I knew this day would come, of course. As we all knew. And I honestly had no idea what I was going to say, or if anything should even be said at all.
But then I saw Episode 3 of Spike Lee’s documentary NYC Epicenters, which dealt with the aftermath of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the events of September 11th, and a ton of memories and emotions came back to me (I know I’m hardly alone with that, and what I think and feel is no better or worse that what anyone else thinks and feels of course). In Lee’s fine documentary, we’re shown how 9/11/01 was truly a beautiful fall day in the east and in NYC in particular, and how people were living their lives as usual until about 8:46 AM. I remember listening to what transpired on my car radio while driving to my job in King of Prussia, and of course, not long after I got into the office, we were gathered into a conference room to make sure everyone could be accounted for (there were a few people traveling, but they made contact as soon as they found out what was happening, and their flights were grounded that day anyway of course). We were all told to go home shortly after that, and I remember driving east on the PA Turnpike and wondering If a plane was going to fall on me (as we found out later of course with Flight 93, it was on an easterly path parallel to where I was, likely heading for the Capitol).
Lee’s documentary is absolutely unsparing in its detail, showing all of the carnage, horror and trauma of individuals directly affected as well as family members and acquaintances. Being a first-class filmmaker, the bar should be set high anyway in terms of the level of storytelling (within the “guard rails,” if you will, of documentary filmmaking), and Lee clears that bar for sure as far as I’m concerned.
But as I watched the production, I couldn’t help but engage in a mental exercise of “what if.” Yes, there were untold stories of heroism and bravery performed by those who knew they faced certain death, in particular NYC firefighters, medics and police. Yes, there is much to be said about our resiliency as a country to rebuild and continually honor the sacrifices of all of those who died or had their lives irrevocably altered by the tragedies that have basically been burned into our consciousness.
The 9/11 cataclysm inspired all of that courage, and it probably would be impossible if any one of us were to spend the rest of our lives trying to somehow record all of it across individuals of all kinds of political orientations, races, ethnicities, gender identification and foreign ancestry (9/11 wasn’t just an attack on this country, though it was that first and foremost, but by virtue of all of the people impacted, we should never forget truly that it was an attack on the entire world).
But here is my problem, as I try to process all of this once more after all of these years; make no mistake that the 9/11 attacks also inspired a hell of a lot of fear (and the “what if” has to do with imagining a far different outcome, where, instead of what followed, we focused on THIS country instead and decided to curb our fevered dreams of “democracy building” and other overseas misadventures).
And that fear was cruelly exploited for the most crass political reasons imaginable. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again now; when George W. Bush stood on the rubble with that bullhorn, I thought to myself, “This guy shares absolutely none of my beliefs and comes from the complete wrong side of the political tracks, if you will, but could it be that somehow he could rise to this moment and make the right political decisions to lead us out of this mess?”
Well, for a time (after we went into Afghanistan), I thought, OK, we’ve driven out the Taliban (for now), even though I thought then as now that the right course was to get bin Laden, al Qaeda and that whole bunch of criminals, bring them to an international court, and then let that be it for the military part of this. Oh, and I would have given our “dear friends” the Saudis about 72 hours to turn over the entire rotten network of anyone who had anything to do whatsoever with 15 of the 19 hijackers, or else we would turn their whole country to glass. And I don’t give a shit about their oil or the geopolitical implications.
And after that, I would have done the most thorough internal forensic audit of sorts about how exactly the 9/11 hijackers were able to do what they did and take every imaginable precaution to make sure it NEVER, EVER happened again (Richard Clarke, the chief of counter terrorism who was held over from the Clinton Administration, was basically yelling his head off that an attack was coming, particularly after the infamous “bin Laden determined to strike in the U.S.” memo). PA Senator Arlen Specter once said that 9/11, first and foremost, was an intelligence failure, and I think that gets to the heart of all this.
Another thing (and I honestly don’t say this lightly): if the findings of the 9/11 Commission had honestly demonstrated negligence on the part of the Bush Administration, to say nothing of actual culpability, then Bush and Cheney should have resigned (or at least, an election would have been called for to elect new leadership, and preferably bipartisan to demonstrate the endurance of our political institutions).
But we know what happened. We were engulfed in 9/11 hero worship “porn,” if you will, leading up to the 2004 presidential election and 9/11 fetishism, culminating in the Republican National Convention, where the mere mention of that date was manufactured into an applause line. Of everything I despise that took place since the attacks, that may have been what enrages me the most. We lost 17 people from Bucks Country, PA....we don’t need any goddamn reminders from ANYBODY on how significant that is or how it affects the core of our being (something else I’ve said before and I’ll say again – I used to see Don Havlish in McCaffrey’s Supermarket, and he was one of the nicest people you’d ever meet...all they found was a femur).
And that political betrayal was used by the Republican Party to build on the fear generated by the attacks (and you wouldn’t be a human being if you didn’t have that emotion...the question is what do you do with it; do you do something courageous and positive, or do you wait to be led by someone into potentially the next calamity?). And that fear was supported and nurtured of course by media sympathetic to the Republican Party and refined into a weapon to be used against other opponents, including our first African American president, immigrants, those opposing the corporate criminals behind the 2008 Great Recession, “big government” intrusions (perceived as such anyway) into our health care decisions, LGBTQ individuals, women, minorities, and as we’ve seen over the last year, proven science against the worst pandemic this country has seen in over 100 years which has now killed well over 600,000 people. And now, that weapon has been so thoroughly refined that we, as a country, find ourselves in pitched battles with each other over issues that surely would have led to the defeat of this country in other crises we faced, in particularly the Civil War and World War II.
And yes, as far as I’m concerned, that was built on the fear generated by our vulnerability after the 9/11 attacks (on the 10th anniversary, I said that the bad guys won, and once more, this is what I was talking about...a related item is here).
As far as I’m concerned, individuals with a conscience would have known how to respond after the 9/11 attacks (yeah, maybe they still would have made mistakes, but they wouldn’t have made them out of hubris). But of course, we had the administration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney instead (and all of the other cretins of that regime). And we may be living with the results of their awful decisions for the rest of our lives.
So let us pause, reflect and remember of course. That’s only right. But let us also resolve to use our courage, intellect and free will and the brains God gave us to act as responsible citizens in our democracy and hold our leaders to account when they don’t act in our interests, as well as those of our families and loved ones.
When people say, “remember 9/11,” it is my fervent hope that, one day, THAT is what they are actually talking about (and I thought this was a good commentary from Will Bunch...more important stuff is here).
Update 9/13/21: Uh, yep.
And I'll just end this with these two clips, including the Springsteen tune of course (more here).
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