GOP historical revisionism and the politicization of 9/11

MSNBC is reporting that many who were directly affected by the 9/11 attacks are putting the Republicans on notice that they will not sit idly by if the GOP tries to turn Ground Zero into a political backdrop during the 2004 Republican convention which is being held in New York City.

Ever since her sister, Lorraine Lee, died in the World Trade Center 23 months ago, Patricia Reilly has lobbied to preserve the Ground Zero site as a memorial. In that time, she has come to resent politicians who make promises and use Ground Zero as a backdrop but who appear to lose interest once the cameras have gone. So when Reilly heard that the Republican Party had chosen New York for its presidential convention in September 2004, she was outraged. “I and other 9/11 family members will do picketing if the Republicans use Ground Zero for political purposes,” she says.

Survivors say they are concerned about rumors that the party intends to schedule some kind of political event at the site during the convention, which will take place a week before the third anniversary of the attacks.

Neither the Republican National Committee nor the New York City host committee, headed by former Mayor Rudolph Guiliani, would comment on the rumor. But Reilly and others like her are taking no chances, registering their concern with Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the Democrat who represents lower Manhattan, city council members and other local officials.

"We have heard complaints from constituents about this," says Jennie McCue, an aide to Nadler. "Tens and thousands of our constituents were affected by 9/11 and they do not want Ground Zero to be a political base for the Republicans."

Nor, presumably, would they want it used as a political base for the Democrats, but that's a whole different matter.

Something I found in this article, though, that I found very interesting was the following statement:

While it is not clear if the Republicans would actually use Ground Zero or any of the downtown 9/11 symbols during their convention, there were complaints about the timing of convention when they announced. In early May, the Republicans responded to the criticism saying that they only wanted to avoid a clash with the 2004 Olympics, which is to be held in Athens, Greece from Aug. 11-29.

And it may well be that they did make this claim in early May. In late April, however, the Republicans were making a different claim - one that shows exactly why the families and survivors of 9/11 have just cause to be worried. In an entry dated 4/27 entitled "Exploiting 9/11" I wrote about the following quote from an article I'd found in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

The president is planning a sprint of a campaign that would start, at least officially, with his acceptance speech at the Republican convention, which is now set for Sept. 2.

The convention, to be held in New York City, will be the latest since the Republican Party was founded in 1856, and Bush's advisers said they chose the date so the event would flow into the commemorations marking the third anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks.

The back-to-back events would complete the framework for a general election campaign that is being built around national security and Bush's role in combating terrorism, Republicans said.

The P-I story has disappeared behind the archive wall, but I was able to find this same story in the Charlotte Observer, still available on the net at: http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/5686610.htm.

That's right - before anyone had complained about the idea of politicizing the 9/11 commemerations, the Bushites had no problem admitting that they deliberately chose the date so they could capitalize on the proximity to the anniversary of the attacks. It looks like the May claim that they "only wanted" to avoid a conflict with the Olympics is a bit of that good old "revisionist history" that Bush so deplores.

Amusing (to me, anyway) story: I had remembered reading at one point that the Bush Admin had admitted they were timing the convention to coincide with the 9/11 commemerations, so I did a Google search to see if I could find any reference to it. The first two that came up weren't really relevant (I was using a fairly broad set of search terms) - the third was my own entry on it. Doh!

Posted by thorswitch at August 18, 2003 02:41 PM | TrackBack