11/9/2002

[flwyd]

So you've sat through all the aniversary coverage you wanted to. But have you just soaked it all in, or have you thought about it? Below are some questions that only you can answer for yourself. Some of them might be easy and obvious. Some might not have an answer. But the value is in you thinking about them. It's not a graded test, so if you answer "yes" or "no," think for a while about why. If you care to share your answers, go ahead, either as a comment or in your own space. If you prefer to keep them to yourself, that's fine too. Below that are some of my thoughts on this anniversary.

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• What were you doing before you learned about the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001?
• What did you think and/or do immediately after?
• What did you do for the rest of the day?
• The rest of the week?
• Did the events of that day and the responses that followed leave a lasting effect on your life? How?
• On your way of thought?
• Did you make any pledges, oaths, or determinations in the aftermath of the attack?
• How well did you follow through on them?
• Were you inspired to buy any U.S. flags or a U.S. flag facsimiles (sticker, shirt, etc.)?
• If so, how long did you display it?
• What does it mean to you to display the U.S. flag?
• What comes to mind when you see someone else display the U.S. flag?
• What does patriotism mean to you?
• Have you stood united with your neighbors?
• Have you stood united with Muslims, Middle Easterners, Arab-Americans, or level-headed Europeans?
• Have you sought to understand more about Islam, Central Asian history and politics, or American foreign policy?
• Did the attacks inspire you to get in touch with friends or relatives you wouldn't have otherwise sought out?
• Did you keep up any such correspondance?
• Do you pay more attention to the news now?
• How do you plan to mark September 11th in the future? Will it be different than the way you mark August 6th? April 20th? December 7th? September 26th?
• Are you more paranoid now than you were before 11/9/2001?
• Are you more afraid to fly?
• Are you more afraid to drive?
• Are you more afraid to open your mail?
• Are you more afraid to drink water?
• Have you supported policies in the past year that you wouldn't have supported were they not done in the name of "homeland security," "the war on terrorism," or other terrorism-related euphemisms?
• What's your definition or criterea for identification of a terrorist act? Of a terrorist? Of a terrorist state?
• Does the U.S., its government, or members thereof fit your definition or criterea?
• Has your perception of Muslims, Arabs, and Central Asians changed since before the attacks?
• Has your perception of Americans changed since before the attacks?
• Think about a time when you were told of a tragic event, such as the death of a friend or relative. How did your reaction differ from learning about the September 11th terrorist attacks? How was it similar?
• Did you donate money to a 9/11 charity?
• Do you regularly donate money to other charities?
• Why or why not?
• Did you donate time and effort or non-monetary resources (blood, services, etc.) to help people on or after the day of the attacks?
• Do you normally do so?
• Why or why not?
• Did you buy any 9/11 commemorative items? Why?
• What's your opinion on the array of 9/11 commemorative items? News coverage?
• What's the most interesting story you've heard about people's reaction to the attacks?
• Did you care that the Pentagon was hit?
• Did you care about the Afghan citizens killed in our bombing campaign?
• If you heard a good joke about the fall of the World Trade Center, would you laugh? Would you repeat it?
• Are you concerned that laws enacted "in response to" the terrorist attacks will negatively affect you?
• Have you paid attention to Afghanistan's rebuilding process?
• What about America do you love? The land? The people? The government? Its services? The constitution? The cities? The ideologies? The culture? The food? The laws?

I just reread my thoughts from less than a week after September 11th, 2001. They're all at the philosophical level, and I didn't describe what I did.

I think my alarm went off around 9:30 am on Tuesday, 9/11/1. I had class at 12:30, so that would give me some time to wake up slowly, check my email, eat lunch, and do any small tasks that needed doing. At first I wasn't aware that it wasn't the right time to hear Amy Goodman of Democracy Now on KGNU -- her show ends at 8 local time. As she said "Both towers of the World Trade Center have been destroyed" I interpreted it as another couple-story drop like in '93. It took a little more explanation before I realized she meant gone; struck by hijacked airplanes. When I heard that the Pentagon was also attacked, my gut reaction was that it was some deranged leftist group -- who else would attack the nation's biggest symbols of capitalism and the military? I was very concerned that it wouldn't be possible to advocate radical left wing issues any more. That it would no longer be safe to be left-wing, pacifist, atheist, feminist, or socially libertarian. Ironically, although the attacks were perpetrated by people who advocate right-wing, militant, religiously fanatical, mysoginist, and authoritarian practices, it's still not safe to be a leftist radical. Funny, that.

I lay in bed for some time soaking up the news until I got a call for an emergency RA staff meeting. I got dressed and attended. I distributed a few hugs and got to work right away setting up a blood donation program. Five residents got up ass-early the next morning and headed down to Bonfils. Two left right away because they'd recently gotten pierced. Another had to leave just before he got out of the outside-the-building line because he'd had acupuncture done by a New Mexico-certified practitioner, not a Colorado-certified one. So I missed class setting up the program (I figure anyone who missed class on 9/11 has an excuse) and class the next morning while giving blood. I gave blood in part because it was a program; had I been on my own I would've waited a week or so. More fundamentally, I gave blood because I knew there were going to be lots of people hospitalized. I figured Colorado would send blood to help out, and our supplies would need to be replenished. I've since given blood once more, when they were set up on campus. I ought to donate more often, but I don't even get around to setting up an appointment to see my optometrist or dentist.

I spent time talking to my residents -- making sure they were psychologically well. Few of them had any connections to NYC, and they were all perfectly fine. My guys were not the psychologically fragile type. I didn't have a TV in my room and didn't really want to see repetative footage, but I did spend quite a bit of time on Internet news sites in the next several days. A few weeks after, I subscribed to Salon Premium, which I've read most days since. I follow the news much more closely now than I ever have. This may actually be a problem -- I could be doing other things (like schoolwork) with that time.

Throughout it all I didn't have much, if any, emotional reaction. I only knew one person in New York (Ben Leibig), and I knew he wouldn't be in Manhattan by 9am unless he'd been there all night. I'm not a very emotional person. I didn't feel anything after the Columbine shootings, I didn't feel anything for the Afghan citizens that U.S. bombs killed. I do feel sad for people I know personally that die, since I have an attachment to them. I also feel emotion when faced with touching works of art about tragedy, even when the tragedy isn't moving. I don't feel anything for the victems of the Holocaust, but I cried after Schindler's List. This is similarly powerful. (And I appologize for messing up the copy/paste a couple weeks ago when I tried to point to it earlier. Why didn't anyone bug me about the broken link?)

I think one reason I didn't have as much of an emotional response to the attacks was that I didn't watch the TV coverage. I saw a few pictures, but mostly I read text. When you see something on TV, your brain processes it almost as if you were there, whereas when you read about something it's a much more distant and second-hand experience. (Well, with the exception of some well-written novels.) Had I been present as the towers fell I certainly would have had a whole host of emotions. Had I watched 5 hours of CNN that day I might have also developed an emotional connection. But it was almost like reading a history book with odd timing. And you don't get emotional about the kids who died in the Civil War, do you?

I remember that people were accusing Bin Laden of masterminding the attacks within hours of their occurance. Public evidence of his involvement at that time was nonexistent -- that Muslim extremists crashed the plane was just an assumption many people had. And as far as I know, no group other than Al-Qaeda was considered for investigation for involvement. This immediate certainty certainly fuels conspiracy impulses. The Bush administration has yet to reveal what they knew before the attacks -- this should be reason to distrust them. If they didn't know anything substansive, there would be no harm in revealing that. But if they did know a lot, they'd have reason to hide it. The administration was pretty secretive even before last September, and that's a bad sign. Democracy can't function well unless there's good information flow. There are still some serious questions which have not, to my knowledge, yet been answered. Why, for instance, did a CIA operative meet with Bin Laden, who was already suspect for previous terrorist activity, in Paris over the summer, but not work with local authorities to arrest him?

I have a lot of respect for Mark Udall for voting agains the USA PATRIOT Act, despite its acronym. There's something really depressing about losing essential freedom because of an acronym.

I'm kind of miffed that we don't have a clear idea of Al-Qaeda's motives and messages for the September 11th attacks. Did they want to make a statement? Did they want to disrupt the American economy? Did they just want to kill lots of Americans? Surely there are more effective ways to kill 3,000 people. I have enough respect for their intelligence to believe they anticipated they would be attacked in retaliation, so how did the attacks help their goal of instituting hard-assed Islamist governments in Muslim countries? They could have blown up an entire suburb of Islamabad and the U.S. wouldn't have done a thing.

There are subjects I'd like to cover (the impending war with Iraq, civil liberties, suicide, etc.) that I haven't said here. I apologize for the unedited late-night nature of this post. But I'll leave you with a quote from Monty Python's Terry Jones: "Can you wage war against an abstract noun?" People have been fighting racism for years and made progress, but it hasn't been obliterated like the dodo bird or the Ottoman Empire. And we've seen how well the U.S. has handled the war on drugs, a concrete noun. The war on terrorism will be long, obscure, and very freaky.