I remember watching the media interview the New Yorkers on the street and at least two of them said something along the lines of "I I hope we're not going to have a war with someone because of this."
My hair stood up on the back of my neck because I realized right then this was going to happen.
There were other options. There was the possibility of pressure to get bin Laden. But the administration wanted that war. It often felt like much of it -both the war and the madness at home --e.g., extraordinary rendition of fairly random people, the Black Sites, putting some innocent man into a year of torture in Syria only to find out it was a case of mistaken identity--were an attempt to restore our 'lost honor' or whatever it was.
Our lost sense of invincibility. It is stupid to want a sense of invincibility as it is bound to be an illusion. Invincibility is not possible. So our government terrorized its own people with constant alerts and warnings and reminders. People in Iowa were panicking and taping up their windows against anthrax or whatnot. I really did think, after having visited Peru and London right after they had had terrorist attacks --maybe it's actually better just to accept the bad shit can happen than to go bananas like the USA did and lose all your privacy and other rights permanently. Mumbai had an attack and acted almost as if it never happened. This was to ensure those who did the attacks would not get what they wanted. If you go back to normal life right away, whatever the terrorists were trying to elicit does not happen and the calculation changes for further attacks.
But this is not our way.
Eventually, Americans started to turn their weapons onto each other, so now I suppose we're ready to die in public places at any time. Will this make a difference in whether we overreact if this happens again? I don't think so because we will be encouraged to overreact, and scolded if we refuse. The reaction serves too many purposes.
Wow. I think this is the best article about 9/11 i have ever read. I fell into a deep, long depression after 9/11 because it completely upended my assumptions about how the world works. Unlike most, it wasn't the breaking of the fragile myth of our safety and security that shocked me; I already knew from personal experience that home is often more dangerous than the world outside. My shock was that I naively believed that we, as a country, would use the catastrophe as a catalyst for learning to treat the rest of the world with more respect. I actually believed that once people knew the reasons why some people hated us enough to attack us in such a manner, we would learn to be better. I did not understand that facts alone do not guide how each person forms their beliefs about how to act in the world. I didn't understand that I, also, was motivated not just by facts, but by a subjective interpretation of the facts, and which were important, and which could transcend into some semblance of "truth." Over the years since then, I found my way -- more or less -- out of the depression, and gained what I hope is a wiser and more complex awareness of the roles of facts, truths, lived experiences, and emotions in creating our myriad visions of what is right and true. Most importantly, I know that my learning is not done, and that every one of us is a work in progress, and if we do not engage in a practice of self- inquiry and a willingness to hold ourselves accountable, we inevitably fall instead into a pattern of acting in defense of our comfort and delusions of safety. We let our traumas justify inflicting our pain on anyone who triggers us -- whether intentionally or not -- and end up perpetuating the same harm of which we were victims in the past. Everything you wrote here so beautifully resonates with my own perceptions of 9/11 and the path we chose as a nation in response. Thank you for this.
I am going through something similar right now, I think -- I was totally swept up in the 9/11 fever, and then I learned some stuff, and I thought most people had learned at least enough not to make the same mistake. Watching them do the exact same thing, realizing they learned nothing...it's hard. That last thing you wrote, about works in progress and accepting (or at least understanding) that people are as they are, I'm gonna keep thinking about it. Thank you
Yeah, that's one of the hardest parts -- finding that balance between living in a state of despair about how we, as a country behave in the world, and accepting that reality to a degree that we don't bother to try to do better. I have a feeling that for some of -- definitely me, and it sounds like you, too -- that's going to be a lifelong balancing act. I think it gets easier to manage over time, but it's not likely to ever resolve completely.
I grew up as a string supporter of Israel, the plucky, young democracy surround by Arab enemies that I learned about in Hebrew School. This was a long time ago. Israel’s history up to then was not as unblemished as I was taught, but successive governments did explore avenues for peace with Palestinians. Had Yitzhak Rabin not been assassinated by a right-wing Israeli, there’s a good chance he would have found a path to peace. That Israel has be subsumed by a right-wing dream of an Israel without Palestinians. For a long time, it was slow, creeping pressure on Palestinians, but October 7 gave Netanyahu the opportunity to lash out like the US did after 9/11. Any Israeli action can be excused by 10/7 just as 9/11 justified everything the US did in Afghanistan and Iraq. It’s evil and unconscionable. It may help Trump win. And it probably hurts Israel in the long term. But my biggest concern is that the Israeli right-wing’s plan works. The Muslims in Palestine have not been there any longer than there were Armenian Christians in Anatolia, but only history nerds and foreign service officers remember that genocide. If Israeli succeeds, we have returned to a world the powerful eat the weak, and that will apply within nations as well as between them. Trump may not win, but individual liberties that have been eroding in America for 40 years won’t be coming back in such a world. Fear and cynicism will keep people divided, and dissident views will be shouted down. I don’t like that vision. I hope that after November 5, Israeli can be brought to heel and Netanyahu can be brought to trial.
So well put. Full of empathy and truth. Thank you for sharing❣️
This is very wise and very true.
I remember watching the media interview the New Yorkers on the street and at least two of them said something along the lines of "I I hope we're not going to have a war with someone because of this."
My hair stood up on the back of my neck because I realized right then this was going to happen.
There were other options. There was the possibility of pressure to get bin Laden. But the administration wanted that war. It often felt like much of it -both the war and the madness at home --e.g., extraordinary rendition of fairly random people, the Black Sites, putting some innocent man into a year of torture in Syria only to find out it was a case of mistaken identity--were an attempt to restore our 'lost honor' or whatever it was.
Our lost sense of invincibility. It is stupid to want a sense of invincibility as it is bound to be an illusion. Invincibility is not possible. So our government terrorized its own people with constant alerts and warnings and reminders. People in Iowa were panicking and taping up their windows against anthrax or whatnot. I really did think, after having visited Peru and London right after they had had terrorist attacks --maybe it's actually better just to accept the bad shit can happen than to go bananas like the USA did and lose all your privacy and other rights permanently. Mumbai had an attack and acted almost as if it never happened. This was to ensure those who did the attacks would not get what they wanted. If you go back to normal life right away, whatever the terrorists were trying to elicit does not happen and the calculation changes for further attacks.
But this is not our way.
Eventually, Americans started to turn their weapons onto each other, so now I suppose we're ready to die in public places at any time. Will this make a difference in whether we overreact if this happens again? I don't think so because we will be encouraged to overreact, and scolded if we refuse. The reaction serves too many purposes.
I agree with all of this
Thank you for writing this.
Wow. I think this is the best article about 9/11 i have ever read. I fell into a deep, long depression after 9/11 because it completely upended my assumptions about how the world works. Unlike most, it wasn't the breaking of the fragile myth of our safety and security that shocked me; I already knew from personal experience that home is often more dangerous than the world outside. My shock was that I naively believed that we, as a country, would use the catastrophe as a catalyst for learning to treat the rest of the world with more respect. I actually believed that once people knew the reasons why some people hated us enough to attack us in such a manner, we would learn to be better. I did not understand that facts alone do not guide how each person forms their beliefs about how to act in the world. I didn't understand that I, also, was motivated not just by facts, but by a subjective interpretation of the facts, and which were important, and which could transcend into some semblance of "truth." Over the years since then, I found my way -- more or less -- out of the depression, and gained what I hope is a wiser and more complex awareness of the roles of facts, truths, lived experiences, and emotions in creating our myriad visions of what is right and true. Most importantly, I know that my learning is not done, and that every one of us is a work in progress, and if we do not engage in a practice of self- inquiry and a willingness to hold ourselves accountable, we inevitably fall instead into a pattern of acting in defense of our comfort and delusions of safety. We let our traumas justify inflicting our pain on anyone who triggers us -- whether intentionally or not -- and end up perpetuating the same harm of which we were victims in the past. Everything you wrote here so beautifully resonates with my own perceptions of 9/11 and the path we chose as a nation in response. Thank you for this.
I am going through something similar right now, I think -- I was totally swept up in the 9/11 fever, and then I learned some stuff, and I thought most people had learned at least enough not to make the same mistake. Watching them do the exact same thing, realizing they learned nothing...it's hard. That last thing you wrote, about works in progress and accepting (or at least understanding) that people are as they are, I'm gonna keep thinking about it. Thank you
Yeah, that's one of the hardest parts -- finding that balance between living in a state of despair about how we, as a country behave in the world, and accepting that reality to a degree that we don't bother to try to do better. I have a feeling that for some of -- definitely me, and it sounds like you, too -- that's going to be a lifelong balancing act. I think it gets easier to manage over time, but it's not likely to ever resolve completely.
I grew up as a string supporter of Israel, the plucky, young democracy surround by Arab enemies that I learned about in Hebrew School. This was a long time ago. Israel’s history up to then was not as unblemished as I was taught, but successive governments did explore avenues for peace with Palestinians. Had Yitzhak Rabin not been assassinated by a right-wing Israeli, there’s a good chance he would have found a path to peace. That Israel has be subsumed by a right-wing dream of an Israel without Palestinians. For a long time, it was slow, creeping pressure on Palestinians, but October 7 gave Netanyahu the opportunity to lash out like the US did after 9/11. Any Israeli action can be excused by 10/7 just as 9/11 justified everything the US did in Afghanistan and Iraq. It’s evil and unconscionable. It may help Trump win. And it probably hurts Israel in the long term. But my biggest concern is that the Israeli right-wing’s plan works. The Muslims in Palestine have not been there any longer than there were Armenian Christians in Anatolia, but only history nerds and foreign service officers remember that genocide. If Israeli succeeds, we have returned to a world the powerful eat the weak, and that will apply within nations as well as between them. Trump may not win, but individual liberties that have been eroding in America for 40 years won’t be coming back in such a world. Fear and cynicism will keep people divided, and dissident views will be shouted down. I don’t like that vision. I hope that after November 5, Israeli can be brought to heel and Netanyahu can be brought to trial.