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I remember 9/11, and all that came afterward. I remember...
But I was only a child. A child uninterested in politics, war, religion, terror, or even New York City. No, my biggest concern on that day was getting to see
Digimon that afternoon. I can't recall if anything out of the ordinary happened at Fulton Elementary that morning. Nothing stands out, so I assume the teachers kept matters quiet. They sought to prolong our innocence before it was violently broken.
When I turned on the TV that afternoon, I saw then-President Bush speaking amidst the wreckage of the Twin Towers. We had been attacked, brutally. I knew at once that there would be another war, they always began with murderous attacks. The Civil War began with an attack on Fort Sumter. World War I began with an attack on Archduke Ferdinand. World War II began with an attack on Pearl Harbor. The pattern had repeated itself. I was afraid. I thought that war was an activity relegated the history books, that there would be peace in my time. So when I saw the wreckage, I immediately wanted to block it out. Those three thousand that were killed, the impending war, the loss of innocence. Horrors such as this weren't supposed to happen in America, these were the tragedies of other countries. That illusion fell. I recall later that one of my middle school teachers was three when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The news of this event interrupted her puppet show. At the time, she didn't care about the president's death. She just wanted to get back to her puppet show. I wanted to get back to my
Digimon. Yet she was only a child, and so was I.
It was a long time before I understood the gravity of that day. Perhaps I still don't understand it, not entirely. Even now, my stomach gets unsettled whenever I see the videos of the planes crashing into those towers. The flames so red, the smoke so black, and the screams so piercing. It gnashed a hole into our psyche. The Pentagon, the brain of our defenses, was also crudely ruptured. Flight 93 was meant to assault the Capitol, the organ of our legislation, yet was stopped by the brave crew and passengers at the cost of their lives. This is what triumphed that day. Not the depravity of our enemies, but the heroism of our citizens. Few moments in American history, few, have revealed such an outpouring of solidarity and courage. In the rubble and white ash, police officers, firefighters, EMTs, the coast guard, and other first responders rushed into cataclysm. Many of them still suffer health problems as a result. Rick Rescorla, the head of security at the Morgan Stanley firm in the WTC, helped evacuate some 2,500 employees from the building at the cost of his own life. On that day, we were all weeping, but we were also inspired. As Shingo Annen said in "Luv (Sic.) Pt. 2", "All good souls lost may they rest in peace."
However, the years following the 9/11 attacks were dreadful, to say the least. By November of that year, we were at war with Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, and the Taliban regime that gave them cover. Our military toppled the cruel government with great speed, but the campaign became entrenched in a manhunt for the Islamofascist Osama Bin Laden. Bin Laden was eventually killed by a committed team of Navy SEALS under the Obama Administration, an act who's legality is still debated. While the loss of Bin Laden is welcome, the war in Afghanistan had by that time devolved into a quagmire of poverty, corruption, and lawlessness. The revelations from Chelsea Manning and Wikileaks have done much to throw doubt into our continued presence there. If one compiles the casualties
listed by
Voice of America, roughly 54,255 to 69,255 have been killed (Dawi). 15,000 of those killed have been civilians, though most of those civilians were killed by the Taliban. My heart weeps for Afghanistan, is there an end in sight acceptable to them? I really don't know.
While the attempt the right the wrongs of 9/11 in Afghanistan could arguably be called heroic, much of what the Bush, and even the Obama Administrations did afterwards was anything but. What we needed following 9/11 was rational leadership, instead, we received a long train of abuses known as the War On Terror. Where do I begin? Torture became official public policy through "waterboarding", and worse, they tried to whitewash their crimes by labeling them "enhanced interrogation." Waterboarding was halted under Obama, though none of perpetrators were tried. With the Eighth Amendment flagrantly violated, the Bush Administration went on to violate the Fifth in the construction of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. It gave the government
carte blanche to detain "suspected terrorists" without charge or trial. Initially, the suspects were refused minimal protections under the Geneva Conventions, though a Supreme Court ruling later changed that.
The Washington Post's Dana Priest also found that the CIA ran secret prisons she dubbed "black sites" on foreign soil. Untold numbers of "suspected terrorists" were detained in these places under obscure legal grounds, many of whom were sent to Guantanamo. Japanese internment for the 21st century. Obama has tried to close Guantanamo, but to no success. Another legally suspect action was the use of targeted drone strikes to assassinate "suspected militants", again, without trial, and more often than not killing civilians, subsequently sending these foreign populations into chronic states of fear. Obama has since expanded the use of drones into a defining feature of his foreign policy doctrine. By no means, though, were these injustices limited to outsiders, as American citizens also had their rights breached. The Fourth Amendment was next on the guillotine, as the NSA began to wiretap the phones of American citizens and collect their phone records without warrants. The whistle was blown on this in 2005 by
The New York Times, with former NSA intelligence analyst Russ Tice contributing to the report. The whistle was blown again in 2013 by Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald, who revealed the warrantless collection of phone records by the NSA had continued under the Obama Administration. Yet hardly any crime of this tragic blunder known as the War On Terror compares to the invasion of Iraq.
During the Nuremberg Trials, the Tribunal
declared in 1946 that, "To initiate a war of aggression is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole," (
The Economist). The shame of that whole Iraq fiasco was evident from the day Colin Powell gave his infamous "anthrax" speech at the United Nations, as he requested that they cover up the mural of Pablo Picasso's "Guernica." A meaningless speech, as the United States soon acted of its own accord, disregarding any approval from the Security Council. We were told Saddam Hussein had "weapons of mass destruction." No such weapons were ever found. Truth is the first casualty. Many on the Left believe that the invasion was primarily over control of Iraq's oil resources. I disagree. As Cold War historian, Melvyn P. Leffler, has examined the memoirs of various Bush Administration officials and concluded that,
"What is clear in the memoirs is that the administration went to war in order to deal with a range of perceived threats – not to promote democracy, not to transform the Middle East, and not to secure supplies of oil. All these matters, according to Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Feith, and Tenet, were of secondary or tertiary importance, and mostly influenced behavior after "formal" military hostilities ended in early April 2003. "I did not think," insists Feith, "that a U.S. president could properly decide to go to war just to spread democracy, in the absence of a threat requiring self-defense." Rice reiterates, we "did not go to Iraq to bring democracy any more than Roosevelt went to war against Hitler to democratize Germany." Saddam's pattern of recklessness, she emphasizes, simply could not be tolerated after 9/11. Military officials concurred. The nexus of WMD and international terrorism, says Meyers, was ominous: if Iraq supplied WMD to al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden "would undoubtedly use the material. With the United States still reeling from the shock of the earlier anthrax attacks, this was a threat no one could ignore," (Diplomatic History).
No doubt, the Bush Administration saw the benefits of a steady oil supply and a U.S.-friendly ally in the region to counter Iran, but the primary motivation was to knock out any chance of another 9/11, not matter how irrational. Indeed, we saw just
how irrational, as the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Some 500,000 people died in Iraq.
Iraq Body Count estimates that between 142,621 and 164,477 of them were Iraqi civilians ("Documented civilian deaths from violence"). Among the worst events to occur to Iraqi civilians was the usage of white phosphorus in Fallujah, which, like Agent Orange in Vietnam, succeeded in giving the Iraqi population all sorts of cancers and deformities. Another focal point in the war was the Baghdad Prison of Abu Gharib, where Iraqi prisoners were tortured by American soldiers. That Abu Gharib occurred at all, shouldn't shock us so strongly, as the Bush Administration had already made torture public policy at the time. Citizens tend to imitate the behavior of their governments. Many a brave American soldier fought and died in Iraq. Whatever valor they may have gained in defending their comrades or helping Iraqis is theirs alone. I'd confer none of it to Bush and his cronies. One such soldier was Tomas Young, made famous in the documentary
Body Of War. Young was paralyzed as a result of the war and spent the rest of his life speaking out against it. Before his death, Young wrote an open letter to Bush and Cheney, condemning them as war criminals who stole American lives. One can only hope that they'll see justice before their time is through on this planet (though the prospect is unlikely).
So what did we get in exchange for all of this death in Iraq? Saddam Hussein, executed by hanging. Hussein was a deplorable tyrant, no doubt, who used chemical weapons against his own people and sparked the Gulf War of 1990 with his invasion of Kuwait. Yet the Bush Administration had no serious plans of what to do with the Iraqi state once it fell. They wrongly dissolved the Iraqi army, which had long suppressed Sunni and Shia tensions. Sure enough, an insurgency followed, and the Bush Administration made matters worse by installing Nouri Al-Maliki into power. Tribal man that he was, Al-Maliki clearly favored the Shiites in the state, further fanning the flames of sectarianism. Iraq soon devolved into a breeding ground for Islamist cults. When America withdrew her forces in 2011, Al-Qaeda flourished, as did the self-proclaimed "Islamic State." A shame that the Obama Administration would make a similar mistake in toppling tyrant Muammar Qaddafi of Libya. The fruits of that labor were made clear enough in 2012 with the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi.
Yet much of the violence in Iraq and elsewhere has been far removed from the ordinary citizen. The danger we've faced since 9/11 has more often come from
domestic actors, rather than foreigners. We are more likely to be killed by our own neighbor than by an Al-Qaeda militant across the ocean. Since 9/11, America has suffered a string of mass killings in her own backyard: Aurora, Newtown, Isla Vista, Chapel Hill, the AME Church, and the Boston Marathon. What strings many of these massacres together, though not all of them, is ideology. It would be foolish the underestimate the prowess that ideas can have over the human mind, particularly bad ones. Having grown up in Sun Myung Moon's cult, I know this to be true. All that we see and do is made up of ideas. These killer's brains were infected with delusions. Eliot Rodger of Isla Vista was victim of the misogynist delusion, he believed that women owed him sex. Craig Stephen Hicks was victim of the anti-Muslim delusion, he believed that Muslims were inferior because they were religious. Dylan Roof was a victim of the white supremacist delusion, he believed that blacks were violently taking over the country. The Tsarnaev Brothers were victim to the Islamist delusion, they believed in the need to enforce their religion on others. Those who attacked us on 9/11 were also victim to this delusion. The Islamist delusion is rising with a similar fervor as the "new religious movements" (Scientology, Unificationism, People's Temple, etc) in the 1970's and 1980's. In the East, many are drawn to these ideologies because of their material situations. They are without economic security or opportunity, groping for some semblance of success in this world. These would-be Islamists may look on the prosperity of the West with envy, lest we forget the moral of Aesop's "The Fox and the Grapes":
we often despise what we cannot have. Political opportunism also has its role. Ideally, we should achieve political goals through nonviolence and dialogue, yet such discipline is beyond those who are diseased with suicidal nihilism. Such desperation is evident is the eyes of those under an oppressive regime, disenfranchised of their land, or abused by foreign militias. In the West, we see people drawn to these Islamist ideologies who suffer from none of these grievances. They are indoctrinated early on, out of a genuine interest, perhaps, in finding a new identity, as many who fall under these ideologies are in an emotionally vulnerable state. Soon, their identities become melded to their ideologies, and are seduced by the romance of creating a caliphate through "holy war" or viewing a distorted picture of the United States as the "Great Satan." These ideas are no doubt helped by the preponderance of conspiracy theories which claim that 9/11 was an "inside job" caused by the CIA or Israeli Zionists.
What can be done to stop this madness? For those already far enough into their indoctrination to murder, torture, or rape, it seems that violence may be the only recourse to stop them. The Obama's Administration's efforts to bomb ISIS are a good step forward, as they've saved the Yazidis from almost certain genocide. Yet the Obama Administration should also examine the ways in which America's foreign policy contributes to our false image as "The Great Satan". He should take Malala Yousafzai's advice and stop the drone strikes, reconsider his armed support of the Saudi and Egyptian tyrannies, and continue to press for a peaceful settlement between Israelis and Palestinians. Though America can only do so much in these regards. Ultimately, our best weapon is critical thinking. The ability to think critically is what will give these young minds the capacity to combat these poisonous delusions. Critical thinking may also save us from supporting the vile behaviors of our government.
It has become impossible for me to separate the atrocity of 9/11 from the chaos that trailed behind it. Leonard Pitts Jr assured us that we would "go forward from this moment", saying, "As Americans we will weep, as Americans we will mourn, and as Americans, we will rise in defense of all that we cherish," (
The Miami Herald). His words are as powerful today as they probably were then. Yet I can't confidently say that we've moved forward completely, as the legacy of the War On Terror still drags down the spirit our nation. It is as a tragedy without end, without law, without victory.
Truly, Americans have done well to reflect and meditate on the attacks. Make no mistake, 9/11 was a cowardly attack on our democratic values. Bin Laden wanted to rattle our soul. To an extent, I think he did. The moral compass of our nation is caught, deep in the wide, dark womb of uncreated night. At times, even with the best of leadership, we are distraught, directionless. In
The Lord of the Rings, Frodo tells Gandalf that he wishes the none of the horrors brought on by the One Ring ever happened. The wizard responds, "So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us." So, too, must America decide if she is going to live by the principles of a liberal democracy, or further neglect her sacred duties to her people and to the world at large. The American people showed great resilience, courage, and honor through the aftermath of 9/11, I see glimmers of these qualities every day as I walk the streets. It is these qualities that will be our salvation, and bring us out of the darkness of terror and delusion, in whatever forms they may take.
a more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article34661703.html#storylink=cpy
Only then, can we go forward from this moment.
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| Image used for criticism under "Fair Use." |
BibliographyDawi, Akmal. "Despite Massive Taliban Death Toll, No Drop In Insurgency."
The Voice of America, March 6, 2014. Web.
http://www.voanews.com/content/despite-massive-taliban-death-toll-no-drop-in-insurgency/1866009.html"Documented civilian deaths from violence."
Iraq Body Count. Web.
https://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/Leaders. "The Nuremberg Judgement."
The Economist, October 5, 1946. Web.
http://www.economist.com/node/14205505Leffler, Melvyn P. "The Foreign Policies of the George W. Bush Administration: Memoirs, History, Legacy."
Diplomatic History, March 19, 2013. Web.
http://dh.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/02/23/dh.dht013.full?keytype=ref&ijkey=05KvFNKdRmwf3rQPitts Jr, Leonard. "We'll go forward from this moment."
The Miami Herald, September 11, 2001. Web.
http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article34661703.html
