View From The Left Coast

It’s September 11th again. The newspapers, the television, the radio, and even the movies are full of 9/11 headlines, stories, and images. And speculation. And profitmaking. Like so many modern occurrences, the actual events and the people involved in them have become more symbolic than real. The connotation of the events of that day, the flag-waving, the hyperbole, the deification of innocent working people killed in the course of doing their jobs, dwarf the actual historical significance.

It’s time we put September 11, 2001 behind us.

Yes, almost 3,000 people died as a result of a terrorist action that succeeded far beyond what anyone could have imagined. It was a one-in-a-million event that could never be repeated, even with a Democratic administration. But while a few hundred more died on September 11 than died on December 6th, 1941, 9/11 does not bear comparison with Pearl Harbor. It could be said to have triggered a figurative war (the “War on Terror�), but it didn’t start an actual war between two nation-states. The “War on Terror� will never be a World War II.

Obviously September 11 was a very significant day, especially for the people killed, and their families, and now, as it turns out, for at least 70 percent of the surviving rescue workers at or near the site: they have serious lung problems.

But come on, folks. . .let’s put it in perspective. A group of Saudi Arabian young men, financed by money coming from oil companies, hatched a plot to highjack airplanes and crash them into at least three buildings. Ordinarily, a few hundred people at most might have been killed. But they got very lucky, and two of the largest buildings collapsed. They also had the element of surprise on their side: if anyone on the first three airplanes had known what was in store for them, as they did on the fourth plane, no planes would have crashed into any buildings. And none ever will again.

As with any other act of terrorism, it had drama and involved “asymmetrical warfare� against a powerful country, and it certainly got the attention for the terrorists and their cause they had sought.

In terms of actual casualties, 9/11 can’t touch the Civil War battle at Antietam 140 years before, when over 26,000 Americans died in one day. It can’t approach the 16,000 people killed in drunk driving accidents in 2004 (much less the 42,000 total traffic deaths that year.) Yet we are told that we must fight Iraquis, who had NOTHING to do with 9/11, or 9/11’s will happen all over the United States. And somehow the tragedy of 9/11 is supposed to make us proud to be Americans. My stepmother was once knocked to the ground on her way into a bank and her purse stolen, but that didn’t make either of us proud to be Americans.

The most important effects of the 9/11 plot were the ones that happened afterwards. A few people used the tragedy to make more money and enlarge their powers. Dick Cheney and his friends had said four years before they wanted another Pearl Harbor to allow them to invade Iraq, and this was their Pearl Harbor. Soon there will have been as many Americans who have died as a result of Cheney’s capitalizing on 9/11 as there were victims of the terrorist plot. Far, far more Americans have been wounded or crippled as a result of Cheney’s actions than were wounded or crippled on September 11. And something approaching 100,000 Iraqis have died as a result of Cheney’s actions.

So who’s the real terrorist here?

The guys who planned, financed and staged the 9/11 attack were despicable, and they certainly brought no honor to the religion they purport to represent. But their actions weren’t an act of war by Saudi Arabia against the US, still less an act of war by Iraq against the US. They got lucky, and they killed themselves, so we don’t get retribution. They don’t represent any particular country, so we can’t attack their homeland, and their relatives who were in the United States on September 11 were whisked home on American planes when no one else was allowed to fly. As a country, we are sadder, and we should be wiser.

In the end, it was an enormous tragedy, brought about be a handful of radical rebels. The response to that tragedy, however, has been far more destructive to individuals AND to our country. Next year, the flags should be flown at half mast for the victims of the Iraq war, Americans and others, perversely killed in the name of those who died on September 11, 2001.

We’ve dishonored the victims of 9/11 enough: let them lie in peace at last.

Posted by Walt Frazer at 05:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A friend recently told me to google the word “failure� for some interesting results. What came up was “Biography of George W. Bush.� There was also a disclaimer from Google that the link wasn’t their idea, that the search engine had been “googlebombed.� They go on to explain that “determined pranksters� can skew search results by linking words to certain sites. The explanatory blog, dated September of 2005, blames “a number of webmasters� for this googlebombing.

Regardless of what one may think of Mr. Bush personally, more and more people are coming to the realization that the war in Iraq, and, by extension, the War on Terror, have failed in their stated objectives. However, they have succeeded in doing what they actually set out to do: enriching a small number of powerful people and providing an excuse to suspend treaties and the Constitution, and providing the APPEARANCE of protecting Americans from external threats.

The “War on Terror�, it turns out, is not about eliminating terrorism, which has become an effective means of combating the military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned us about 50 years ago. Rather than eliminating terrorism, the “War� foments it, thereby ensuring it will go on indefinitely. It’s like the “War on Drugs�: NO one, conservative or liberal, would argue the war on drugs has been successful. After decades of spending billions of dollars and incarcerating millions of people, only the braindead could actually believe there are fewer drugs being used than before the “war� began. Instead, they are more widespread than ever, which was the actual intent all along. The only thing that’s changed is the mafiosi and CIA types are making more money than ever selling them. And Democrats as well as Republicans, paid by Jack Abramoff and his friends, can say “Look how much we’re doing to save the children from drugs.� Meanwhile the kids are higher than ever, CAMP notwithstanding.

The recent wholesale decimation of Lebanon by Israel, ostensibly aimed at Hezbollah but curiously targeting infrastructure and non-combatant refugees, and even UN peacekeepers, was a replay of what the US has been experiencing in Iraq: if you bomb people, they get mad at you. Israel hoped to bludgeon the Lebanese into hating Hezbollah by blaming Hezbollah for what Israel was doing to them. Instead, the Lebanese now see Hezbollah as their best and only friend.

Similarly, only the braindead could actually believe Iraq is stabilizing, there is no civil war, and the Iraqi people love Americans. Going on four years of warfare, the killing and wounding of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and tens of thousands of Americans, and the spending of hundreds of billions of dollars on Halliburton, The Lincoln Group, Exxon, etc, America is worse off by far than it was before 9-11. But Dick Cheney, George Bush and their CEO buddies are far better off, and that’s what counts.

The mission HAS been accomplished; it just wasn’t the one we thought it was.

Posted by Walt Frazer at 03:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)