Country Songs that reference 9/11 vs. Rock Songs that reference 9/11

What I find I dread even more than the rock critics' reading post-9/11 meaning into pre-9/11 lyrics (hello Wilco! Moola moola Mr. Tweedy!), are rock musicians reading meaning into 9/11. I also find myself wincing less at country music's responses be it Alan Jackson's "Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning?" (which managed to trump Sleater-Kinney's "Far Away" in one twelfth the time with one eighth the melodrama and none of the narcissism) or the Toby Keith rant which albeit a bit jingo (although more understandably so than say, "Parklife"), at least managed to sound firmer in it's convictions (and hella more catchy) than S-K's "Combat Rock" which has to be the emptiest anti-war anthem since what? ("War on War"?) (and the only reason I'm singling out Sleater-Kinney is that they're the only rock examples I've been able to bear listening to as yet. I'm not getting anywhere near Springsteen). Is it because country music is probably the least anti-American music there is and country artists are free to express grief/anger without having to twist themselves into knots resolving it with their liberalism? Or is it that rock musicians lack the humility common to country acts, and feel the need to make a statement of supposed import (what was it Dylan said when told Crosby, Stills, & Nash claimed credit for ending the Vietnam war? "Yeah, they would. They were those kind of guys.") Also, is the appearance of Arabic chanting on records by guys (Springsteen, Earle) whose previous recordings have been aesthetically "America First" isolationist/exceptionalist a sign of empathy or patronising?

Incidentally, its also a pretty shit album too. They have become real shit like most hip-hop these days thanks to the whole scene being thrown into a downward spiral of degeneration into consumerism in the early nineties. As you can tell I don't like mainstream hiphop.

"But is it music?" I hear you ask. To these ears...

But there is meaning in 9/11 (obv. more for Americans), and if you pretend there isn't the terrorists have already etc. And doesn't Jackson's "I don't know politics but I know God" (paraphrase) scare the shit out of you? Isn't the point of S-K's (overt) 9/11 songs that we have to question our human/religious authorities, that no matter how morally or aesthetically uncomfortable it makes us, now's the time to bring the noise? (Hasn't this always been the point of S-K?)

I've put a link on my blog - make haste!

Uh... what? This claim makes no sense to me.

I vote for hip-hop's response being the most interesting - definitely the most varied and the most humanistic.

(as in, their post 9/11 material is phenomenal)