THE ANNIVERSARY of the Sept. 11 terror attacks inspired a number of memorials and tributes in remembrance of the dead, perhaps none so tacky as the Pentagon's "Freedom Walk," which culminated in an "America Supports You" concert starring country music sensation Clint Black and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
The cringe-inducing Freedom Walk was possibly our government's worst perversion of the word "freedom" since they gave us Freedom Fries. Someone ought to sit down with the secretary of defense and explain the difference between "freedom" and "crypto-fascist police state" to spare us all from future confusion.
Freedom, as our founders described it in the U.S. Constitution, involves the right to peaceful assembly and free expression even when that expression is critical of our leaders -- a vital right in a healthy democracy. But in the Pentagon's event, everyone who walked had to be pre-registered and checked in. Walkers were forbidden to carry signs or banners of any kind, and unregistered members of the public were kept at a distance behind the massive security force.
But really, you can't blame the Freedom Walk organizers for fearing dissent. While some Americans prefer to mourn the dead with a country music concert, others might choose that day to ask the uncomfortable questions, like whatever happened to Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the attack that killed thousands of innocent Americans?
They might choose the anniversary of one horrific disaster to ask why thousands of victims of Hurricane Katrina were left to starve without federal assistance while the president took an August vacation, a chilling reminder of August 2001. Or they might point out on national television that the troops everyone is supporting are embroiled in a bloody quagmire that had nothing to do with Sept. 11.
Protesters and dissenters will probably be accused of inappropriately politicizing the tragedy of Sept. 11 on what should be a day for national unity and non-partisan mourning of the victims, but the Department of Defense already attempted to twist the event in our national memory for cynical political gain. In combining remembrance of Sept. 11 with the "America Supports You" events, organizers tried once again to conflate Sept. 11 and the war in Iraq in the minds of an emotionally vulnerable public.
The official Web site of the Freedom Walk describes the event as "a way for people in the D.C. area to recognize what happened that day, to commemorate our victims and their families, and to honor our American service men and women, both past and present." At every mention of the victims, the troops are mentioned in the same breath.
Supporting our men and women in uniform should be an uncontroversial cause, but unfortunately it is one that is easily confused with supporting the war in Iraq. Defenders of the administration's policy like to remind their fellow citizens to support the troops on ribbons and on bumper stickers, as though some group of Americans needs convincing that we should want the best for the troops. If there is some segment of society that hopes the troops encounter misfortune, it consists of fringe crazies who will never be politically relevant.
What "support the troops" really means for the Department of Defense is that to honor the victims of Sept. 11, we must unite in support of the war and the administration's evolving reasons for starting it.
It's easy to see why this manipulation works: We all want to believe that fallen soldiers died for a noble cause, one that was noble not just in their minds but in the minds of those who sent them to war. No one likes to think that 18-year-olds are risking their lives for a futile cause, and to question the war seems to suggest that Americans died in vain -- a thought that becomes especially painful at a time when we are mourning those who died for no reason on Sept. 11.
We will debate the war in Iraq for many years to come, but this debate should not be confused with the tragedy of Sept. 11.
If the Department of Defense wanted to mourn those who were murdered on Sept. 11, they should have chosen a tasteful memorial that focused only on the victims rather than attempting to manipulate our emotions for political gain.
Cari Lynn Hennessy's column appears Tuesdays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at chennessy@cavalierdaily.com.
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