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Why I Was So Wrong on September 11th
On September 11, 2001, a fellow New Yorker and friend of mine, a public health historian who knew instantly what the dangers were, bicycled directly into the smoke, ash, and chemicals that hung over lower Manhattan searching for his daughter whose school was only blocks away from the collapsed buildings. She was, it turned out, "safe" in that same pall of dangerous smoke. She had been evacuated to the street with her class in time to see people leaping or falling to their deaths from the upper floors of one of the crippled towers. You probably couldn't live in New York City that day and not be connected, however indirectly, to someone who died. In my case, it was the father of a classmate of my son's, a photographer, who also advanced into the chaos near one of the towers, leaving behind an eerie, moving trail of photographs.
As for myself, I was on my bedroom floor that morning most undramatically exercising when my wife called to tell me that something was happening. By then, TV cameras were already focused on the first punctured tower and, remembering tales of the B-25 that had hit the Empire State Building in 1945, I assumed I was watching a horrifying accident. Another friend, a rare North American who remembered the first 9/11 -- that day in 1973 when Salvador Allende, the Chilean president, was overthrown and murdered in a U.S.-backed military coup -- thought it might be Chilean payback.
Any half-plausible idea was, for a while, possible. History hadn't set. The Bush administration, in disarray, hadn't yet hijacked the day or the country. September 11th, still being lived, hadn't been renamed "Patriot Day." There was, as yet, no Department of Homeland Security, no Patriot Act. No one had been rounded up. No wars had been launched.
As for New Yorkers, those of us not making our way out of -- or into -- the danger zone were on the phone checking on loved ones, listening to rumors, or outside in the streets, talking to each other, wondering while the sirens wailed. It was a memorably terrible moment, but not, in fact, a nightmare of fear; nor would New York ever, as far as I could tell, find itself in the grip of blind revenge as, it seemed, so much of the country would soon be. Not so long after 9/11, for instance, two New Yorkers I know -- one had been close indeed to the collapsing towers -- headed for Afghanistan, not armed to kill but to help.
I remember my own now-embarrassing first reaction to 9/11 (once I grasped what was actually happening). It was unexpectedly dense and unprophetic, given the American reaction to come. I thought, then, that perhaps the horror of those acts of destruction and mass murder in my own city would open Americans to the sort of pain so many others in the world had felt -- sometimes, in fact, at our own hands. It might, I thought, change our politics. It did, of course, do that, but in no way I imagined. And that was the strange, unexplained thing for me: it seemed as if living at "ground zero" during the assaults of 9/11 somehow made you the worst predictor of what our nation would feel and do.
For me, even today, an especially unnerving aspect of 9/11 was the way so many Americans donned "I [heart] New York" T-shirts and hats -- New York having, until then, been Sodom to Los Angeles's Gomorrah for much of the country -- and under the Bush administration's fear-filled ministrations, began beating the drums of war, while panicking over prospective terrorists launching improbable attacks on their local amusement parks and landmarks. It seemed craven to me then and still does today.
Eight disastrous years later, I suddenly understand that day so much better, thanks to Rebecca Solnit, whom 9/11 indirectly sent my way offering hope in dark times. Now, she's returned with her latest book, A Paradise Built in Hell, which capsizes our most basic sense of what disaster is all about, humanly speaking. As befits an author who has written a guidebook to getting lost, she is bold beyond belief and her originality matches that boldness. And here's the thing: if you take a journey into disaster with her (9/11 being but one of the many disasters she explores in the book), you won't get lost. You'll find yourself. You'll find ourselves, our better selves, even in catastrophe.
Think of Paradise as the perfect companion volume to Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine. Klein explained how governments try to take advantage of disasters to optimize their power and wealth (and that of their cronies); Solnit explains what ordinary people in disasters regularly do for themselves. They don't, as we have been taught, run screaming from danger. They head for the smoke, pedaling hard, and then, without the help of governments, they begin to organize. They become, briefly, their better selves. So here's a thought: Maybe it was the lack of the actual experience of 9/11 that left the rest of America so vulnerable when the Bush administration led them toward their lesser selves.
Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His latest book, co-authored with Nick Turse, is Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050. His other most recent book is The United States of Fear (Haymarket Books). Previous books include: The End of Victory Culture: a History of the Cold War and Beyond, The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's, as well as of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com here.
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Thank you, Tom Engelhardt, for this heartfelt reconstruction of a New Yorker's reaction to 9/11. Though only briefly a resident of the city in the l960s as a young professor at NYU, I feel that New Yorkers, far from the Kitty Genovese indifference for which they are notorious, are people who can rise to a level of human solidarity in a crisis; I experienced that personally with the blackout of 1964.
Your conclusion, however, is a sobering if totally realistic one. While disaster can have the effect of people rushing to rather than from the scene of disasters (a pattern noted long before Solnits' book), we've had plenty enough indications that people outside immediate communities maintain the indifference of the removed: Katrina, for example. The implication of your conclusion, so far from your initial expectation,seems to be that only a massively country or world wide catastrophe could have this effect on a societal level. It remains to be seen whether the world financial crisis will have this effect: some hopeful signs, but also some tendency indications of nations pulling up the drawbridge around their economies as they conduct business as usual.
Anyway, thanks again for your thoughtful essay, the very kind of thinking that should be done on a 9/11--or any other day.
As the horror of death and destruction set in, another disturbing vision came on that September day. Many of us saw the fear-mongering, deception and loss of civil liberties in the War on Drugs. It was no great leap to imagine what would come next. I couldn't help feeling the dreadful sense that the falling of the towers was to become the preamble of the collapsing of the Bill of Rights in the coming War on Terror.
I fear that a central reason that Tom Engelhardt, an astute and intelligent journalist, was so wrong about the reaction of the vast majority of his fellow citizens to the crimes of Sept. 11, is that he -- like too many of our intellectuals -- are out of touch with the debased lives and culture of the good ole USA.
The post-Sept 11 outrages were and are a massive collective crime against humanity that were simply waiting for a trigger.
We live in a fundamentally racist, sexist, imperialistic and backward nation: and the vast majority of our fellow citizens are quite satisfied with that, as long as they are materially comfortable.
Rent or buy the DVD "Loose Change" by Dylan Avery and Korey Rowe. Decide for yourself.
Or watch it on yuotube.com for free.
Drumchap
Loose Change Final Cut is well done but I believe that an even better documentary on the subject is the overlooked Italian made film Zero: An Investigation Into 9/11 which features the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature Dario Fo and with appearances by David Ray Griffin and Webster Tarpley. These people along with others analyze what happened on that day and examine the anomalies put forth by the Bush administration that had occurred on Sept. 11, 2001.
Here is the important quotation from this article:
>>I thought, then, that perhaps the horror of those acts of destruction and mass murder in my own city would open Americans to the sort of pain so many others in the world had felt -- sometimes, in fact, at our own hands. It might, I thought, change our politics.>>
That is hopeful of rationality and compassion. It is a recognition of the often-stated motives of the attackers: to get the US government to change in its politics, in particular, the political policies of imperial domination of the world by force. For those who are willing to look at facts the way a jury does, the blowback, or feedback, or retaliation, or resistance-to-empire that the attacks represent, presents an opportunity to reflect on a lesson we all learn as toddlers: if we hit someone, they may hit us back.
The solution for progressives, of course, is exactly what Tom eludes to: feeling the pain of others as a way to motivate us to quit inflicting it.
But as the last eight years have shown, that is a tough nut to crack.
Take the example of Germany. After their society was leveled by summer of 1945, at least the urban areas, as blowback to German militarism and imperialism—and after the crime of the Nazi Holocaust was uncovered and prosecuted at Nuremberg—a majority of German adults, for over 30 years, failed to believe the Nuremberg trials were justified or fair. And this after their society was leveled and the worst possible sort of crimes in the history of humanity unequivocally exposed. (The survey was done several times from the 50s to the 80s by the US military.) It wasn't until a TV miniseries about the Nazi Holocaust was aired in Germany that a majority of Germans came to condemn their former horrific policies and support the Nuremberg war crimes trials.
Back to the US.
We've invaded or overthrown or attempted to overthrow over 40 nations since WWII. We've killed millions of innocent people, including up to 4 million in the invasion and occupation of Vietnam alone. Yet with the wrong conclusion of Tom Englehardt, we now know that the abandonment of militarism and the end of the US national right to kill innocents for our government's perceived interests, will take something other than 9/11-types of attacks or successful resistance to our occupations in the Mideast. I dont' know what it will take.
But articles like this are helpful.
And the wrongheaded, inaccurate hope that Tom had that our population would gain compassion for those harmed by US violence and end our lawless national violence against innocents abroad (at least since 1818 and the invasion of Florida), is the basis for changing our imperial foreign policies.
and the general reaction of america?
why of course:
it's STILL a variation of "they hate us because of our freedoms"..........
and STILL never looking at itself with honesty and even courage to do so and find that "america" ISN'T as glorious and righteous and moral and ethical as americans DELUDE themselves into believing.
why ELSE do americans still have the mentality of "going against the war" (in afghanistan) - ONLY because they can rationalize that "it's not worth it?"?
"Worth IT?"
WAR? going abroad to kill and "teach afghanis" etc how to be "civilized?"
THAT"s "worth it" for WAR?
but americans say nowadays "it's not worth it" - because it HITS them in their POCKETS and "we have domestic problems to attend to?"
ONLY because of that? otherwise - war - in SOME "better" way - "would be WORTH IT?"
it STILL does not remove americans from the mentality of MAKING WAR - so long as "we can win this".
REGARDLESS of what it does TO other cultures and regions.
I'd just add to my own post that we need to say, over and over and over again, that when one group hurts or kills others, sometimes they hurt or kill back—out of revenge, or perceived defense, or a sense of justice.
One of the London bombers, a native Brit, Mohammad Sidique Kahn spoke this in his video:
"This is how our ethical stances are dictated. Your democratically elected governments continuously perpetuate atrocities against my people and your support of them makes you directly responsible, just as I am directly responsible for protecting and avenging my Muslim brothers and sisters," the man said on the videotape.
"Until we feel security, you will be our target," he continued. "Until you stop the bombing, gassing, imprisonment and torture of my people, we will not stop this fight. We are at war and I am a soldier. Now you too will taste the reality of this situation."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/01/international/europe/01cnd-london.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1125624178-SWGpQ8GO/8fjOf0azcPI6A
So if we are to believe Mr. Kahn, the solution is simple:
Make everyone secure, including third-world peoples. Including Muslims.
And that means owning up to one's own harm, one's own crimes, and to quit doing them, and begin to replace lawlessness with lawfulness, as our Constitution requires. Remember, Article 6 (2) says that "treaties made" are the "supreme law of the land."
To prevent more terrorist acts, we need to follow our own laws and treaties, including the UN Charter, which forbids "the threat or use of force" against other nations.
One of my favorite movies, the first version of The Day the Earth Stood Still, made this point so eloquently by Klaatu, in his final speech to Earth's scientists:
"There must be security for all or no one is secure. Now this does not mean giving up any freedom, except the freedom to act irresponsibly. Your ancestors knew this when they made laws to govern themselves and hired policemen to enforce them. We, of the other planets, have long accepted this principle. We have an organization for the mutual protection of all planets and for the complete elimination of aggression. The test of any such higher authority is, of course, the police force that supports it. "
http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/filmnotes/klaatu.html
Thanks for sparking one of my warmest childhood memories again. Uni.of Maryland used to have a Free Friday Family Movie Night in an older lecture hall in the early 70's. They showed award winners including "39 Steps" "the 3rd Man" "the Boy with Green Hair,"" How Green was My Valley",and of course, "The Day the Earth Stood Still". Most of them had a theme of either promoting peace or forcing upon the audience the recognition of evil and the dilemmas that frequently confront us in rejecting it. It was a worthy use of state resources that supported families, fostered a lifelong love of art, particularly cinema, made off-hours use of a significant resource, and promoted the moral and intellectual growth of a wide-eyed 10 year old.
It makes me sad to know how infrequently that sort of event probably occurs on either that campus in College Park or elsewhere now.
Mohammad Sidique Kahn was British. He killed his countrymen. By your post, should Muslims be suspected as traitors? What is your point? Also I note you seem to be implying collective punishment.
Collective punishment happens all the time. The US government has killed at least two million innocent civilian Iraqis, for example, since 1990, in invasions and occupations of that nation. The Mideastern resistance militias such as AQ have done the same thing on a much smaller scale against innocent, civilian people in the US, Spain, and the UK, and elsewhere. I think all such collective punishment is illegal and criminal. ANY attack that kills civilians whether by intent or context, is terrorism.(Ours or theirs.) Our government does it all the time. Mr. Kahn did it against his fellow British countrymen, and in defense (he said) of his Muslim countrymen. His actions were completely lawless and criminal. Every human life is totally valuable.
As for my point, I made my point very clearly. I'll make it again: if we want to prevent such attacks in the future against our civilians, we need to own up to our own crimes, prosecute our war criminals, and stop committing terrorist war crimes against the innocent civilians in other countries. For us to be secure, all must be secure, in a system of the global rule of law—a system directly opposed in word and deed by our government.
His Muslim countrymen? Either Khan is a member of a nutty negligible demographic or all Muslims are subversive treasonous. Which is it?
And second, where do you come up with your assertion that all violence is terrorism? Terrorism is a political tactic used by sub-national groups.
From Mr. Kahn's point of view, not mine, his Muslim countrymen live in other countries as well as in Britain. His is a common concept of a global "Muslim Nation" spanning many nations. He sees it as a kind of de facto dual citizenship. He has a right to define his affiliations and identities as he sees fit. (But no right to kill or harm any civilian.) The Organization of Islamic Conference is a collection of about 67 predominately Muslim-population nations. The OIC then reflects the same affinities that Mr. Kahn had when he killed himself, killing innocent British civilians in London. Mr. Kahn's decisions do not have any relationship to what all Muslims think. You are making that up Guess Who. No one person speaks for all Muslims or all Catholics. Or all Americans.
On your second question and assertion. You made up the idea that I asserted that "all violence is terrorism." Read my text. I didn't say any such thing. Our own domestic laws assert that violence for self-defense or defense of others, can be legal, as determined by laws applied to each case in court or by prosecutors who decide to or not to prosecute someone. All domestic US police officers have detailed training in when lethal force is justified and when it is not.
As for your assertion that "Terrorism is a political tactic used by sub-national groups." that is true in some cases. But individuals (a group of one) can commit terrorism. So can nations, obviously.
The most objective definition of terrorism I know of came from the UN:
>>The report of the Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change included a working definition of terrorism as:
“any action, in addition to actions already specified by the existing conventions on aspects of terrorism, the Geneva Conventions and Security Council Resolution 1566 (2004), that is intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants, when the purpose of such act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or to compel a Government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act.” >>
Implementation of the UN Global Counterterrorism Strategy
42nd Conference on the
United Nations of the Next Decade
Sponsored by The Stanley Foundation
June 8-13, 2007
The Inn at Perry Cabin, St. Michaels, Maryland
p. 164
www.stanleyfoundation.org/publications/report/UNND807.pdf
Official US definitions, as would by expected by a militaristic nation, tend to absolve nations (our government) from guilt for the same or worse terrorist acts committed by smaller groups. Nuremberg however enshrined in law the fact that when nations commit horrendous crimes, it is a crime. The ICC further enshrines this. So did the Special Tribunal for Genocide in Rwanda.
A US aircraft fired a rocket or bombs on some fuel tankers in Afghanistan and killed dozens of civilian adults and kids last week. That was a terrorist act, just like if a Chinese (just to pick a big "other nation") rocket launched from a Chinese aircraft against a hijacked truck near your house or mine and killed you or me.
I appreciate your feeback. First of all you can't have it both ways. Either Muslims are consistant combatants who must be reckoned with or the violent ones should be brushed off and dismissed. Simple.
Second, war is not terrorism. Collateral damage is not a terrorist attack. And firing a rocket at the bad guys is not terrorism either.
Commondreams.org is a progressive community. It is a place for people who have or seek compassion for others and to value all human beings. Referring to children and other innocent civilians burned to death by US bombs or rockets as "collateral damage" is not a concept that fits with this community.
I suggest you reflect on the attitudes that perpetuate violence in our world with a focus on your own thinking, and the hardness of your heart.
Our conversation is over. Hey, I tried.
study some history, bud.
war, of choice, has always been terrorism.
this modern conceit of non-state terrorism is only intended to make the terrorism of any state "understandable and acceptable".
collateral: descended from a common ancestor.
"The test of any such higher authority is, of course, the police force that supports it."
implying the moral character of said force.
so long as politicians still think they can debate or redefine torture - worse: so long as anyone thinks this - where do we find such a force?
(not with Blackwater)
only in our personal interactions.
There were more of us who hoped this event would be America's epiphany - as we had hoped Vietnam would be.
America's apologistic denial concerning its militarism is deeply entrenched (pun intended).
There will likely be an Afpraq Syndrome which will need burying in some new jungle or desert sands.
A lot of articles here today are commemorating 911.
On a popular "left-wing" website (among very few others) I had "hoped" to see some articles challenging our assumptions about the events of 911 and calling for an investigation.
Nope. CD supports the whitewash of the 911 Commission.
You obviously don't read CD much. There's plenty of challenges. Maybe just not alot on the actual day because it might seem insensitive; regardless of whether it was false flag terrorism or not, people died.
"Maybe just not alot on the actual day"
Zero actually.
"because it might seem insensitive; "
How on earth would it be insensitive? I have no idea what you mean. Please explain.
questioning the manner of these deaths when they should only be commemorated and/or exploited is insensitive.
continuing the bombardment of innocents is not.
Not all disasters lead to violent retaliation even when people are killed. During the disastrous 1953 flood in the Netherlands (and Belgium, and Northern France, and parts of England) 1853 people were (officially) killed in Holland. The next morning numerous people rushed to places where the dikes were still threatened to fill sandbags.
Since storms are not produced by nations the Dutch did not look around for a country to invade but eventually built a defense system along their coast to prevent the recurrence of this disaster.
Is that a lesson for us?
Goodness. That was my first reaction too. I thought that when the citizens of the west, especially Americans, saw what it was like to be the victims of terror they would understand the feelings of those (like the citizens of Belgrade) who had suffered the violence of the west. I thought a "war on terror" would be literal, would consist of a principled abandonment of all terror tactics, that is the use of lethal force on civilian populations. War, in other words. That we would declare terror illegal and pursue it as a criminal act using judicial means. We would establish and maintain a regime of international law that would bestow peace on the world.
But within 72 hours I knew better. I was reading articles by Americans seething with a "resolve" to "make them pay" and whining about their inability to see what they had done wrong. Within hours Americans were calling on Afghanistan to be nuked into a parking lot, and I knew, I just knew, that Iraq would be the target sooner or later. And then I saw terror succeed in the only way that this atrocious tactic can be successful - in unmasking the monster its livid limelight illuminates as that monster reaches out with ever greater cruelty and barbarity, throwing its hideous shadow on the backdrop of history for all to see. That jerking, scratchy, inhuman shadow play continues, as our words drift ever further from the significance of our actions and make the very foundations of our "civilisation" meaningless.
I suggest that a few of you read the post by Jerry D Rose if you want to see what an intelligent post looks like.
I, too, remember 9/11. I was awakened at about 7:00 am PDT by a call from my parents that the US was under attack and turn on the television. I remember the fear and terror in my mother's voice as she tried to make herself understood, and as I woke my husband and turned on the TV I was stunned and in shock. Then I realized what was happening as I watched the towers collapse and the other reports from PA and DC began to come in. I just started to cry. My first thoughts were for those who were dying and lost in the rubble, their families, and then I realized that even though I was over 2500 miles away, I might be able to help. I called the Phoenix terminals of the airlines and offered to put up people at our home until the flights could resume. We had a 4 bedroom at that time for just my husband and myself, so we had plenty of room. The airlines thanked us, and said that they had been flooded with calls to help stranded travelers, but that they had found accommodations for them all. So I watched as the horror unfolded, unable to help.
Then I watched over the last 8 years the true victory of Bin Laden's obscenity play out in America: WE allowed ourselves to be turned into witless cowards, by an even bigger coward called George W. Bush and his terrorist accomplice, Richard B. Cheney. I watched as they stripped away our freedoms and our rights, and I watched in ever increasing horror as they were abetted in this by Congress. My heart broke as I have watched my country which I love become nothing more that a bully with large guns and our politicians nothing but craven shills for the corporations who are making a profit. I have watched religion turned not into a movement for brotherhood and peace, but into a hate filled crusade against anyone who does not agree with your chosen faith.
This is not my America anymore, but I will not give up on Her. I will fight to my dying breath to restore Her and once again allow Her People to have the rights and freedoms that we lost on September 11, 2001. I will not let those who died that day and in the days after under the cowardly government of Bush and Cheney be forgotten or to have died in vain. Our country deserves a better legacy that the madness of 9/11 fear.
I understand your feelings and not wanting to let the powers that be prevail in the warped, twisted thing that the USA has become. About 4 years ago I'm sure I posted something very closely worded to your post above. I agree about the country I want to live in, needing a better legacy than the madness of 9/11 fear. But now I realize that a legacy of justice and peace would reflect a USA that never authentically existed before this future version/vision.
Now I realize that what was sold as a white-washed representative democracy actually excluded over 90% of the population from citizen participation. The economy was based on slavery and genocide. Yes, it has receded from this to be more nominally participatory ... into being agents of our own ensnarement because the system that was being rigged by the right hand then , is being rigged by the left hand now; the right hand being busy extending the bait for the trap currently.
If you frequent the comments columns of CD posts, watch for comments by SiouxRose, NativeSon and many others to whom I owe a debt of gratitude for helping the veil fall away from my eyes about our past so that I can direct my energy to building what I do want. I want something better than the "restoration" that is due.
The only way to have a better legacy is to expose who really caused 9/11 and how they used it to inflame hatred that didn't exist before and to fill their coffers at the expense of millions of lives and our economy and how they tore our democracy apart. The truth of 9/11 is the only way out and it is what the families have been seeking. www.newamericandream.com
And that truth is very needed to see what they are doing now - also hidden under a false threat, the pandemic, and using it in the same way, to wipe out civil liberties. But the aim is larger now because they hope to trigger martial law and the end of the US Constitution, having laid all the plans for it with a presidential directive and a series of treasonous orders, none of which Obama has revoked.
Waking up to 9/11 leaves people aware of the depth of their depravity and more able to see there are no limits on what they would do. Mandatory lethal vaccines is first strike. Time to expose 9/11 and to expose the next attack on this country - a pandemic artificially created by the military and pharmaceutical industry as a military agenda to take over here.
"This is not my America anymore"
it never was, sister.
it was ever a dream.
gnken
I was in Norway traveling upto the Northern Boarder with Norway/Russia. It was day 2 and we were traveling through this beautiful fjord. An announcement was made that "Attn. American Travelers, we have CNN on the Television in the forward Observation Lounge and Cafeteria Lounge. There has been a Tragedy in America". I immediately went below from the bridge wing to witness a repeat of the attack. It was 4:30 pm, which would be 10:30 US time. My first remark was of course "Oh MY God - Chaney has found a way to get the defense budget he wants" I also thought my god the people killed and Emergency reponse (Fire Police Etc). It was early into the Bush era but I knew what would happen. We see this today.
Tom writes: "Maybe it was the lack of the actual experience of 9/11 that left the rest of America so vulnerable when the Bush administration led them toward their lesser selves."
or maybe it was a lifetime of accepting and voting for similar "lessers"?
The psychological trauma of 911 were the notes played over and over endlessly like a violin virtuoso in concert playing the unending political song of war and the people were led by the rings of their noses to it by the pied pipers. Any other chord of belief is out of tune with the song.
What I Remember
From house to house the jets were flying
into the towers
over and over and over and over
From house to house I brought silence and medicine for the dying who were dying before and were dying still.
I walked into a home where a man named for a fruit lived just when the first tower sank.
I was a counselor for the dying.
It was a beautiful day.
Planes fell out of the sky on such a perfect day.
From house to house what changed was not what anyone thought
would change
From house to house and into the hospitals the repetitious
bodies falling through repeated billows of black smoke
falling though the last days of some people's lives
lying there dying watching crowds of terror running
over and over last calls from crashing airplanes
a stupid president disappearing
over Omaha over Florida Over Iowa who knew
No one knew where he was or what anyone was supposed to do
A Story about a Goat
What I remember is going to my old father in the hospital after watching the planes
fly into the towers over and over again
his bionic heart his shock machine
and veins just fine but he was scared
but wouldn't admit it he had almost been a pilot in
the last good war.
I Wrote a poem.
It knew we would be wrong however we changed
I yelled "What are you doing"
and lost a good number of friends
when people demanded we kill one hundred times one hundred more than had been killed.
Bloodlust on the lips of the pretty TV girls and boys
because we were only used to causing this kind of catastrophe
and bloodbath
for freedom. Was that what we called it?
Free
Dom
I knew we wouldn't know how to act and would not learn from those we had readily massacred while we were worried about
equality or the Rapture or how to make money money money.
I remember people falling out of their clothes from the sky with the glass and poison
Falling Down.
I was in a play:
Spinning Into Butter
we stopped to talk and cry
not many came to the play.
Who wants to talk about racism
when we were getting ready to bomb brown people?
I remember hearing that our grief
is not an excuse for war
drowned out
by lists of names
and the markets froze and fell
and the people went on and breathed the poison to rescue
people they didn't know
and they were heroes.
And the president flew onto the deck of a plane
with a huge codpiece
it wasn't so much later
and said "Mission Accomplished"
and we are still scraping the shit off of the walls
I remember.
If I could somehow applaud I would!
Give me a break with all the conspiracy theories. Area 51, Kennedy was killed by the Mafia, CIA, Cubans, all the moon landings were a hoax, AIDS is a government plot, Holocaust never happened during WW II, U.S. military caused the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, Kentucky Fried Chicken makes black men impotent, and the Nazis had a Moon Base. Now we have the 9-11 conspiracy theories. People please stop watching Oliver Stone movies, ignoring the facts, and viewing bogus paranoia websites. Please read intelligent research by credible sources regarding 9-11 such as PBS’s Nova, Popular Mechanics, and National Geographic to name a few.
"Please read intelligent research by credible sources regarding 9-11 such as PBS’s Nova, Popular Mechanics, and National Geographic to name a few."
please read David Ray Griffin's Debunking 911 Debunking which addresses the moronic content of these "intelligent" (service) publications.
Please do consider that our collective ability to rationally understand facts is especially limited, when they are confrontational to one's treasured beliefs -- as described by H. L. Mencken.
The core of Mencken's social philosophy was relatively simple.
He believed it is the nature of the human species to reject what is true but unpleasant and to embrace what is obviously false but comforting.
Stand up, and live for the truth -- it demands and imposes such, from heroes and patriots. We have much work to do.
_||_
Only the truth will set us free.
The perfect companion volume to read is the document below, very well researched and referenced (over 400 footnotes). The article is lengthy, some parts not easy to follow and it needs to be read with an open mind. The insight into the cancer on the body politic is extremely hard to swallow and very painful to digest. Human hope and defiance of realisation refuse to accept facts, logic and analysis.
The implications will challenge how we look at politics, economy, history, finance, war and terrorism. Many persons in the documents are well known; many are right now in pivotal positions of politics and finance. These people do shape OUR life and that of our children right now. The details are stunning. The consequences are BEYOND BELIEF.
“Collateral Damage” by E. P Heidner, part I and II.
>>> www.scribd.com/people/documents/2169400-ep-heidner <<<