,”* the USA-PATRIOT Act, Afghanistan, Iraq, the TSA, and any number of other topics are all deeply political and divisive. As such accusing someone of “politicizing” a discussion of 9/11 is like accusing someone of “athleticizing” a discussion of football.
It is also a highly emotional topic.
Indeed, the combination of the politics of the event (and the response thereto) coupled with the emotional nature of the discussion has been what has kept me from wanting to comment.
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*And, indeed, using that word (as well as the decision to put it in quotation marks) are all part of the political nature of this discussion.
