Getting Over 9/11
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.