I've tried to avoid writing on the attacks on the World Trade Centre, because I didn't want offend anyone. But fuck it. I'm going to. Anyway. the rest of the Western World is at it, so why can't I?
It is well-known that when Dubya was informed about the
attacks on the Twin Towers he was in classroom reading a book with some primary
school children, an action for which he was widely criticised. I think this is a little unfair. If I had nearly read a whole book for the
first time in my life, I’d be loathe to put it down because the country of
which I was President was seemingly under attack and three thousand people had
just died in downtown New York. Besides,
I bet he really wanted to know what was going to happen to that hungry little caterpillar,
and the world could wait an hour or two while he finished the remaining few
pages.
I remember when the towers were attacked that I found it
surprising, and horrific, but not shocking.
Anyone outside of The States was aware that the world was at best
ambivalent towards it* and quite often antagonistic. Ask the Vietnamese. Or
Guatemalans. Or Palestinians. Or French film directors. So when in the news, in the days following
the attack, we saw footage of people celebrating, burning American flags and
dancing like drunken monkeys, it seemed to me that this would be a good time
for reflection. A time to ask ‘ Why has
this happened?’. A pertinent moment in history for the USA to consider its role
in the recent global history.
What we got instead was a machismoid explosion of unblinking
patriotism. The mindless chant of
Yoo-Ess-Ay, the If You’re Not With Us You’e A Satanic Fuckbag, the search for Someone
To Blame.
It’s a common reaction. Maybe it’s instinctual, maybe it’s
cultural. But when something bad happens to us, our first knee-jerk is often
WhoTheFuckDidThat? Quite often followed by AndHowDoIFuckThemUp? On a personal level,
this will most usually result in, at most, light swearing. Quite often under
the breath, with inner dreams of bloody revenge against the person we think cut
us up at the traffic lights. Or took the last disposable barbecue from Asda. Or
that twat in the black on the field who fails to notice that Wales’ kicked goal
was possibly between the posts. We look to blame, even though sometimes, shit
just happens.
The problem Dubya and his gang of blamers faced was that
there were people who were responsible for the murders of over three thousand
people. Unfortunately, those were people
were dead. Short of attempting a mystical quest to the Underworld to persuading
Hades to let him bang out some Extraordinary Rendition, there was nothing Dubs
could do to those people. There was no-one to hit back at. This was a perfect
opportunity for reflection.
Unless you realise that Dubya has logic which works beyond
that of the common-or-garden human. I suspect he realised that he didn’t like
the attackers, and he didn’t like the Taliban. Therefore, as these two have his
dislike in common, they must be the same. Ergo, the Taliban, a group of militants
based in the mountains of Afghanistan were the same as educated Saudis with
pilots’ licences, a bag full of vague grievances and a fierce drive to get laid
by virgins.
The rest is history. And the curse of humanity is that we
are doomed to learn nothing from history. Ten years on, Afghanistan and Iraq
are changed, but violently unstable, The States are more expectant of an attack
than ever, and they are still held in uncertain ambivalence beyond their
borders.
I’d like to dedicate this to anyone who died needlessly in
those attacks, and anyone who has died needlessly as a result of reactions to
those attacks. Ten years on, at a time
of remembrance, let this also be a time for reflection and realisation. When you try to impose yourself and your
beliefs on people, and especially if you do that with violence, your
achievement is the same. You become a
monolith, and people want to bring you down.
Darth Vader realised this, when he finally chose to
sacrifice himself to bring down the Empire he had helped create. Let’s take a lesson from the book of Jedi. Fear
and anger lead to the Dark Side, and it’s called the Dark Side for a reason. Because
it’s dark. What we need to do is stay in the light. It’s shinier.
*I don’t know whether to
treat The States as a singular or plural.
I’ll do whatever feels best. I’m a bit Ayn Rand like that.
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