You Own 9/11, GOP. Deal With It.

Funny what a little tightening in the polls will do.  Hillary Clinton had a phenomenal August in the polls and media, thanks to a highly successful convention and a seemingly boundless willingness by Donald Trump to self-destruct.  But September has not been as kind so far and, as a result, the presidential election appears to be a statistical dead heat.  It's possible to assign the responsibility for Hillary's slide in equal parts to both candidates, but it's getting harder and harder to imagine how either of the two most disliked presidential candidates in modern history could get any kind of credit for anything at this point.

But that has not stopped Trump's party, and its agents in the media, from attempting to take advantage of the current mini-trend in favor of The Donald.  This past week, in an Op-Ed piece in (what a surprise!) the New York Post, someone named Marc Theissen takes Hillary to task for using her husband's anti-terrorist policies as the basis for explaining how she, as President, would continue the anti-terror fight.  And why is that specifically a bad thing, given the lack of terror attacks on U.S. soil during the eight years that Bill Clinton was in office?

Because, according to Theissen, this is why the September 11 attacks occurred:

... during Bill Clinton’s eight years in office, they [the terrorists] had waged a virtually unimpeded offensive against the United States.

You read that correctly, folks.  9/11 had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the Bush Administration ignored the threat of al-Queda for more than seven months, with Bush electing to spend the entire month prior to the attacks on his ranch, clearing brush, convinced that he didn't have to worry about what his family friend, Osama bin Laden, might do to destroy the country upon which he declared war after the Reagan Administration had left bin Laden and his supporters high and dry after the Soviet pull-out from Afghanistan.  Even in spite of the pre-9/11 tragedies that Theissen uses in his failed attempt to play pin-the-attack on Bill (and, by extension, Hillary).

Nope.  If it happens on the watch of a Republican, the trick is to find a way to blame it on a Democrat.  When Republicans talk about personal responsibility, they are not talking about their personal responsibility.  That's something they work overtime to avoid.

Especially when it comes to the war of choice in Iraq which they launched, and its disastrous impact on the current state of the Middle East, including the rise of ISIL.  Oh, that's right--if you read Theissen, it turns out that one's on the Clintons as well, not on the fact that the war in Iraq eliminated the common enemy named Saddam Hussein that united rival ethnic and religious factions in a common hate.  Of course, Theissen won't tell you about the Republican role in promoting and funding that common enemy.  That would involve accepting personal responsibility, rather than assigning it.

Oh, but Hillary started the war in Iraq, all by herself, didn't she?  Nope.  That's very much on Bush, Cheney & Co..  Hillary voted for it, and now admits that vote was a mistake.  Nothing wrong with admitting that.  That's called actually accepting personal responsibility

Which leaves America waiting for your move, GOP.  And, if you want to survive as a political force, that means an end to cheesy attempts to blame others for your failures.  9/11 was your failure.  It happened on your watch.  It happened despite foreknowledge that it would happen.  It was a failure followed by more failures--massive, trillion-dollar failures for which generations unborn will pay the price.

And you're denying all of this so that you can give America Donald Trump?

Damn you.  Damn you all to hell.*  And let the rest of us take upon our shoulders the personal responsibility of finally fixing your screw-ups.

*Apologies to "Planet of the Apes," if not to its Republican star, the late Charlton Heston.