Patriot Day

Thoughts on 9/11 in the ten years since…

On the morning of September 11th, I was still asleep when the first plane hit the north tower. A few minutes thereafter my alarm clock went off and I slowly surfaced to dismayed reportage of a terrible accident involving a plane crashing into the world trade center. I flipped on the television to find out what was going on just before the south tower was hit by a second plane and the horrifying reality that this was NOT an accident became clear. The first thought that came to mind was that someone was trying to overthrow the government by destroying our economy, and shortly after there was the sickening news that the pentagon had been similarly attacked and that another plane had been crashed, perhaps intentionally, in PA, most likely on its way to the White House. In the course of about two hours, the thin veneer of prosperity and peace that had obscured all the vile brutality to which men subject each other was torn away and the US had finally become a fully fledged member of the brotherhood of terrorized states.

Over the next few days, we began learning the details…19 angry men, mostly from Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, hijacked four planes and used them to cause as much carnage and murder as they could manage. Military enlistment spiked almost immediately. Calls rang out for revenge of the swiftest and most severe kind. Before October was out, we were on the ground in Afghanistan. Retribution was on its way. Throughout the end of 2001 til the end of 2002 reports came back that the rout was on. The Taliban and al Qaeda leadership were forced into caves and mountains. Americans checked the news for updates on places with names like Kabul, Kandahar, and Tora Bora. Victory, it seemed, was imminent.
 

Details began to emerge about the largely un-debated USA Patriot Act. Some argued that it enacted civil liberties violations on an unprecedented scale, while others posited that if you weren’t doing anything wrong you didn’t have anything to worry about. Talk began brewing about a possible invasion of Iraq. Rumors flew that Iran might be next. Tactical discussions of "shock and awe" dominated the airwaves. The actual conflict in Afghanistan seemed to lose some of its luster as more and more eyes turned towards Iraq and our on again/off again frenemy Saddam Hussein. Shadowy meetings between Iraqi security forces and al Qaeda operatives were discussed ad nauseam. People began obsessing over yellow cake and mobile anthrax vans and dirty bombs and suitcase nukes. This culminated with Colin Powell being sent to the UN General Assembly with the flimsiest of evidence of Iraq’s involvement in 9/11 and possible possession of weapons of mass destruction.

The focus on Afghanistan was totally lost as preparation for an invasion of Iraq began in earnest. Large companies did what large companies do in time of war: they positioned themselves to make the largest amount of money off the conflict with the least amount of effort possible. The invasion began and the Iraqi government fell in a matter of weeks. The Iraqi army lay in tatters. Their infrastructure and logistical capability was decimated. The Iraq War was won before Saddam was pulled from his spider hole.

Almost immediately, sectarian violence broke out amongst Sunni and Shia, and the US troops became embroiled in a messy, prolonged occupation. Simultaneously, a reconstituted Taliban began a renewed insurgency against troops in Afghanistan who no longer held the numbers or resources to put the uprising down.

Substantial gains were made in Iraq through a combination of the work of the Iraqi security forces taking more responsibility for their country, the violence shifting from militia attacks on US troops to conflict between Sunni and Shia, and a massive troop redeployment dubbed "the surge." Most combat troops have finally been pulled out of Iraq, and the focus has been shifted back to Afghanistan where we recently had the most deadly month of the entire conflict and there is talk of negotiating with the Taliban to end the war.

In May of this year, we received news that Osama bin Laden had finally been killed, snatched, and dumped in the ocean during a raid by members of Seal Team Six.

In a single morning all of my bitching about perceived injustices and unfairness was rendered completely worthless. Less than stupid. Not even worth the breath it took to form the words. There were three thousand souls smoking in a hole in the ground in New York for no better reason than they went to work that morning. You could make the case that the Pentagon and White House are valid targets for an outside military or paramilitary force to go after. The WTC wasn’t a military target. The stock exchange would have been the juicier target to damage our economy. They killed Americans and foreign nationals. Christians, Muslims, Jews and atheists alike, all incinerated in the time it takes to watch a movie.

I had been disliked before. I had been persecuted for being different. 9/11 was my first taste of truly being hated, and I hated right back. The war began to cheers and near unanimous support.

Then something changed.

We were now fighting a multi-theater, multi-enemy, asymmetrical war that had very little to do with 9/11. Osama bin Laden escaped, both from his own health as well as from the coalition military forces hunting him. Scandals abounded, from prisoner abuse to soldiers running amok and murdering teenagers and taking body parts as souvenirs.

The moral high ground was lost. What once seemed a clear cut mission to find and kill those responsible for carrying out the 9/11 plot had become a messy, bloody, expensive campaign of occupation and hegemony. If you asked 1000 Americans on 9/12 if they thought that we should occupy Iraq ten years later 996 of them would have laughed at you and asked if the attacks had made you a little bit nuts (answer: yes, it made us ALL a little bit nuts). Corporations like Halliburton, Aegis, Xe (Blackwater), and G.E. rake in massive profit, while troops struggle at times to find proper equipment.

The Patriot act has been expanded and extended three times, by two different presidents. Prisoners at Guantanamo bay have been held without charge for years at a time. The news of Osama bin Laden’s death was tainted by the inevitable conspiracy theories that germinated almost immediately, dampening the feeling of relief and justice that should have come with that news.

While I am glad that Osama is dead, and I can’t think of many people more worthy of a 5.56 round to the eyebrow and a dunk in the sea, I cannot help but wonder if the price paid in blood, treasure, and liberty has been worth it. I find it hard to believe that there might be educated people that still think that going into Iraq was a good idea. To face the concept that Iraq was a mistake means that you have to swallow the fact that 5000 coalition troops and 110,000 non-combatants were killed so that George W. Bush could finish what his father started with Saddam. This is in addition to the estimated $1.9 trillion of expenditures related to prosecution of the war.

As time has gone on I’ve grown to believe more and more strongly that our chance at coming out still wearing the white hat was lost when the focus shifted from Afghanistan to Iraq. Had bin Laden and the Mullahs not been allowed to escape by our preoccupation with Iraq, the possibility was there to end the Taliban AND al Qaeda as we know it. A proper reconstruction and reconciliation of Afghan people, land and culture could have been primed, without the threat of near constant bombings, murder, and intimidation. That opportunity was lost in those heated months in 2003 when the policy shifted from overthrow and rebuild to empire and dominion. This paradigm shift, not coincidentally, saw that near unanimity of support crumble in a matter of weeks as massive protests against the invasion of Iraq began.

The cynic in me can’t help but wonder if the whole thing hasn’t become an economic exercise, in which case I say give our men and women a night to pack their things and bring them ALL home tomorrow.

These last ten years have brought incredible pain and hardship, fear, isolation, distrust, bigotry and hate. They’ve shown us that as a people we have the ability to become to some extent tainted by the very thing that pushed us all together on that day.

They’ve shown us that when we are scared enough, we will capitulate and without argument surrender our liberties for a false blanket of electric security and big brother-like domestic spying.

The years since 9/11 have shown us that we are supremely flawed, incapable of moral and ethical consistency, and that human rights sometimes only matter if that human looks and talks like you do.
 

These same years have shown us that politics can be pushed aside and people can work together. That families in the midst of a near economic collapse will give every spare cent they have to the red cross. That office workers and police officers, grocers, florists and first responders, contractors and housewives will volunteer time, blood, money, and sweat to pick through the rubble, search for the missing, and salvage the unique dignity of America, which is what was really attacked that day.

The years since 9/11 have shown when the world is at its worst, that is when we find the best of what we are.