9/11 – salvaging memories or the manipulative use of a tragic event

By: Hatto Fischer, Athens

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- to elevate everything into the false promise that the victims would be replenished by America unleashing a vindictive spirit so as to give ‘revenge’ the greatest say in foreign policy and to justify the going to war without fear of consequences because apparently a justified war of revenge.

As New Yorkers and many others around the world attempt to remember what took place that terrible morning, they may be distracted. Recently Oliver Stone tried a first reconstruction by producing a film based not on fiction but on claim of authenticity since he used two survivors as consultants on the film set. If not fiction, what then, if not a new kind of propaganda? It may well be suited to Bush’s political tactics before this year’s mid-term election in Congress with all seats in the House of Representatives up for grabs while one third of the Senators need to go hit the campaign trail after six years of disillusionment. Indeed, democratic politics has become since then nearly impossible in a country united around its president.

Yes, 9/11 is in 2006 a kind of nostalgia in terms of remembering back then, when it happened, that the country was not merely united around its President but willing to give him a blank check to fight off further terrorism. Thanks to that the Commander-in-Chief could become after 9/11 the war lord banishing democracy around the globe while uplifting everything to ‘either for us or against us’ as demand for a kind of Patriotism to replace Democracy. It means in clear language 9/11 transformed “America, America” into “go bomb them” and so they did first in Afghanistan, then in Iraq.

A sample of that blank check everyone gave to the Bush administration is the highly politicized effort to transform everything after 9/11 into the language of victimization. The terrible thing is that it give the administration full justification to seek revenge. Johnny Cash said in an interview on Larry King Live when seeing on television the planes flying into the Twin Towers, that “whole of America was under attack” and secondly, “who would dare to do such a thing and think he could get away with that”.

Indeed, 9/11 stands for the lust of revenge which has ruled ever since America and with it the world. As Michael Moore put it in “Bowling for Columbine” it made the business with fear that much easier for now ‘terrorism’ could be evoked at any time to raise the level of fear that much higher. It is a mechanism by which everything gets larger, faster, more profitable and vindictive. Essentially it means also a war can be waged without fear of consequences, that is regardless how many innocent people die, how many human rights abuses are incurred, for this fear makes new levels of business possible.

Quite another image of 9/11 emerges when newspapers report about a growing health problem of those who rushed to help since they exposed themselves to Toxic waste as the towers came crushing down. That means illegal building materials were used and more so these kinds of victims are not meant when reference is made by politicians to the victims of 9/11. There is moreover to be recalled the statement by an international lawyer whose husband died that day; she said plainly into the running cameras, ‘her husband did not live to become a victim in order to justify over his dead body the going to war’. Clearly that says it is not automatic but a conscious political choice to go to war over something which meant not an all out attack against America (where were the standing armies which could invade the country since everyone knows even Israel’s latest effort to combat the Hezbollah from the air was in vain since only ground troops can seize territories as was the lesson on Viet Nam overturned when American forces entered Iraq on March 23, 2003 and have grown ever since to 145 000 troops but with rising death tolls amongst both soldiers and more so civilians? There were none!) but a provocation to which to respond it would require political wisdom – something the Bush administration lacks completely. But it should also be remembered that Grace Boggs said in Detroit by transforming 9/11 into the story of victims, America was freed from the need to analyze why such an attack took place in the first place.

The sad thing is that the world has not learned much since 9/11 or even worse bomb blasts fuel more attacks from the air and on the ground, the latest example being the Sixth Middle East war in Lebanon. Besides the nuclear issue looming largely on the political horizon, Noam Chomsky named the widening discrepancy between official policy and public opinion as the most alarming development in recent years. It testifies to mere puppet governments being installed everywhere to follow orders from Washington rather than remaining democratic in both spirit and practice. Thomas Mann said one can tell a democrat by shaking his hand and see if body and mind are one. This is not possible in a shaky world of deceptions and propaganda being renamed as ‘public diplomacy’. And spin doctors mapping out argumentative strategies developed and delivered by paid intellectuals who have no conscience of their own, no independence of mind and spirit. That was the case during the Cold War and is now again the case of the Hot War. Climate change is downgraded by paid scientists from industry to counter the arguments of those who warn about catastrophic impacts upon the environment if the world continues to develop the way it does. But no matter Israel could bomb the oil refinery near Beirut and spill tonnages of oil in the Mediterranean sea. War and environment are not compatible, nor do tanks heed cultural heritage when they grind through the gates of Babylon in Iraq to set up a military camp in the midst of an ancient archaeological site. Yes, destruction is becoming that much more reckless since cultural identities have no longer their sources of knowledge intact and military strategists make sure these sources of independence are the first ones to be attacked.

In the equation of 3000 killed on 9/11 and countless more traumatized or now under specific health risks due to exposure to toxic wastes, there is something missing when leading to mere revenge and therefore to a permanent war: the ability to stop the war even though by now the body count of innocent lives killed in the process exceeds by far the number of 3000. Alone an estimate of 50 000 civilians have been killed in Iraq alone, never mind the rising death toll in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The inability to stop the war shows itself when politicians avoid this real issue when debating merely about leaving or not Iraq. In reality it would have to mean not delivering cluster bombs to Israel which used them especially during the final days before the tentative truce was installed to at least cease the senseless destruction of Lebanon and especially of Northern Israel (by the rockets of the Hezbollah). It would mean going at the core of war: the weapons trade and the production of weapons as a way of doing business needing war to continue.

No wonder then that sustainable development is no longer the credo of the world. The world agenda has been co-opted by global business. For this business with weapons cannot sustain peace. It needs enemies galore and if not existing since terrorists are really invisible, the production of new enemy pictures is outdoing by now even Hollywood. To that the language about ‘evil’ by a war president has to be added. Bush uses it to fulfill a mission: the destruction of democracy in order to install his ‘rule of law’ as the freedom to conduct war without fear of consequences. He does so in order to avoid a repeat of 9/11. By now there is for sure real fear dominating Washington that other and new forms of reprisal will follow all the injustices and inhuman acts being inflicted by American troops upon innocent civilians. That makes the unrealistic politics of Bush into a realistic prospect for the near future, namely a permanent war to suppress that inner fear. It does not make this world any more just than it was already unjust before 9/11.