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Welcome to my utmost random thoughts on random shit that really doesn't matter much.
This is where my mind takes a dump.
~ Sticks, Stones and Funnybones ~
Part 28 - The Remembrance
This week's Scissors will be dedicated to 9/11, lest we forget - literally.
The Remembrance
I always write these Scissors pieces ten minutes before I put them up. I never know what they are going to be about until I start writing them. Sometimes I browse through Reuters, CNN and other news sources, and pick and choose - other times I just buckle up and go nuts. The Scissors articles are raw, unedited and supposed to represent my train of thought careening through a week’s worth of news. Sometimes I’m Jon Voight’s Manny, standing defiantly on top of the runaway train in the blistering icy wind, and other times I’m Charlie the Choo-Choo, derailing at the bottom of the hill with a broken brain. And sometimes I am just the passenger in one of the last carts, looking out at life, shaking my head – not really needing to put my thoughts into words, but still taking mental notes.
9/11 is such a train ride.
This day has come to represent so much – both for me personally, and for America as a whole - hey, for the whole world in some sense. 9/11 will forever be a milestone in history, marking ends and beginnings, meaning different things to different people.
To some it was the end of everything, as they lost spouses, brothers, sisters and friends, and a beginning of fear. Some say the day marks the death of innocence, but let’s face it, kids, we were never that innocent. Naïve, maybe, but never innocent. To me it was the beginning of a new life, as I chose that very day to get my ass on board a plane from London to New York, and instead ended up in Canada, a refugee of war. To most, 9/11 marks the end of the American invincibility and a beginning realization that we can be hurt, too, right here at home.
Whatever it marks, to any of us, we swore we would never forget.
I was watching the memorials on TV this morning. Spouses and children were reading the names of the victims, mayors and firefighters made heartfelt speeches, moments of silence spoke volumes and bagpipes were played to commemorate the dead… and then, in the middle of Rudolf Giuliani’s tense speech about pride and survival, NBC abruptly cut to their regular programming. One second we were watching the man who became a symbol of the New York Heart, speaking of guts and glory, and the next we were watching some welfare Martha Stewart wannabe playing tennis with her guests - bouncingly happy, without a care in the world.
Maybe it is just symptomatic of how quickly we forget.
Like the war in Afghanistan. Does anybody really know what’s going on there? That is the righteous war; the collective act of American vengeance upon the guys who actually hurt us. The war without guilt, shame and that bad taste in our mouths. As far as we know, Bin Laden is still hiding in the caves of Afghanistan somewhere. Would anyone of us object if we just dropped 30 nukes all over those mountains? Granted, maybe some innocent goat herders would perish, too, but so what? We have killed goat herders before, for far less valid reasons. Why is it that we forgot about this war? The one noble war? Instead we made a left turn and invaded Iraq on sketchy grounds. Sure, Saddam was a fuckhead, and as such he probably shouldn’t be leading a country full of mad Arabs, but what the hell did that have to do with 9/11 and Bin Laden? We forgot about why we went to war in the first place and followed the new shiny object down the Yellow Brick Road, all the way to Baghdad.
We forgot.
Bin Laden must have danced a fucking jig in his bat cave.
We always hear how we have to follow through, before we can pull our forces out of the two areas. Well, I think that is the biggest problem I have with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; not so much the wars in themselves, but how they have been conducted. I hate all things half-assed, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are the epitome of half-assed. Either do or don’t do. Easy as that. Don’t beat around the Bush and hope for the best… that instills nothing but ridicule and disrespect in our enemies. There are doers and wanna-doers in this world. Bin Laden is a hard-ass doer. Bush is a baby-kissing wanna-doer. We had the chance to kill the chief snake, and all we did was stir up the rest of the snakes instead.
We forgot about Afghanistan and Bin Laden, and turned Iraq into another Vietnam. Not a great American moment, and totally unworthy of the originally so noble cause.
We also forgot about the threat itself. We talk about it, and we are constantly reminded about it every time we watch the news – but we don’t really take it to heart anymore. We get annoyed when we have to wait in lines at security checkpoints and we have once again become the same jerks on the planes we used to be, fussing about our hand-luggage and the too salty peanuts. We learn from CNN how a terrorist threat was thwarted in London, and how mysterious Arabs were apprehended in Minnesota with 300 cell phones in the trunk of their car. We ooh and aah, but don’t really get that we are a turn of a corner away from the next 9/11. It’s like we all breathed a collective sigh of relief when we started sending troops overseas, thinking that would solve all our problems. Not so. You can’t wage war against terror. Terror is a malevolent phenomenon – a word that describes a deep fear in all of us; a fear that so called terrorists, agents of that fear, capitalize on by flinging thunderbolts at us out of a clear blue sky. The terrorists are here among us. The guy on the bus that never blinks, the weird neighbors you only see coming and going at night, the over-achieving college student with the weird last name, the White House security guard with the nervous twitch… How do you wage war against them? Not by bombing donkey farmers halfway across the world, but by investing more resources in intelligence, security and covert operations. Remember that when our leaders speak of international deployments, and vote for the guys who are willing to face the problems, head on, here at home instead.
We also forgot to respect our dead.
You can find any numbers of sites on the internet, dedicated to showing, in slow motion, how people are throwing themselves out of the burning towers, and where you can read eye-witness reports about the exact sound made when those bodies hit the pavement 700 feet later. Sure, humor is a great way of dealing with grief and shock, but we have taken it to a level of the macabre. Can we really frown at the kids for checking out gruesome deaths on YouTube, while we gulp down a soda in front of “Flight 93”? We have gone from being shocked, appalled and heartbroken, to being morbidly curious and totally desensitized about the whole affair. The dead of 9/11 are mere statistics these days. We have made Hollywood Heroes out of the Flight 93 passengers and Silver Screen Saints out of the firefighters of NYC, so now we can all move on with our shallow lives. Everything is put back into place again. Is that how Americans deal with grief and adversity? Give it a spit shine and put it up on a shelf, next to the ugly porcelain cats we got for a wedding gift by Aunt Nellie?
As you sit there in the dark theater and munch on your popcorns, watching Oliver Stones’ “World Trade Center”, you probably shed a few tears over the intensity of it all – but, hand on heart, wouldn’t you shed just as much of a tear if it had all been fictitious? As soon as the violins get to you, your waterworks get going. We cry when we watch “Schindler’s List”, too, and still the kids in American and European schools get rushed through the Holocaust, much like they quickly browse through the chapters on slavery, the cruel history of our native Indians and the Trojan War. Likewise, we are slowly filing away 9/11 into the archives of history, knowing enough to shed a tear at the opportune moments, but not really learning a damn thing.
There are many lessons to be learned by 9/11; some of them obvious, others not so very much.
We learned that we are not invincible, but do we understand what it means? It means that we can’t just let others be responsible for our safety and security. Be your own guardian angel and go with your gut feeling. If something seems a little screwed up, it usually is. Don’t believe everything you hear and check up on facts yourself. You are in charge of your own life, not our politicians. Don’t be a sheep.
We learned that there are people out there that hate us with a black passion beyond rhyme and reason, but do we understand that there is no reasoning whatsoever with these people? We pin our hopes to mediators and diplomats to get these people to sign treaties and documents, thinking their inbred hatred for us will just vanish in a puff of smoke the second that signature is etched onto that paper and some lame government is established. Not so. We have to treat these people like we would treat any insane and violent people at a mental institute. Assume they lie, keep them at a safe distance in a controlled environment and cattle prod the hell out of them if they make a stink. Do not, I repeat, do not send your sons and daughters to spend some quality alone-time with these lunatics.
We learned that “we are all Americans” and that we stand together, but do we understand that our politicians are politicians before they are Americans? You and your friendly neighbor may be Americans, but the guy you vote for only operates according to an agenda that will further his own political goals and plans. Where is that American brotherhood as we discuss the fate of our deployed soldiers, ghetto crack-babies and old people without medical insurance? Why can’t all “Americans” come together and solve problems like those? Or is “American” just something we conveniently pull out of a hat when times get a little fussy, and we need to make a stand against the outside world – all supervised by our fearless leaders in the White House? We bravely thump our fists across our chests and rattle our sabers in the face of our enemies, and in the meantime we have bona fide old-blood Americans dying from disease, gang-shootings, poverty and neglect right here, in our own backyard. Let’s come together for them instead. Fuck the rest of the world.
Most of all we learned that we should never forget, but do we understand that it entails more than observing the moment of silence once a year?
Do not forget, and most of all, do not forgive. Ball up that feeling of sadness, anger and passion into a black marble and put it in a corner of your heart, always reminding you that life is not a fucking parade. We have lived a sheltered shiny happy life here for so long that we have forgotten that the world can be an ugly place. 3,000 Americans died so you would remember that forever. You owe it to them to remember. That doesn’t mean that you should cry a river everyday, but rather that you should strive to not be so fucking shallow, stupid and naïve. That’s what got us here in the first place.
And, hey, live life a little better while you're at it. Love more, laugh more and live more. Don't fear the future, but embrace it with respect.
Never forgive, never forget, and remember… the other cheek is for pussies. Nuke the mountains of Afghanistan into a slab of glass, and then let’s tend to our own garden while the rest of the world goes to hell all around us.
And while you're at it, read OverMuch's excellent tribute to the 9/11 victims.
