[Insensitive] A Screed Against 9/11

[digitaldiscipline]

Five years out, the terrorists have won.

We have always been at war with Eurasia.

Americans are herded like cattle through metal detectors, screened within a hairsbreadth of the Fourth Amendment, have phone calls surreptitiously and illegally eavesdropped upon, watch soldiers die, watch money flood in a torrent from where it's needed to where it's wasted.

Today, we live in a country of institutionalized fear, and that fear, nay, that terror, is propagated not by violent, jihadist, freedom-hating fundamentalist ideologues (the Muslim ones, not the Christian ones, though the latter are certainly aiding the cause unintentionally or otherwise), but is instead spread, both blatantly and insidiously, from the bully pulpit of our own elected officials.

Five years out, we are a country under seige to "remember the lessons of 9/11" by people who ignored warnings both subtle and overt, who could have acted when it mattered to prevent what happened. These people have not learned the lessons they give the most callous lip service to.

And today, five years out, we are a nation under seige to remember what happened, rather than move on and heal.

Living in the shadow of fear, leaping at the smallest noise or hint of threat... that's not freedom.

I am sick to the fucking tits of "rememberances" and "retrospectives" and slickly-produced documentaries (slanted to one side or the other, or without any bias whatsoever), because all they serve to do is remind me of how much we have lost and how little we have gained.

We are not safer. We are less free.

We have always been at war with Eastasia.

We have not found Osama Bin Fucking Laden. Some contend that competent leadership could have done so in places like Tora Bora. I will be the last person to call our country's leadership competent. The fact remains that the shit that walks like a man behind what happened is still wasting as much of my oxygen as George W. Bush.

9/11 was the day the internet grew up, and a political figure became the #1 search term on Yahoo and Google instead of the latest pretty person or trifle.

I understand that people cope with trauma in different ways. Mine happens to be telling people who enjoy wallowing in sentimentality or going into a neurotic shell when presented with anything on the subject to get the fuck over it. I'm being assaulted by gravitas-laden montages of "God Bless the USA" intercut with GWB sound bites from the pro-armed forces radio station playing too loudly in my coworker's cubicle, and it's all I can do to avoid throwing the goddamned thing out the window because I'm sick of the blind and smirking propaganda that has suffused every mention of the date.

Our leaders trot it out to keep us afraid to think, to keep us afraid to act, to keep us believing that they know what's best, when it's patently obvious that they don't, haven't, and refuse to.

We have always been at war with Oceana.

I have always been at war with stupidity. And I think the national fixation with wallowing in remembrance has crossed the line. We don't work ourselves into a catatonic lather over Pearl Harbor Day anymore. We don't grind to a halt on the anniversary of JFK's assassination. We don't fret incessantly on the days leading up to when either Space Shuttle blew up.

Get over it. Live.

The emotional weight oppressing and crushing our national psyche is propaganda in the purest, most insidious sense.

Fuck that noise.

I refuse to be a victim of terrorists, or my government, or the propaganda machine that serves them both. Nobody dictates my thoughts or emotions without my consent. Don't let them dictate yours.

Today sucks because it's a Monday, and that's all.

Comments

[critus.livejournal.com]

Amen, brother.

[mschaos.livejournal.com]

thank you...when people tell me 'oh my gawd I have to be afraid of every little thing' I get ill...they don't want freedom...they want to be sheep and hearded into what they think is the American Dream

Live dammit, becuase guess what...we, every single one of us, is going to die someday...and we don't know when or how that will happen now do we?

so live dammit

[ladysoleil.livejournal.com]

If I were with you today I'd give you a big wet sloppy fucking kiss on the mouth for saying 90% of the shit I think that it's not politically acceptable to say in NYC today, particularly not when you're sitting less than 2 miles away from said giant hole in the ground.

Give the boy a gold star.

Mistake

[tomakins.livejournal.com]

Beneath the line We are not safer. We are less free. you mistakenly said: We have always been at war with Eastasia. As you know brother we have in fact been at war with EURasia, not EASTasia.

I read that same mistake from other sources before though. Twice last night and now twice today. That's a total of five times now.

But all joking aside, good post.

[gruamach.livejournal.com]

This is what I love about my friends.

I can sit here and read what should theoretically be the totally opposite of my own socio-political views and still go "Right on, dude!"

[gruamach.livejournal.com]

Hell, I'd give him a big sloppy kiss, too. :P


The thing is, he's got the whole point of what even a lot of "ultra-conservative" figureheads say, too. You can't go "I refuse to let the terrorists win" and then cower in fear to the point where you give up all your own freedoms and comforts for (supposed) security. You refuse to let them win by going "Fuck 'em" and moving on. Like a horsefly that just bit you, you smack the damned thing til it's dead and then forget about it. You don't go running and buy a new wardrobe of beekeeper overalls and proudly proclaim that the fly lost.

To quote an old, war-mongering NRA-loving conservative (who I totally admire, mostly):
"Let us call it something else, but not ‘Terrorism’… A man cannot be terrorized unless he allows himself to be." -Col Jeff Cooper

[etcet.livejournal.com]

Then can we please smack it -competently- and -effectively- and stop dicking around the fucking desert?

Christ, I hate RoE's that hamstring something that should have taken a whole lot less time to accomplish.

[the-yellow-king.livejournal.com]

I believe it is well worth quoting once again the observations of Hermann Goering on being interviewed by Gustave Gilbert:


We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.

"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."

"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."

"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

It is the last paragraph that is the most important. Goering, like any good propagandist, knew exactly what to tell people - and it's exactly what's been told to us by our leaders, both Republican and Democrat.

When 9.11 happened, I was of the firm belief that we should identify the country harboring the terrorists, invade, and wipe out opposition. I still believe this. We did not do so; we engaged in an ineffective 'police action' against Afghanistan that has left the 'rebel contingent' still in charge of the countryside. Instead, we wasted troops and resources on a dictatorship that had no WMDs, no connection with Al Quaida, and which provided us with no victory in the 'War on Terror'. Useless, useless, and more useless.

Of course, what is to be done about it is another matter altogether and one which I would engender mass disagreement.

But, yes, I am also displeased.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

And I saw your post and was nodding in agreement, too.

I see "supporting the troops" as including two disparate options, among others: "Getting them the fuck out of there" supports them by taking them out of harm's way and letting the people who want to fuck one another up get to it without us being a creamy, well-armed filling, and "Let them blow the shit out of things so they can get done sooner." I don't know which of those is the -right- answer, but I'm not going to imagine that anyone who has another opinion must be full of shit.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

by "mass disagreement," do I smell a big glass parking lot?

[tylorael.livejournal.com]

Well said. It sucked. I hate that people died.

But yes, Fuck that noise.

[ross-winn.livejournal.com]

touche'

[megiddo-lj.livejournal.com]

Then can we please smack it -competently- and -effectively- and stop dicking around the fucking desert

No can do.
There's too many flies.

We are fighting a war we - to be blunt - cannot win. We have some hubris to think that we'll succeed where Alexander the Great, the Ottomans, and the British Fucking Empire all failed. We aren't going to *stop* the *terrorists* from wanting to kill us. What we can do is stop allowing them to turn us into a bunch of scared pussies.

Right.
So off to buy that ticket to Tel Aviv. Fuck 'em. I'm going diving.

[ex-xn667.livejournal.com]

If you *ever* have an asshole filter, I hope to be one of the first you add to it :P

And amen to all you said. FWIW, until I saw your post I haven't had time today to pay attention to the news. It was Monday. I stayed up too late last night, doing enjoyable things. I woke up late and groggy and felt like the crap fairy took a dump in my brain overnight. I made it to work, here in the Seat of Evil, and noticed nothing untoward to call my attention to anything I didn't care to think about (helps that I am *inordinately* distracted by the fairer sex of late). I got to work, and it was peaceful and quiet. I had shit to do here at work, and dug in after a cursory check of email and LJ replies.

That means you, dear propagandist for the reactionary leave us the fuck alone contingent (thank the gods for ya), were the first pundit of sorts I had seen all day who mentioned the 9/11 debacle.

Am I callous and self-absorbed to not even have remembered 9/11 after weeks of reminders? No. I friggin live here in the also-ran to NYC. The day it happened, the neighborhood of my workplace was swarming with armed troops and the most rapidly assembled array of jersey barriers I'd ever seen. That was the day I had no idea what would happen next. And apart from the necessary angst-ridden, anxiety-induced shock and occasionally-resisted tear over the next week or so, especially as support from around the world came pouring in over the Internet to all points posting such, I let it affect me ohhhhhhh, about not at all in any practical way. Our government on the other hand? Them I worried about until recently when I decided fuck them, too. I'm living my life, and if it kills me, well, that's what life does.

Ridiculous amounts of moral relativism have done that to me. We tragically lost ~3k people 5 years ago. My condolences to the survivors went out back then. How many friggin mental sympathy cards am I supposed to send? I knew then about the untold millions worldwide that don't suck up that much news in spite of far greater suffering and loss of life. And I had no way of knowing what the future held, but I knew it held something nasty. I knew the victims and survivors of 9/11 about as well as the ~250k (correct number, hell if I know) wiped out in the tsunami, and far, far less than I knew the approximately 1/2 of NOLA that will likely never return. Did I know those people? Only in the same way I know the feeling of a neighborhood, the local flavor. But they were my people, however anonymous to me.

I'm lucky. I wasn't in NOLA for the destruction that *actually* matters to me. And there's a sick little spot in my soul that feels really fucking guilty for that. People I love were fucked up by it and remain that way largely, though they're a bunch of tough-as-nails survivors who aren't taking any shit about it.

Maybe, just maybe, when the rest of the country, our government, and our media get and stay up in arms about the national embarrassment of Katrina I'll give a shit about 9/11 again, but I doubt it. It's ruined for me. Till then, anyone crying 9/11 can kiss my fucking ass, and I'd be willing to bet that sentiment is mild compared to what's probably far more politely unspoken back home.

[the-yellow-king.livejournal.com]

I reply quite carefully:

War is a nasty, dirty business that no one should be in, including soldiers, unless absolutely necessary.

I consider such an attack as that which was made to be casus belli.

War, when necessarily conducted, should be performed only by those whose business it is to make war; i.e., soldiers. Thus, our 'leaders' [the President] should present goals to the generals and let them figure out the best way to accomplish that. There should be no interference with that.

[Argument-causing paragraph ahead. Warning.] As I am a firm believer in the ends justifying the means, if the generals believe that the most practical way of reaching said goals is a glass parking lot, so be it. I am not a soldier, I have no experience in these matters, and I am not qualified to pass judgement on any methods utilized. If the generals decide I need to be drafted and used as hamburger meat after a month of training, if the generals decide IBCMs are Fun Toys, if the generals decide to say "Screw this - kill them all and God will know his own.", I am all for it - so long as it is the most practical method for obtaining the objectives, all things being equal.

It's that all things being equal part that people disagree with.

YMMV.

[the-yellow-king.livejournal.com]

Note: Deleted and reposted with non-butterfinged HTML.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

I had a feeling it would be something like that. If a couple of drunken louts like us can see that it's shitty foreign policy, how is it possible that -nobody- in the State Department doesn't think this way?

Or is it just the comprehensive "Stand By Your Man" mentality that keeps anyone from speaking up to undermine that solidarity even at the expense of the country and world?

[angldst.livejournal.com]

Amen.

Thanks.

-d

[the-yellow-king.livejournal.com]

As my father would say, "Follow the money." If it is occurring, it is because money is involved in the doing of it. Something about this is furthering someone's profit.

[gruamach.livejournal.com]

f a couple of drunken louts like us can see that it's shitty foreign policy, how is it possible that -nobody- in the State Department doesn't think this way?

Because when we look at politics, we're not blinded by the money/profit/"what's in it for me" bias.

[gruamach.livejournal.com]

I still grin at the fact that in 2003 I was getting lots of officers pissed off at me by answering their questions honestly....

My favorite was a COL who asked me how long we should stay there. I answered honestly that "it doesn't matter." We were seeing tribal fighting break out over issues decades or even centruies old. These people out-waited Saddam, what the hell could we do to change/influence them? Not a damned thing.
Then I went on to say that if we were still in-country at the 1-year mark, shit would happen. I knew full well that even at our best effort, that was unrealistic, but that was the perspetive of the Iraqi people.
What happened? Bunch of revolts and violent protests started at the one-year mark. Big surprise.

I also have documented proof as early as May 2003 that I officially presented a warning about an up-and-coming cleric named al-Sadr who "wouldn't hesitate to start a violent uprising just to make a name for himself". I hate being right. *rolls eyes*

[mc-questionmark.livejournal.com]

I agree with your sentiments.
I sure wish I could put a cage with rats in it on GWB's face.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

who might you be, eh?

[mc-questionmark.livejournal.com]

I am MC? from Canada.
I found you through shortshort, I believe.
I like pineapple and the sun.
And your words.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

Alllllrightythen!