9/11: One Year On

I find it interesting to re-read this and note just how quickly Dubya squandered the goodwill and sympathy generated by 9/11.





As milestones go, forgetting about tomorrow would probably rank about equal to forgetting about one's partners birthday the day after neglecting to buy them a present for the wedding anniversary in the eyes of many Americans. And in truth, it would be churlish to expect America to feel anything other than a sense of grief and loss 1 year on from the worst atrocity that they have ever suffered in peacetime. So before I even get started, I have to make it clear that I have nothing but sympathy for the families who were affected by September 11th. Nor do I wish to cheapen the impact of that dreadful day on the rest of the nation. What I do want to do, however, is address the mindset that now seems to be emerging in America; that is, that because they have suffered because of a terrorist atrocity, they have divine right to do whatever they please in order to get their pound of flesh. I'd also like to briefly examine the cynical manipulation by the American government of the grief and anger justly felt by many Americans in order to make confused and blundering motions of aggression toward whomever they choose, whilst attempting to silence any criticism or doubts over their (quite remarkably ill-thought out) policy by claiming that dissent is equal to treachery.

It is of course difficult to make any sort of substantial comment about America and American policy as a result of 9/11. After all, their government doesn't seem to be entirely sure what they are doing these days (do we invade Iraq? Do we go through the UN? Have we finished in Afghanistan? Answers on a post card to the White House, because frankly, I don't think Dubya has the first clue...), so trying to decipher the intent behind their clumsy words and murky thoughts is a labour that would rival anything Hercules did. However, certain things can be gleaned from the avalanche of misinformation, contradiction, and blind stupidity that has become the hallmark of the US government of late. Obviously, they want war against Iraq. The removal of an evil dictator who had some part in 9/11, plus freeing of an oppressed people is the reason that is being played to the gallery. Naturally, nobody but the blindest patriot believes this. The real reasons are a matter of speculation; oil, distraction from the economic corruption that has mired the government down, revenge on behalf of Daddy...any, all, or none of these could be true. The government has been doing it's best to convince the public of this by blandly repeating the mantra that Saddam is a real and immediate threat, whilst at the same time providing no evidence for this.

I find it extremely annoying that the US government has made such a botched job of this whole affair; nobody would grieve Saddam's passing as dictator of Iraq. Yet by refusing to provide evidence for the danger he poses (and surely there must be some; we're talking about a man who used to routinely order the mass murder of Kurds and Marsh Arabs living in Iraq), and by suppressing any political opposition to an invasion by painting support for an invasion as the only way to be patriotic, Dubya's government are showing themselves to be as politically astute and as media savvy as Prince Phillip on a visit to China. I think it's rather telling that on the same day that the CIA have announced that there is little evidence linking Saddam to international terrorism, a news item has surfaced purporting to be an interview with a former lover of the Iraqi dictator. Apparently he likes watching torture videos and dancing to Sinatra in his spare time. Shit, why don't they go the whole hog and announce that scientific evidence has been found that gives a clear indication that Saddam Hussein is the closest living relative of the Boogeyman. It would appear that America is trying to win the war of hearts and minds via the National Enquirer...

So, now that I've qualified what I want to say to the point of rendering it almost irrelevant, I may as well proceed. What has been happening in America in the last year? Has the US public good reason to be proud of the actions of their government over the last year? Well, we should have been forewarned by the fact that no-one seemed to give much of a damn about the fact that the result of the election was...well, it was bollocks. Indeed, I'm sure that in years to come, historians on the education board will set aside a lesson specifically to allow future generations of schoolchildren to have a bloody good laugh at the gullibility of the American public and the sheer audacity of the Republican party (they may be corrupt and ignorant, but if nothing else they must have balls the size of watermelons to say that there was nothing remotely questionable about the result). And, true to form, America really doesn't seem to care that it's government has managed to alienate the entire world (no mean feat when one considers the outpouring of sympathy a year ago). Why doesn't it care?

The cynic in me suspects that the reason they don't care about the opinion of the rest of the world because America is a nation in the grip of self obsession. Prior to 9/11, nobody in America particularly cared about the fact that their government was a huge sponsor of terrorism. At best, they were indifferent to the suffering and misery in South America, Afghanistan, and Africa as a direct result of American funding of terror. At worst, they contributed toward it themselves (as any IRA quartermaster would no doubt confirm, the good old US public made huge contributions to their cause). Only now that America has begun to reap what it has sown has the American public in general made the belated discovery that terrorism is bad.

Now that terrorism has become a domestic problem for America, Americans have to think about it. This was something that they never had to trouble themselves with when it was happening overseas (incidentally, I'm not suggesting that the American public is unique in this rather selfish approach to the world; as an Englishman I'd be hypocritical to do so...). However, the prevailing attitude regarding how to prevent another 9/11 shows an imperiousness that has not been seen since Victorian times. Their seems to be an assumption that America can do what it damn well pleases, just so long as whatever is done stops the terrorists from attacking America again. The fact that America is militarily stronger than any other nation reinforces the belief that they can do what they like without fear of retribution. Their government have obliged by telling the rest of the world what they want, then stamping their feet and wailing "If you're not with us, you're against us" if they meet with anything less than total compliance (and if we bear in mind that the UK is the only country to have offered unconditional support, that adds up to a lot of rattles being thrown out of Dubya's pram).

There is a name for this; it's called "Gunboat Diplomacy", and it's something that the American public seems to approve of greatly. Well, not wishing to piss on their chips, but the last empire to try gunboat diplomacy was the same one that invented it; the British Empire. As I recall from the history of our little empire, we too had something of a belief in our divine right to tell the rest of the world what to do. We too took advantage of having a better military than anybody else. And yet here we are, dancing to whatever tune that Dubya spits out. We're no longer the biggest kid on the block. And do you know why? Because, after all the resentment that built up towards the imperious attitude of the English, the rest of the world made damned sure that it brought Britain down a peg or two at the first available opportunity. In our case, that opportunity was the Second World War. After the defeat of the axis powers, the UN was formed with the idea that no one nation should be able to bully the rest of the world into complying with whatever fun packed scheme they had come up with during that particular week. Britain had to hand its empire back to the people who actually lived there.

The American public seems to believe, rather sweetly, that this could never ever happen to them. I've tried asking a couple of them to justify this belief and have been met with answers ranging from "We could conquer the world so no one will ever mess with us" (evidently this gentleman belongs to the school of thought that believes Vietnam and Somalia aren't worth conquering...), to "It won't happen" (I tried pressing the giver of that last answer for a reason why it will never happen; unless you count repeating "It won't happen" over and over in the hope that I'd go away as a reason, none was forthcoming). Of course, the last time it took a world war to make something like this happen. Will it take the same thing happening again?

Let's put it this way; during the cold war, the leadership of America had an upsettingly high proportion of fundamentalist Christians in its numbers. These are the people who believe that the Revelations portion of the bible was not in fact the work of a gibbering fool who had spent too long in the desert eating mushrooms, but was in fact the exact representation of God's will. Happily, the Russian leadership were altogether more pragmatic, eschewing a dogmatic belief in the end of the world in favour of a belief in the need for keeping their own people on a tight leash. So all we had was 45 years of arse clenching fear, and no war. This time round, the Russians have been replaced with Moslem fundamentalists; people who are to the Islamic ideals of love and justice what Dubya is to the ideals of intellect and statesmanship. They too have a hankering for an apocalyptic "end of the world" scenario. So it seems that both teams want one big, messy conflict between good and evil. And each has found in the other someone perfectly willing to oblige that desire. Frankly, my only hope is that Dubya can be stalled until the next election, because surely the US public wouldn't be stupid enough to allow him to steal a second election, would they?

Would they?