Two days ago was the 3rd anniversary of the Day America Stood Still. Oops. The Day George Bush Sat Still while America, stunned for a moment, got to work doing what Americans do -- whatever they can to help.
But now, three years later, way too many Americans have forgotten all about that, and Sept. 11 has become an almost abstract symbol of something, and most of us are not quite sure what that is.
Is it the symbol of an unwarranted attack on U.S. soil, one that launched this noble country into a war to end all terrorism? Is it the symbol of an excuse to attack another country? Is it the symbol of a delusion of power greater than that of Alexander, Napolean and Rome combined?
Whatever it is, the missing towers in NYC have been a backdrop of sorts for all that's come sense, more often than not shoehorned into that place, against all evidence it didn't fit, by an administration using everything it can to delude the American people as much as it is deluded about its place in history.
Sept. 11 isn't a symbol though. It was a day when 3,000 people died because madmen used airplanes as missiles against an enemy they perceived as worthy of such an attack.
They, too, were deluded. And the men who sent those madmen to their deaths remain just as deluded. And so, we now fight a global war against terror, good vs. evil, us vs. them, that is as deluded as the men who created it.
The problem with delusions is they often include real people who are irrevocably hurt by the actions of the deluded, and in this case, we're just about to include the entire world.
And here in America, we're inching closer to electing the chief of the deluded, George W. Bush, to a second term in office. How ridiculous. If only we had eyes to see ... some of us do, but daily, I fear not enough.
Tom Engelhardt, he of Tomdispatch.com, is rapidly becoming one of my favorite writers. In his latest, a discourse on what he calls "September 33rd," Tom discusses what the leaders of the free world did with their day after learning of the murderous attacks back in 2001, and concludes that since that day, Bush and his war-obsessed vice president have pressed us to be afraid, be very afraid, because THEY are. And more importantly than making US safe is making them safe.
That's what the Patriot Act and all the other ridiculous things are about -- making this administration safe, and making certain it gets another four years to recreate its paranoid vision of the world.
Now, they have chosen the view from "the shelter" for all of us Americans. Their embunkered, panicky, fearful world is ours as well, and so many things Americans once thought valuable, freedoms especially, have been sacrificed thoughtlessly at its altar. For them, any carnage is permissible Out There as long as, first, they are safe, and second, Americans are safe. And now that we are even half-looking, it's tough indeed to get operatives from Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, North Africa or wherever into this country to commit mayhem. This was hardly a difficult trick. But from a global perspective, the decision to make American safety the only significant safety, to fight, as they love to say, "on their soil, not ours," is perhaps the greatest cowardice of all. It represents an embunkering and a mad triumph of fundamentalist thought on all sides, political as well as religious, a formula guaranteed to terrorize our poor planet and sooner or later us as well. This is certainly the victory of Osama bin Laden.
Tom hits on something else that has been floating around the periphery of my mind's bleary vision for some time now. These men -- very few of whom ever saw anything approaching a real war -- are hellbent on this one precisely because they have no clue what war is.
Normally, the Vietnam-era records of these two men would not matter to me a bit. But in both cases they reflected a similar urge to duck at an earlier moment of crisis. What's more striking than Dick Cheney's various well-timed acts leading to deferments, or the string-pulling for George, or even his seeming avoidance of service for months at a time in those years is the fact that no record exists of their positions then. There are no statements at all from those years on the primary subject of that moment, wherever you stood, other than Cheney's classic comment, "I had better things to do." They didn't oppose or support, they just evaded. It wasn't draft-dodging; it was event dodging.
For them, those years are in a sense a blank. The only wars they had attended took place in the movie theaters of their childhoods where they watched mythologized versions of the World War II deeds of the previous generation. These were the thrilling visions of American victory which they carried, untarnished by the reality of war, untouched by the Vietnam years, right up to September 11, 2001 and into the years thereafter when George Bush would metamorphose into a swaggering "war president" with that crossed-out list of al-Qaeda "high value targets" in his desk drawer and his trophy from the unending war he did manage to start -- Saddam's pistol captured in that famed "spiderhole" -- now hanging in the Monica Lewinsky memorial room in the White House.
"Mythologized versions of the World War II deeds of the previous generation." "Thrilling visions of American victory." Sounds about right, doesn't it? Isn't that what this administration keeps trying to ram down our throats every chance it gets?
Pity of it is, too many of us have the same delusion. |
