Opinion: All Americans Should Be Sickened By the January 6 Attack
Denial Is Not An Option: The Attack on the Capitol Demands Full Investigation
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I was sick to my stomach on Thursday night, and it had nothing to do with the fact that I had major abdominal surgery a week before.
The prime-time hearing of the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol must have had a similar effect on most Americans of good will no matter what their political persuasion.
Those Americans must be ill again today seeing how extremists are attacking the proceedings with embarrassing intellectual dishonesty.
Sadly, they are often effective with their red herrings at using confusion, distraction, and irrelevant, often false details, to shift blame and avoid focus on a basic fact: The storming of the Capitol was the worst domestic assault on American democracy since the Civil War.
Last night’s hearing made that very plain, with new video that showed the horror, and new testimony from Capitol Hill Police Officer Caroline Edwards.
“I was catching people as they fell,” Edwards said. “It was carnage, it was chaos. I can’t even describe what I saw. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that, as a police officer, as a law enforcement officer, I would find myself in the middle of a battle.”
Not that you need to be reminded, but this was at the U.S. Capitol, the greatest symbol of democracy anywhere in the world.
In prior hearings, officers have testified to the horrors of being “electrocuted again and again with a taser” and seeing a “medieval battlefield.”
U.S. Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards, who was the first law enforcement officer injured by rioters storming the Capitol grounds on January 6, 2021, testifies during a hearing by the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol on June 9, 2022, in Washington, D.C. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Still, the words of a heroic young woman officer, who was knocked unconscious only to revive and continue to defend the Capitol, brought with them a special power. “I couldn’t believe my eyes,” Edwards said. “There were officers on the ground. They were bleeding, they were throwing up. I mean, I saw friends with blood all over their faces. I was slipping in people’s blood.”
Slipping in people’s blood. At the U.S. Capitol. Thanks to people who call themselves patriots.
This was not “a loving crowd” that had “a lot of love,” as former President Trump claimed. The mob was not "ushered in" by Capitol police, nor were those officers "hugging and kissing" them, as he said. The hearing’s video and testimony once again proved the opposite.
Don’t these “patriots” and Trump supporters call for law and order elsewhere? Of course, they do. “I didn’t approve of violence from anyone,” one of my readers wrote on my Facebook page after the hearing. “I wish they would focus on deadly crimes more.”
So, why is it so hard for them to condemn an attack that led to the deaths of five officers and injured another 140?
Paying attention to one thing does not mean attention should not be paid to another. Reporting on the terrible massacre in Uvalde or on the January 6 hearing does not mean we should ignore the ongoing bloodshed in inner cities, the inexcusable violent rioting that gripped the U.S. in 2020, or the opioid crisis, something other readers raised.
However, these hearings are essential to get to the bottom of what happened on that terrible day. Please don’t have short memories: Many of those who now oppose the January 6 hearings supported, as I did, the Benghazi hearings. How is January 6 any different? If anything, it is much more important for the future of this great country.
The January 6 deniers also argue untruthfully that the attackers had no weapons. They did. The deniers accuse the committee of being formed of “seven Democrats and two RINOs,” despite the fact that Republicans refused to fully participate, leaving only Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger to courageously risk their careers to join the committee anyway. The deniers claim, as former President Trump did, that Speaker Pelosi had rejected his request to deploy 10,000 National Guard troops on January 6, 2021, even though there’s no evidence whatsoever that he did, and Pelosi’s office denies it. He also gave no clear order to the Pentagon, as Trump and his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, later claimed.
U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) (L), Chair of the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, delivers opening remarks alongside Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), during a hearing on June 9, 2022, in Washington, DC. The bipartisan committee, which has been gathering evidence related to the January 6, 2021 attack at the U.S. Capitol for almost a year, will present its findings in a series of televised hearings. On January 6, 2021, supporters of President Donald Trump attacked the U.S. Capitol Building during an attempt to disrupt a congressional vote to confirm the electoral college win for Joe Biden.. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Then there’s the most troubling of reactions, which equates to “I’m burying my head in the sand because I simply don’t like what I hear, no matter what the evidence shows.” One reader exemplified this, writing: “I don’t trust the left, period.” That, of course, ignores that many on the right, including Bill Barr, Trump’s loyal attorney general, clearly gave testimony, aired in the hearing, that undercut Trump’s “Big Lie.”
The hearing also showed us many other high-level Trump supporters that the former president instigated what happened on that day. I will wait to write more about that as the hearings fully unveil the committee’s evidence.
But a simple fact remains: The Capitol was outrageously attacked by a large mob on January 6, 2021, in an undemocratic attempt to undermine an election and prevent the peaceful transfer of power, an uninterrupted tradition in America for more than two centuries. No politics or red herrings can distract from that painful reality.
To paraphrase Liz Cheney, we must return to the America made great by respecting the rule of law over the rule of man.
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Cover photo: U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), Chair of the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, joined by fellow Committee members, delivers opening remarks during a hearing on the January 6th investigation on Capitol Hill on June 9, 2022, in Washington, D.C. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)