Stoopid Stuff

On 9/11 and the Tragedy of Violent Attacks

I've heard alot of renewed discussion about 9/11 recently, and frankly, the jingoism and one-sided, through-the-wrong-end-of-the-telescope viewpoints are begining to sicken me. Over and over, from people of all political persuasions, I hear the same lament. We were Attacked!! The worst attack on US soil since Pearl Harbor!! It was a brutal, calculated attack that killed thousands of civilians without warning! It was a tragedy of monumental proportions, an immeasurable loss, a global wake-up call. Sure it was.

After the 9/11 attacks, America needed to respond. We needed to hit back at those who hurt us so badly. And so we have been doing so, again and again, over and over, spilling more blood, causing more pain and anguish. Where is the end of it? How much bloodletting does our national pride require, how many lives do we have to take, how many cities must be laid to waste?

I invite those of you with open minds to think about this. 5 years ago, two of our cities were attacked. Buildings were destroyed and over 3000 people were killed. And today, five years on, we still wring our hands with wrenching anguish over the pain and loss of that day. Yet how many 9/11s have we been responsible since that day? Kandahar, Baghdad, Faluja, Najaf, Beirut. Thousands of buildings destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of innocents slaughtered. Do you not think that each and every victim of these attacks feels the same wrenching anguish? Do you not believe that their sense of tragic loss is every bit the same as ours?

How Dare We?

How dare we continute to exploit our national sense of loss as the primary reason to create the same kind of urban terror, over and over and over again, all around the world. All described in the dry journalistic tones that wash the blood from the corpse and hide the horror in sepia tones. "AC-130 gunship pounded islamist positions in southern Somalia." "American troops advanced up Haifa street under cover of airstrikes from F-15s and Apache gunships." "Israel launched another day of strikes against Hezbollah infrastructure in South Beirut."

Each of these events, and the thousands just like them we have perpetrated in the five years since that September day are 9/11s too. The collapsed buildings, the stench of burning flesh, the cries of the injured, the grief and anger of the survivors. We, of all people in the world today, should be able to recognize the absolute wrong of blowing up buildings full of people. We of all people should understand the forces unleashed when strangers, foreigners at that, suddenly appear to kill our friends and relatives and destroy our cities.

I am sickened by the outpouring of racist hatred that continues to drive our nation to use it's military might against people who are not our enemies, just to satisfy some kind of national revenge fantasy. But even more, I am offended by the sheer impracticality of our actions. How can we expect anything but more hatred, more attacks, more war? We are perpetuating the conflict and ensuring that ultimately we will be the loser. For as we squander our wealth and our exalted place in the pantheon of nations, we continue to create enemies at an alarming rate. And those enemies are an asymetric threat. They don't need aircraft carriers and supersonic fighters and armored brigades. We can't stop them with all of our firepower, indeed, all of our firepower merely creates more of them. And they can hit back, anywhere, anytime. Like the bloody Lebanon debacle of this summer, they win by not losing. And we lose by being unable to even define winning, let alone accomplish it.

So the next time you start to describe the horror and terror of that September day back in 2001, think about all the horror and terror we have unleashed since. All the flattened buildings, all the burned and broken bodies, all the grieving survivors. Think about it and ask yourself if this is something we should be doing.

posted by mikey @ 11:21 AM