Alexander Cockburn
[NB: Cockburn is pretty much the only reason (OK, maybe a few others) to pick up the NY Press. I thought this worth reading.]
It was bracing to see former Sen. Bob Kerrey, now president of the New School, joining CNN's Paula Zahn for commentary Monday morning. Zahn, whom I place only fractionally under Laura Bush in the pantheon of my affections, made reference to Kerrey's expertise in military affairs. This plunges us straight into the fierce debate about how much of an historical context one is permitted to give the Sept. 11 attacks.
Lest there be any doubt about this, by the way, maybe I should register my own view that these were crimes against humanity. But I also think it's very necessary to set them in a full historical perspective, not least because one hears, often enough, questions like, "What are we to tell our children?" or "Why does everyone hate us?" being answered in a carefully circumscribed fashion.
Take Nat Hentoff, in a recent column: "'How can I explain this horror to them?' Jessica asks. 'How can I explain how people can do this?' What I'd say to my grandchildren is that there are people everywhere in this world who identify themselves totally with a system of belief–whether political, religious, a poisonous fusion of both, or some other overwhelming transcendence that has become their very reason for being. These vigilantes of faith have unequivocally answered the question of Duke Ellington's song 'What Am I Here For?'
"Such people can be of any faith, color, and class. Palestinian suicide-bombers; the self-exhilarating murderous fringe of the Weather Underground here in the 'revolutionary' 1960s; John Brown, the abolitionist executioner; and the self-betraying pro-lifers who urge the killing of–and sometimes actually assassinate–doctors who perform abortions. How can our American government–and how can we protect ourselves against such 'holy' fanatics?"
Surely Hentoff's grandkids deserve a little more than sneers about the Weather People and the 60s, this by way of explanation of what prompted those Muslim kamikazes to their terrible deeds? After all, around the time the Weather folk blew themselves (and only themselves) up in that house on W. 11th St. in the Village, the United States government, in the name of freedom's war on evil, was incinerating Vietnamese peasants with napalm and shooting them in their huts or in ditches. In Kerrey's unit the techniques included throat-slitting as well as shooting.
Mention of Vietnam or any other of the United States' less alluring zones of engagement with the enemies of freedom makes Christopher Hitchens seethe with fury, at a level of moral reproof almost surpassing his venom against Clinton the molester of women and bombardier of Khartoum. In a Bomb the Bastards outburst in the latest Nation he takes a swipe at the "masochistic e-mail traffic that might start circulating from the Chomsky-Zinn-Finkelstein quarter" and decrees that "Loose talk about chickens coming home to roost is the moral equivalent of the hateful garbage emitted by Falwell and Robertson, and exhibits about the same intellectual content."
We can safely say that the word "loose" is a purely formal device, and what Hitchens means here is that any and all talk about homeward-bound chickens is out of bounds, part of all the things we are not allowed to talk about. In times of crisis, by the way, it's often liberals who are quickest to set rules about what we should say and how we should say it.
"This nation is now at war," proclaimed Peter Beinart, editor-in-chief of The New Republic, "and in such an environment, domestic political dissent is immoral without a prior statement of national solidarity, a choosing of sides." Well, obviously we're in total solidarity against the fanatic terror that doomed just short of 7000 ordinary people that Tuesday morning, and we're against the religious and political precepts of those who were reverently described only a few short years ago in our newspapers and in presidential proclamations as the Afghan or Saudi "freedom fighters."
But at what point is a fracture in national solidarity permitted by Commissar Beinart? When the B-52s lay waste to Afghans in some slum on the edge of Kandahar on the supposition that bin Laden was there? Or when Attorney General Ashcroft moves to end all inhibitions on electronic snooping or warrantless arrests?
The time when the Bill of Rights, or the providing of historical context or satire, is most precious and most necessary is always when it is being deprecated as too dangerous, irrelevant or inappropriate at the present time.
What moved those kamikaze Muslims to embark, some many months ago, on the training that they knew would culminate in their deaths as well of those (they must have hoped) of thousands upon thousands of innocent people? Was it the Koran plus a tape from Osama bin Laden? The dream of a world in which all men wear untrimmed beards and women have to stay at home or go outside only when enveloped in blue tents? I doubt it. If I had to cite what steeled their resolve, the list would surely include the exchange on CBS in 1996 between Madeleine Albright, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and Lesley Stahl. Albright was maintaining that sanctions had yielded important concessions from Saddam Hussein. "We have heard that half a million children have died," Stahl said. "I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And you know, is the price worth it?"
"I think this is a very hard choice," Albright answered, "but the price–we think the price is worth it." They read that exchange in the Middle East. It was infamous all over the Arab world. I'll bet the Sept. 11 kamikazes knew it well enough, just as they could tell you the crimes wrought against the Palestinians. So would it be unfair today to take Madeleine Albright down to the ruins of the Trade Towers, remind her of that exchange and point out that the price turned out to include that awful mortuary as well? Was that price worth it too, Mrs. Albright?
Mere nitpicking among the ruins and the dust of the 6500? I don't think so. In many ways America has led a charmed life amid its wars on people. The wars mostly didn't come home and the press made as sure as it could that folks, including the ordinary workers in the Trade Towers, weren't really up to speed on what was being wrought in Freedom's name. In Freedom's name America made sure that any possibility of secular democratic reform in the Middle East was shut off. Mount a coup against Mossadegh in the mid-1950s, as the CIA did, and you end up with the Ayatollah Khomeni 25 years later. Mount a coup against Kassim in Iraq, as the CIA did, and you get the agency's man, Saddam Hussein.
What about Afghanistan? In April of 1978 a populist coup overthrew the government of Mohammed Daoud, who had formed an alliance with the man the U.S. had installed in Iran, Reza Pahlavi, aka the Shah. The new Afghan government was led by Noor Mohammed Taraki, and the Taraki administration embarked on land reform, hence an attack on the opium-growing feudal estates. Taraki went to the UN, where he managed to raise loans for crop substitution for the poppy fields.
Taraki also tried to bear down on opium production in the border areas held by fundamentalists, since the latter were using opium revenues to finance attacks on Afghanistan's central government, which they regarded as an unwholesome incarnation of modernity that allowed women to go to school and outlawed arranged marriages and the bride price. Accounts began to appear in the Western press along the lines of this from The Washington Post, to the effect that the mujahideen liked to "torture victims by first cutting off their noses, ears and genitals, then removing one slice of skin after another."
At that time the mujahideen were not only getting money from the CIA but from Libya's Muammar Qaddafi, who sent them $250,000. In the summer of 1979 the U.S. State Dept. produced a memo making it clear how the U.S. government saw the stakes, no matter how modern-minded Taraki might be or how feudal the muj. It's another passage Hentoff might read to the grandkids: "The United States' larger interest...would be served by the demise of the Taraki-Amin regime, despite whatever set backs this might mean for future social and economic reforms in Afghanistan. The overthrow of the DRA [Democratic Republic of Afghanistan] would show the rest of the world, particularly the Third World, that the Soviets' view of the socialist course of history being inevitable is not accurate."
Taraki was killed by Afghan army officers in September 1979. Hafizullah Amin, educated in the U.S., took over and began meeting regularly with U.S. embassy officials at a time when the U.S. was arming Islamic rebels in Pakistan. Fearing a fundamentalist, U.S.-backed regime in Afghanistan, the Soviets invaded in force in December 1979. The stage was set for Dan Rather to array himself in flowing burnoose and head for the Hindu Kush to proclaim the glories of the muj in their fight against the Soviet jackboot. Maybe I missed it, but has Dan offered any reflections on that phase of his reportorial career?
Looking back at that period, Robert Fisk wrote in the Independent on Sunday, "I was working for The Times in 1980, and just south of Kabul I picked up a very disturbing story. A group of religious mujahedin fighters had attacked a school because the communist regime had forced girls to be educated alongside boys. So they had bombed the school, murdered the head teacher's wife and cut off her husband's head. It was all true. But when The Times ran the story, the Foreign Office complained to the foreign desk that my report gave support to the Russians. Of course. Because the Afghan fighters were the good guys. Because Osama bin Laden was a good guy. Charles Douglas-Home, then editor of The Times, would always insist that Afghan guerrillas were called 'freedom fighters' in the headline. There was nothing you couldn't do with words."
Well, the typists and messenger boys and back office staffs throughout the Trade Center didn't know that history. There's a lot of other relevant history they probably didn't know but which those men on the attack planes did. How could those people in the Towers have known, when U.S. political and journalistic culture is a conspiracy to perpetuate their ignorance? Those people in the Towers were innocent portions of the price that–Albright insisted–in just one of its applications was worth it. It would honor their memory to demand that in the future our press offers a better accounting of how America's wars for Freedom are fought, and what the actual price might include.
| Terrorism | 9/11 | Alexander Cockburn |
Dear All:
As a project to make myself feel useful, as well as perhaps to do something for other people, I am attempting to build a repository of sorts of images of the World Trade Towers from better times. But not just any pictures; rather, I was inspired, in rewatching "Being John Malkovitch" and seeing the towers from the Jersey side (attached), to try to assemble a collection of pictures/screenshots from DVDs/stills/what-have-you that have the WTC as a backdrop. For example, I would guess that "The Sopranos" has shown them from the Jersey side at least once, and I know I saw a Jeep ad last night on TV that did the same. Naturally, what I'm hoping for is to create something on the Web whereby others can at the same time remember what the twin towers really looked like (and just how they dwarfed their surroundings) and grapple with the magnitude of their destruction. There's no object lesson, no moral I'm imparting, just a possibility.
So if you know you have something in your collection -- but no news articles or anything that is in some way specifically referential to the attacks, please -- do send it along and I'll keep you posted as to what I create.
Scopophilically, Tk (lazlokovax@toast.net)
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What does it mean for us to be at war against terrorism? I think there's only one war this is comparable to, and that's the war on drugs. You know, the one that we've been fighting since 1972, that costs us about $40 billion a year. Again, we've got an enemy that is not a nation-state, that has global reach, that has the tacit support of several governments, that's well financed, etc. It's not really a war in any traditional sense. More of a metaphor that justifies massive expenditures, erosions on civil liberties, jailing citizens, etc. And that's what I fear with our current war -- that it will become a war on ourselves, and a war without end. I don't doubt that we will take justified action against guilty parties, that some mix of justice and revenge will be meted out by our forces. But, like the war on drugs, we're going to go after the suppliers, and ignore the demand side. What I mean is, even if we take out bin Laden et al., there will still be a "demand" for terrorism, and other terrorists will follow in his wake. Just as you can't keep drugs away from an addict, you can't prevent a determined fanatic from killing people. This demand is fueled by hatred. And what's at the root of this hatred? Is it really democracy? Our loose culture? Or our foreign policy? If it's either of the first two, well then I suppose we will always be hated. But, if it's the latter, is there a way to get to the root causes? What would that mean? I don't have the answers to these questions at all. I wish I did.
| War | Civil Liberties | Terrorism | War on Terror | War on Drugs |
For the extremely long-range view (3.7 billion miles) on all of this, a quote from the late Carl Sagan is worth reading.
Here are the photos of my college roommate Johnny Liew's BMW. Parked it a block away from the WTC. This is something we are laughing about at this point. Actually, he told me that it took a couple of days for him to laugh about it but that I understand.
| Ground Zero | New York City | Cars |
In partial response to Matt Xanderhod:
First, were these attacks acts of war? It is pretty clear to me that Osama bin Laden (or whoever planned the attacks) sees them as acts of war. [etc.]
A speculative point of clarification: I would suggest that the Responsible Parties see these as acts of a war that is already ongoing. Not to flog Clausewitz's horse, but what constitutes war is as much a matter of expediency as anything else. That said, I would agree with you that increased conflict is a desired goal of the perps. At the same time, and at the risk of being jingoistic, I think they may have underestimated just how stubborn Americans can be. We've grown soft and fat from too many years of prosperity and self-indulgence, but when God is on our side (as apparently it is, since W said so in his speech and he's got 90% approval ratings these days), we're fairly hard to lick. Trouble is, they've got God on their side also. (And I refuse to make the distinction between using the word God and Allah. That's a veiled bigotry that I can't stand.)
Second, should we now behave as if we're at war? I say no. This may sound strange, but I think that we should NOT treat the attacks as acts of war precisely because that's what the perpetrators want us to do. [etc]
A set of points, and one which bears acting on, but I would draw the distinction between what we should do and what of the actually possible options we should do. Since tit-for-tat is the ruling principle here, I would second your mention of covert teams. I have it on good authority (to wit, my father, a 22-year Marine Corps veteran) that people living in caves are highly unlikely to be "smoked out," as the detestable metaphor runs*, by conventional attacks. A missile can land within a stone's throw or closer to a cave and the inhabitants will be perhaps deafened and nervous, but they will not be otherwise harmed. The Marines managed to island-hop in the closing year of WWII, but only fairly slowly and by adapting techniques to the terrain and the enemy. Vietnam provides the clear contrast.
Further, I am skeptical of the conventional wisdom that holds that a headless al-Qaeda is no different from, and perhaps more dangerous than, a bin Laden-headed al-Qaeda. The metaphor chosen by J.P. Lederach (as reprinted in Ishbadiddle) is that of a virus. One flaw in this metaphor(since all metaphors have at least one) is that there is one identifiable source of this virus's growth and well-being, and that bottleneck is bin Laden. I'm no expert on him or al-Qaeda, but it seems to me as though even the experts are only referring to him. Not to lieutenants, not to similar organizations and their leaders, but to him. That would suggest that if we obtain him (and concomitantly cut off his funding), we will do significant damage, so as to set back his plans by many years. During that time, of course, I suggest we work on the other aspects of the problem, elucidated quite well by Messrs. Xanderhod and Lederach.
Ethically, [snip] I think we need to have SOME ethical standards like these or we risk lowering ourselves to the level of terrorists.
At the risk of being too world-weary, I proffer that we have long since lowered ourselves to the level of terrorists and state-sponsorship of terrorism. Perhaps is is worth desiring and working so that we begin to have some ethics, but denouncing terrorism in the name of God and then defending military action in the name of God seems to me highly lacking in ethics.
The other aspect of "waging war" that frightens me is the effects here in the US. Already, we are hearing calls for large scale-backs of privacy rights and, to a lesser extent, civil rights — some coming from John Ashcroft . . .
*This is where the asterisk above comes in. Though the discussion about the encoded nature of contemporary racism belongs to another day, I'd like to strongly second Matt's concern here. The dominant contrasts being made — in the Paper of Record as well as in the government's language — are unsettling, to say the least. Saying that this is a fight between the civilized and the uncivilized (I had someone actually say to me that 'these people' were worse than animals because 'at least animals care for their children'), between cowards and the brave, between a known 'God' and a strange 'Allah', all encourage the vilification of non-Jewish Semites and South/Central Asians despite the casual assurances to the contrary. Tigers not changing their stripes and all that.
With this last point in mind, I'd like to suggest that we all write our various national, state, and local representatives, asking that they make an unmistakable statement that there shall be no singling out of Arabs or South Asians for restrictive treatment, whether couched in terms of protection or of national security, during this conflict.
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> I'd gone down, thinking that if I could only see it
> with my own eyes I could begin to comprehend it. Of
> course, they're only letting residents down there,
> and I couldn't even begin to think of a credible
> reason why I needed to go below Canal.
Well, I had a credible reason last Thursday -- I needed to go to a Wall Street-based Verizon store to replace a dead cell phone -- and after I ran my errand, I decided to walk east and see how close I could get. Like Mike, I think I felt a compulsion to see the site with my own eyes after a week dominated by an all-encompassing, partially self-inflicted multimedia blitz.
To my surprise, Broadway had been reopened below City Hall -- unsurprisingly, only the east side of the street. When I crossed Cedar St., to the block bordered by Liberty St. and dominated by the HSBC building and the Big Orange Cube, and looked west, what I saw simply took my breath away.
Continue reading "A Visit to Ground Zero" » | New York City | WTC |
Patrick's brother is working here as a member of the Texas Urban Search & Rescue Team. He writes: "My brother is staying 2 blocks from where I work in the Javits Center under tight security. Despite his closeness I can not see him or talk to him for more than 5 minutes at a time." If you check out the site, there are some remarkable pictures from a searcher's eyeview here. Patrick also links to an article written by a man in a similar group in California.
| 9/11 | Ground Zero |
[Juliet forwarded this interview with Noam Chomsky. I disagree with much of it, but it bears reading.]
Continue reading "Noam Chomsky on Radio B92, Belgrade" » | Noam Chomsky | War on Terror | Osama bin Laden |
Thanks to Alex for asking these thoughtful questions. I've been trying to figure out how I think the US should respond -- partly because I feel that it's my responsibility as a US resident to have an opinion, and partly just to deal with my growing sense of dread and confusion. I hope Ishbadiddle will induldge me as I share some very preliminary ideas.
First, were these attacks acts of war? It is pretty clear to me that Osama bin Laden (or whoever planned the attacks) sees them as acts of war. It seems that a war is exactly what the perpetrators want, and the more widespread the better. They want an openly hostile conflict between nation-states -- or at least between two clearly-defined groups of people with (as they see it) irreconcilable values. I think terrorism is using terror as a means of coercion -- to get the target population to do what you want. The perpetratrors of the NY attacks do not want to coerce the US to act in a certain way; they want to destroy the US.
Second, should we now behave as if we're at war? I say no. This may sound strange, but I think that we should NOT treat the attacks as acts of war precisely because that's what the perpetrators want us to do. By accepting their premise that this is a war, we are playing into their hands. Here's why: If this is a war, we will use military force to attempt to destroy (or at least subdue) the "enemy." But who is the enemy? In a war, it's generally a nation-state -- the logical choice here is countries that "harbor" terrorists. So in this war, we would attack Afghanistan, Iraq (as some in the Bush adminintration are now advocating), and perhaps Libya, Syria, and others. By doing so, we would not only kill many innocent people; we would create a coalition of nations (some potentially with biological and nuclear warfare capabilities) actively fighting against the US -- and that to me is a terrifying thought.
I think the best course for the US -- both ethically and strategically -- is to treat the attacks as crimes against humanity (which they were), and to lead an international effort to bring the perpretrators to justice. This may mean working with Afghanistan and other countries that "harbor" terrorists to pressure them to stop the harboring and to get their law enforcement organizations to work with the US to capture the terrorists. It may mean sending covert teams into these countries, not to attack the governments, but to round up terrorists. And, while the goal should be to bring the terrorists to justice (and give them a fair trial, perhaps in an international court), it may mean killing suspected terrorists who resist. This course of action may also mean providing more international aid and working to eliminate the poverty and inequality that give rise to extremist groups of all kind (this is not meant to excuse terrorist acts or to suggest that bin Laden is poor or oppressed, but merely to recognize that terrorism is a lot less common in societies that are politically and eocnomically stable) -- in the long run, it is this kind of effort, not war, that will stop terrorism.
Ethically, I'm not sure it makes sense to separate "war" from other conditions -- and thus to suggest that "acts of war" justify "acts of war" in response. I think the US military should be used to keep the peace, to defend against attacks, and also to bring people who have committed crimes against humanity to justice (which means, wherever possible, capturing people rather than killing them -- although clearly that's not always an option) -- in all cases taking extreme care to avoid the loss of human life. To use the Pearl Harbor analogy, did the Japanese attack on the US justify military action to stop Japanese expansion in Asia? I say definitely yes: The US was trying to keep the peace. But did Pearl Harbor and the ensuing war justify the US dropping the atomic bombs on Japan? I don't think so. I recognize that the standards I outlined above are pretty broad (one could argue, I suppose, that the atomic bombs were dropped in self-defense, but I think that's a stretch), but I think we need to have SOME ethical standards like these or we risk lowering ourselves to the level of terrorists.
The other aspect of "waging war" that frightens me is the effects here in the US. Already, we are hearing calls for large scale-backs of privacy rights and, to a lesser extent, civil rights -- some coming from John Ashcroft, who, ironically enough, was one of the most vocal opponents of Clinton's efforts to impose similar restrictions after the Oaklahoma City bombing. Clearly, the FBI and CIA need to do a better job with intelligence gathering, and maybe they need more resources, but we don't need fewer rights. Finally, I have heard calls for racial profiling of Arab-Americans as a security strategy: One poll I heard about on NPR apparently found that close to 50 percent of respondents thought that Arab-Americans should have to carry special identity cards. This stuff just makes me sick to my stomach.
I look forward to hearing others' thoughts.
| War | War on Terror | 9/11 |
My friend Chris Griffith writes:
Mike: I am so glad to hear you are all OK. I've been thinking a lot about you, as Shari and I have finally made our way back into the country from our honeymoon on Vancouver Island. What an odd time to be away from home. I'm still trying to process my emotions, and responses. I'm still in shock. What is especially hard for me is hearing our government's responses. My sister just sent me this e-mail, and it is the first thing I've read that comes close to my own feelings, and offers some positive hopes for change. I'm forwarding it to everyone I know, and urging everybody to join me in forwarding it to our senators and representatives. Maybe if enough of us do it, it will get through to someone. At the very least, it will contradict USA Today's assertion that America is "united" in our reactions. Either way, it is my first coherent response. Feel free to pass it on as well.
We can only hope.
May you continue to find peace, love and joy.
-Chris
Continue reading "Letter from Minneapolis" » | 9/11 | John Paul Lederach | War on Terror |
| Ground Zero | 9/11 |
I'm just devastated. It is hard to think that anything matters. I'm having trouble getting beyond my fear and uncertainty. And yet I think we have to. In some ways this tragedy is an opportunity for us to prove our humanity, to truly vanquish the goals of the terrorists by proving that we are all heroes, that we can transcend our fear and anger and heal the world. I am hopeful that we can learn the true extent of our strength by being tested this way.
People talk about this as being an attack on "the American way of life". The only way of life that I can think of as being truly American--and I mean the good side, not the ugly American side, not the side that fucks up other countries in Latin America, not the side that did nothing in Rwanda and Bosnia and Tibet, or the side that aided the Taliban when they were fighting the Russians and which hates them now--is that we all get along together and we have tolerance and respect for one another. We are greater than the sum of our parts. We make something work that, on paper, seems wildly implausible. I wish we could all remind ourselves that what is important is not that no one messes with us and gets away with us, but that no one can prevent us from pursuing what is right and good. There's been a lot of talk about rage from politicians (Giuliani being a notable exception), and that scares me. The U.S. was founded in the spirit of justice: the real kind, not the frontier kind. And justice involves not just revenge and reprisal, but treating someone with dignity and clemency who doesn't fucking deserve it, because we're bigger than that. Because it's the right thing to do. And the right thing to do is never easy, but it is (or should be) its own reward. I wish I could say this is going to force us to think about what kind of country we want to be, but what disturbs me about all the anger is that anger doesn't involve reflection at all. We're just going to do stuff and figure out how we really feel about it later.
That is not to say I don't have my share of anger. I'm beyond rage that someone would kill so many people in cold blood. They destroyed the World Trade Center. And how the fuck can the U.S., which spends all that money on defense and not on education, let the SECOND plane hit, for Christ's sake? I am angry at my own impotence, which feeds into everyone's lust for revenge (including mine). I am angry at anyone who is happy that this happened.
But in this lust for revenge, again, people talk about THEM without thinking about who them is. If we end up killing people or start to talk in terms of acceptable collateral damage/civilian casualties, we're back where we started. The loss of innocents. People getting angry and killing other innocents. Indictment by synecdoche. And those ways of thinking are what lies behind some evil person's decision that innocent officeworkers are part of a THEM who deserves to be burned alive. That's why we can't give into the anger, much as we want to lash out and hurt someone, anyone else. When we do that, they win. We have agreed to take on their violent and hopeless view of the world. We have agreed to abandon our way of life and descend into hatred and never-ending cycles of grief and vengeance.
I especially worry about this as a Muslim. I'm especially angry about those fuckers as a Muslim, too.
It is obviously a shitty time to be a Muslim. I mean that in a couple of ways, but one of the ways I feel it is, I think, wrong. I feel pressure to differentiate myself from people who kill in the name (but not the spirit of or consistent with any of the teachings of) Islam. It is interesting that I didn't feel I had to justify my white maleness when McVeigh killed, but I do now. I feel like I have to justify Islam not only to others, but to myself, even though every Muslim I know is gutted by the news and looking for ways to help (a group of our Muslim friends who are doctors went to St.Vincents last night). I mean, religion is about peace. God is love. So I'm upset that bin-Laden has brought God into this and that we (the press, silent Muslims, people who don't listen to non-silent Muslims) have let him. The people who did this are insane. Why do we think they're right about what God thinks even though we know they're wrong about everything else? The most bitter, wrong-headed, evil people own the concept of Islam, and the rest of the 1 billion people who call themselves Muslims are what? Silent? Unheard? I don't know.
The English translation of the main part of the Muslim prayer goes like this:
God is the most gracious, the most merciful.
All praise be unto the lord of worlds.
The most beneficent, the most compassionate.
Master of the day of judgement.
You alone do we serve, to you alone do we come for help.
Show us the straight way.
The way upon whom is your favor.
Not of those who have earned your wrath, nor of those who are astray.
Compassion and mercy are at the fore of this. These monsters have clearly misread the way of favor (I'll get to that in a bit). But I wonder if they even care. I really wonder if they think they're doing the right thing or are letting hatred blind them. There is no mercy, no beneficence, no grace, no compassion in their actions, and if they are truly observant, they probably repeat these words more than 15 times a day, without listening (even though the first part of prayer is announcing intention, which is supposed to prevent your just saying words that you don't think about). The straight way is not about bloodlust. It is about submission to God, submitting to forgiveness and humility, and doing that all the time so you never forget the lesson. It is not about assuming that you know God's will and deciding to end the lives of thousands of people.
God's idea of the straight way re: terrorism and the killing of civilians is pretty clearly laid out. Referring to the Old Testament/Torah/whatever you want to call it from whatever perspective, the Koran says:
[5:32] "......, we decreed for the Children of Israel that anyone who murders any person who had not committed murder or horrendous crimes, it shall be as if he murdered all the people. And anyone who spares a life, it shall be as if he spared the lives of all the people. .............."
[2:256] "There shall be no compulsion in religion".
[60:8]"GOD does not enjoin you from befriending those who do not fight you because of religion, and do not evict you from your homes. You may befriend them and be equitable towards them. GOD loves the equitable."
And I don't want to get into it, but jihad is supposed to be about striving and in most places has a non-martial context. But I'm preaching to the converted here--ha ha--or, actually, I'm not, because it's pretty clear that there's no dialogue that these devils are interested in. I just wish people would remember that people who are in this country are here for a reason. They want freedom. They have no interest in destroying the American way of life, only sharing in it with their families.
Obviously I have chosen to live my life in a loving way and I feel like my voice, like all our voices, is being drowned out by hatred and violence. I meant that in general, but also specific to the community--however loosely defined or imposed, because I'm not the member of any community that would include these people. I'm feeling pretty helpless to counter that because I'm not in a position of power and I'm sure no one would take my opinion as "typical".
So I feel thwarted and helpless on a variety of levels. It is tough to generate the hope necessary to preach/be/embody/spread peace, but without peace, things are truly hopeless. So I guess we're back to generating hope and goodwill out of darkness, which is one of the lessons I learned from Bill [Stiles].
I'm having a hard time believing in permanence. I keep having flashes of what it must have been like. I am afraid, and yet I read about the people who carried down the wheelchair-bound woman from the 85th floor and I am heartened. Then I think about the couple who jumped off holding hands. I know they must have felt strength in jumping together, and I understand that, which terrifies me.
But we can leap off into nothing believing that if we're all in this together, we'll be all right. I hope people take each other's hands. We're all bootstrapping each other, whether we know it or not.
- Nietzsche
| Quotations |
9/18/01
It looks like rain today. Somehow the clouds fit our collective mood -- a sense of threat overhead, the muffled sun, the sky reminiscent of smoke. Now, crossing into Manhattan, I can't tell the remaining smoke, the smoke of the remains, from the clouds. The unthinkable drops into the background.
And I think: when it rains, what will happen to the posters of the missing? Will they wash away? Or will they run, smudge? As if they haven't wept enough already.
Continue reading ""When it rains, what will happen to the posters of the missing?"" » | New York City | Subway |
Patrick:
I was in my office on 34th street when the planes struck. I soon left the office on foot (not wanting to risk getting caught anywhere) and reached Katey and Nicholas in are apartment. Our neighborhood was not effected by the blasts but you could clearly see the plume of dust where the Trade Center had been and the people walking up first avenue to safer areas. We heard a lot of sirens. More than normal and we knew where they were all going. After about an hour of news overload we decided to turn of the tv and radio, but the temptation was too great. We decided to walk over to Tompkins square Park, where we assumed we would not hear any broadcast, see any smoke or hear any sirens. Although the park was pretty normal we eventually decided to walk up Ave. B to Katey parents and eventually ended up staying overnight with them.
| 9/11 | New York City |
I'm ok. Somehow the full magnitude of this just hasn't hit me yet. There are ways the disaster brushed incredibly close, and yet I just feel numb. I keep feeling I should grieve for the people who were killed, and yet it's so hard to believe that, even seeing the rubble, it still does feel like a special effect.
I work about two miles north of the trade center, and things were oddly calm up there on 23rd street. Most offices closed around noon, and the streets were filled with people, in the middle of the streets as well as the sidewalks. But most of them were astoundingly calm, focusing on how to get home, and seeing the city's well-organized response to the emergency in the process. Many buses passed us, heading downtown to help evacuate the area. The taxis we saw were all off duty, for some reason, and most people just seemed to be walking, slowly, but reasonably calmly. I passed one young woman staring down Fifth Avenue at the smoke pouring out of the hole.
I was the only one who made it into work yesterday. David has been driving me in because I'm having a tendon problem with my foot, and he dropped me off at about 8:30. We generally take the Battery Tunnel in, which exits just west of the former towers. So we drove by about half an hour before the explosions. I don't think I was even paying attention.
My boss was in DC yesterday; still is, as far as I know. He travels so often that his wife didn't even know what hotel he was staying at, and she called, frantic, to try to find out. (As it turns out, he was in Rock Creek Park, safely far away from the explosions.) I called our colleagues who work further downtown, and the person I spoke with had just seen the tower collapse, out her window. I left my office twice to try to give blood. The first time I couldn't get uptown; the second time, I started walking, realized I would never be able to go two miles on my aching foot, and finally was able to share a cab uptown with several other people. I had planned to meet David at his office, and we were to go together, since he had already been to the Red Cross center and was told there was a five-hour wait. He had also signed up to do grief counseling, and he had been picked up by one of the commandeered buses by the time I got to him. So I waited, read through almost the entire Table Talk thread, and listened to the radio. Meanwhile, he waited at the piers that were to be a temporary morgue, and eventually was dismissed because neither the bodies nor the grievers had arrived.
So, a lot of near misses, but we're all ok. David and I eventually got home to Brooklyn over the Triboro Bridge, which was the only one open, and stayed up far too late watching the rescue attempts and that very swiftly-moving plane. My office is closed today, but we're working from home, televisions and radios blaring.
Much love to you all. When you break a glass at a wedding, it's supposed to mean that you remember sorrow in the midst of joy. I think enough glass has been broken for years of weddings. But we'll see you at ours, God willing.
{Later}
The situation is actually quite a bit calmer up here on 23rd street. I tried to get over to give blood earlier, but there's a five hour wait in local hospitals. The streets are filled with people, most of whom are fairly calm, but who are walking slowly down the middle of the street instead of staying on the sidewalk. It reminds me of celebrations at the end of World War II, rather than what could be the beginning of one.
In a movie, the eerieness of this scene might be marked by silence or wailing, but what makes it particularly eerie is the normal behavior most people are lapsing back into. Most seem more focused on trying to get home. I overheard one conversation about the wtc collapse which transitioned into a discussion about Independence Day, and then into other Denzel Washington movies. But it's all under a literal pall from the smoke billowing out of the hole at the end of fifth avenue.
I am going to try again to give blood in a little while. This is an extraordinary and very frightening day.
| New York City |
Ranya:
My Arab friends are already reporting a backlash. Of course, despite the images we saw on the news of the already-long-frustrated and desperate Palestinians celebrating the attack, most Arabs and Arab-Americans are horrified by this event and I'm sure many would like to show where their sympathy is by donating blood and by trying to help. A Palestinian friend of mine who grew up in wartime Beirut said this is what Beirut looked like. He also reported that veil-wearing Muslim women in Bay Ridge have been verbally harassed and an Arab shop owner was sprayed with pepper spray.
It is very important not to blame the millions of innocent Arabs and Muslims over this tragedy, and to do what we can to stop further spread of this hatred and blaming, which I'm sure will happen in the coming days and weeks.
| 9/11 | New York City |
David:
In 1977, when I became involved with the Clamshell Alliance trying to stop the proliferation of nuclear power, and I began to research the subject, two hypotheticals jumped out at me:
1. A meltdown, when the reactor core superheated and would, in theory, melt all the way down to China (hence the term "The China Syndrome", which became the title of a movie), but instead would hit ground water and "Contaminate an area the size of Pennsylvania." This hypothetical was actually referenced in the movie, which came out only a few weeks before the incident at the 3 Mile Island nuclear plant in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, back in March, 1979.
2. In the event of a possible meltdown, how does one evacuate an area the size of Pennsylvania? The hypothetical that stuck with me all these years was that "It would take 2 1/2 hours to evacuate the World Trade Center -- without panic."
I have thought about that hypothetical many times over the years, including just yesterday morning, as Liz and I drove into the city through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, passing underneath the World Trade Centers at about 8:20 am, less than a half hour before the first plane hit.
We managed to get home to Brooklyn last night. The streets reeked of smoke. Taking the F train to Manhattan from Brooklyn this morning, you could still see the smoke, as high as skyscrapers and as wide and area as much of lower Manhattan, fortunately blowing south into the harbor, rather than north over the island.
I'm reminded of Phil Ochs' song, "Crucifixion," which he wrote after the assassination of JFK. He wrote this many years ago, and I'm just changing the pronouns of a couple of partial verses. The first verse I thought of upon first hearing the news, and the second after watching every replay from every angle:
....First, a smile of rejection at the nearness of the night Truth becomes a tragedy, limping from the light The Heavens are horrified! They stagger from the sight And the Cross is trembling with desire....But you know, I predicted it, I knew they had to fall
How did it happen? I hope the suffering was small
Tell me every detail, I've got to know it all
And do you have a picture of the pain?
I can't imagine what it must be like for Jesse, or for my Liz's brother-in-law Dennis, who both work at Bellevue Hospital, which houses the first makeshift morgue, and received the bulk of the first casualties. I volunteered as a Mental Health Professional yesterday, putting my hypnotherapy license to use as a grief counselor, and was bussed by the Red Cross to a makeshift morgue, but it wasn't set up yet, and they sent us all home without having had the chance to counsel anybody.
To say that our hopes and prayers are with the thousands upon thousands of people, alive and dead, who are still trapped under tons and tons of steel and rubble, feels to me like spitting into the ocean. And yet, New Yorkers rise to the occasion: there was a five hour wait to give blood yesterday at the hospital near my office, and as long a wait as that at the Red Cross center on 68th Street.
| 9/11 | New York City |
Jessie:
Dear all:
I wanted to try to write something, both to let you know what I've seen and to help me get it off my chest, I fear I won't be as eloquent as others or as the occasion deserves. All that I write is my own musing and completely off the record. Thank you all for your concern and good vibes sent my way. As you may or may not kow there are 2 "level one" trauma centers in lower manhattan: St. Vincents and Bellevue. St. Vincents is closer to the site, but Bellevue is bigger. When we first heard about the initial disaster we had just finished our morning conference and really didn't know what had happened except that a plane had hit a building. We set up the ER for mass casualties and got assignments of duties. It was very efficient and under control. It turns out that many of the staff in the hospital had watched both crashes unfold as there are windows of the hospital that face south and had an unimpeded view of the towers. In the ER, though, we knew very little and simply readied ourselves for the worst. And then people started coming in. At first, there were a few victims, who had been picked up fleeing the scene, then we started getting rescue workers who had fallen and hurt themselves or who had suffered smoke inhalation or asthma attacks. And all the physicians in the hospital seemingly came down to the ER to lend a hand. We had facilities for over ten simultaneous trauma resucitations. People who had trained at Bellevue in the ER showed up thinking that we, and not their current hospital, would need help. But there just weren't very many patients. Finally at 1PM after feeling very agitated that I was basically standing around doing nothing, I came home for a few hours sleep figuring that all there docs would eventiually get tired and go home and they would need fresh people in the ER to stay up all night. While I walked home I couldn't believe that it was such a beautiful day. It seemed wrong, like it was too cruel a juxtaposition to have evidence of our divine gifts while experiencing such loss. When I went back to work at 8PM, nothing was much different. There was stil a lot of standing around. Occasionally some folks would go down to the site or to Chelsea piers where there's a triage center, but the people who came back said that there wasn't much for them to do there either. Surgeons slept on stretchers in the ambulance bay, there were so eager to save someone's life. I walked around in a daze. Thinking about how I used to look at the twin towers being built when we crossed the Brooklyn bridge when I was little. They finished one before the other. I don't remember which was which, but for a time, they were distinct for me. I started getting more and more sentimental about the firemen. They've suffered such huge losses. They mourned so hard when they lost that group of firefighter in Massachustts. Yesterday they lost hundreds. The docs who went down to the site said that the firefighter were superhuman. They would go and dig, get overwhelemed by smoke, come out, suck on some oxygen for a few minutes and, as soon as they felt better, go right back in. I thought about how they risk their lives without hesitation and what it really means to be a hero.
I feel like the entire day has been spent hoping that we'd get some patients, hoping that we could save some lives, thinking "with the death toll likely to be over 10,000, even if only 1% can be saved, we should be seeing a lot more people here." So we were a whole hospital with nothing to do, everyone was ready and willing (suddenly the laziest staff had a spring in their step), we just had so few patients and that was so horrible.
There were some people who came in who we probably saved, but it's such a small percentage. It's hard to comprehend the thoroughness of the destruction.
I'm going to watch some TV, eat breakfast and go to sleep. Love to you all.
| 9/11 | New York City | Ground Zero |
I'm turning around in my cocoon of shock, absorbing the astounding sight of so many lights on in the windows of apartment buildings, taking in the progressive slowing of Peter Jennings' train of thought, taking in the ratio of people walking down the street with a cigarette in their hand, taking in the child psychologists' advice that parents should reassure kids that they are there to keep them safe--around one's baby, maintain one's routines. The parenting experts also say that if the kids are talking about how excellent it is to see bodies flying from buildings, then maybe it is a good time to share one's adult feelings about the many people in that building who won't be with their families anymore.
I fear I find myself guessing what percentage of kids won't be getting plain-spoken reassurance from their parents this week. Then I find myself reassured that the homeless guys are walking by with their bags of cans, just as they usually do.
I am most thankful that, contrary to what I speculated to Chris earlier, my former roommate Kay was not in the building. It's an understatement to say to say that it was a good move she quite her job on the 102nd floor of the WTC 2 weeks ago.
I'd like to note, since we all will end up at some point discussing today's awfulness by invoking previous historical awfulnesses (another recommendation to the parents, actually), that not one of the disaster management professors or other talking heads on the airwaves have managed to remember to include the recent deaths of 100,000 or so Hondurans by earthquake on their list of acts perpetrated by God or the devil.
May we all remain well, suffer a minimum of loss to our immediate circles, and have the fortitude to help where we can.
Yitgadal v'yitkadash v'yimlach malchutay b'chayaychon v'yomaychon--God's holy canopy of peace, come and cover us quickly in our days.
| New York City |
Xeni:
When I turned NPR on this morning and didn't hear Dick Estelle's Bookshelf, I knew something was terribly wrong because, as often as I've wished for it, nothing but nothing has ever preempted the froggy recitations of Dick Estelle. A man who was not Dick Estelle said something about a passenger plane flying into the Pentagon and two into the World Trade Center, and it seemed too unreal, too much some special effects nerd's wet dream ("We'll have a plane. No, wait--two planes! And we'll crash them into the World Trade Center!) to be true. I turned on my small tv, and there found terrible (if still surreal) confirmation of the NPR story. I tried calling New York, afraid for friends, for friends of friends, for people I don't know or know barely (I worked in one of the towers for a couple of weeks, doing secretarial stuff for a firm that specialized in, of all things, catastrophe insurance, and, oh, those poor, poor people; I pray they got out alright).
As grateful as I feel today to be living in a state that isn't ranked high by terrorists in iconic value, I wish that I could be closer to the people I care so much about. Because I can't right now, please email. And please, please be well.
| Iowa | 9/11 |
It's a horror show down here. My family is okay; Debbie, last I spoke to her, was still waiting for word on Mike, who commuted into work this morning; but given the time he left (9ish), we suspect he -- thank God -- didn't get very far. I spoke to Jay and Andrea earlier, too -- they are fine.
My Dad's 70-something uncle Oscar, miraculously, got out of the second WTC building after the first crash. He got out in the 18 minutes between explosions. Incredibly, he got on a subway at Brooklyn bridge and made it home...we are so relieved. A cousin's father-in-law is still missing; we're praying for him.
I'm typing e-mail because I'm too nervous to do anything else.
My building is very close to the city and offers a perfect view of lower Manhattan. I was reading the paper on my back porch at around a quarter to 9 when ash began falling on me. I thought it was soft hail, but it's a sunny, totally clear day. Not knowing what was going on, I clambered up the fire escape to my roof and saw the smoke flowing out of the first building. Because of the wind, it was all heading toward Brooklyn.
In the time it took me to get down, turn on the TV and start calling family, I witnessed the second explosion live on TV. I soon returned to my roof and saw the first building collapse right in front of me, from my roof. Seeing the crashes on television was sickening, but watching the first collapse in person was absolutely horrific.
It was raining ash, also raining pieces of paper; one from a brokerage company, with some flowcharts on it, coated in ash, landed on my roof. The ash was a little at first, but about an hour ago it was so thick, people couldn't walk on the street in my neighborhood. The sun is back out from behind the cloud; my back porch coated in ash.
| New York City | Brooklyn |
Jay and I were both here in Park Slope this morning when the planes hit, and thank whatever, the only physical trace of tragedy to reach us is the ashen, wind-born taste of what's left of the tallest buildings in New York.
We can't see the double-amputated skyline; it's shrouded by a long gray cloud (an airborne hate-seeded event?) stretching over what had been a cloudless day. Then also, I had to take a break from watching TV. They're running the four-step carnage tape over and over again, and when I see the towers' steel lattices collapse downward, I can't stop imagining it as the staged demolition of some retired Vegas showplace, only somehow, oh god, they (puke) forgot to tell... everyone inside. No one knows how many there were yet, though I guess our friend Jessie is getting a sense. By now she must be in up to her elbows at the ER. We worship her.
For now, we've been stopping by the hospital down the street periodically to see when they'll have room for us to come give blood. Last time we were there, the paper sign posted out front made me tear up a little. It said: "Blood Donors: Due to overwhelming response, we cannot accommodate any more people today. Please come back on Wednesday, September 12."
When the earthquakes last hit in Turkey and and the murders at Columbine, I remember how the news of community response had a fairy-story feeling for me, how I didn't quite think that I lived in a place like that. Anyway, don't worry (about us, at least). We're a little shaken, but fine, and this is a place like that.