For the past several years, I have tried to ignore the 9-11 remembrances for several reasons I'll explain below. But since we are now a quarter century from that day, I thought it fitting to do my own remembrance.
I do remember the day quite clearly. September 11, 2001 was a Tuesday. I was beginning my second year of law school at the University of San Diego, and my morning class was California Civil Procedure (one of my favorite and most useful classes I took in law school). Later that day, I was scheduled to attend the Central Committee Meeting for the San Diego County Democratic Party. I was the Publications Director and member of the Executive Committee (my biggest contribution was the creation of a pamphlet which I think the Party still uses, but I digress).
Anyway, I was living with my parents at the time, and it was my father who woke me up with the news of the first plane hitting the Twin Towers. Now, at the time, we did not know this was the result of a terrorist attack. For all we knew, it could have been a drunk pilot or something. Anyway, as time went on, and the horror became more fully known - including seeing the 2nd plane hit the other tower - terror set in. My aunt worked in that building (she had been in the World Trade Center and had left before the first plane hit). I had friends and other family members who worked on Wall Street. And as those buildings came crashing down, I was consumed with concern and fear for my friends and family members in harm's way.
Specifically, I was terrified about my aunt, my college roommate, and my cousin, all of whom lived or worked in and around what became Ground Zero. I was lucky - they were all safe. My college roommate blogged about the experiences as way of providing updates without having to field calls and emails. For me, 9-11 wasn't an attack on some random place, it was an attack that threatened MY family and MY friends. Not in theory, but in actuality.
And it pisses me off to this very day that 9-11 is used by people who did nothing but sneer at New York City and the multiculturalism it represented, which Al Qaeda wanted to destroy, as a badge of honor. Or that 9-11 should justify gross racism against Arabs and Arab-looking people (Sikhs). And I remember that, in the aftermath of 9-11, John Ashcroft using the powers of the federal government to round up Muslim men - pretty much any the feds could find on short notice - and illegally jail them. No warrants, no investigation, just grabbing people off of the street.
Mind you, a number of the victims of 9-11 were Muslim, and Muslims were informing the FBI about the 9-11 hijackers BEFORE 9-11. Pretty much everyone around these guys were calling the FBI. No matter - Muslims had to be punished for the FBI's failures.
Worse yet, I saw the Bush Administration use 9-11 (an attack on a city it had gleefully demonized) as an excuse to invade Iraq, and lead the United States into two forever wars that did nothing but drain our Treasury, and damage an entire generation of young men. And America's reputation abroad was so damaged, that Barack Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize for the sole accomplishment of NOT BEING GEORGE W. BUSH. Oh, and the paramilitary group now harassing local communities - that was created by post 9-11 "reforms." These reforms, mind you, were proposed by Democrats looking to "keep the powder dry" while Democrats also supported the Iraq War.
When I think of 9-11, I don't think of it as the beginning of the rot that has caused our country to be lead astray, but it cemented a lot of the rot. By the time Obama was elected, a direct pull out of Iraq was all but impossible. And the Iraq invasion lead to the creation of ISIS, which created further instability in the region, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths. Oh, and the first responders who helped people on 9-11 all ended up with severe respiratory issues, including cancer, because the Bush Administration and Giuliani's NYC lied about what was in the air.
It's also clear, now, that the leadership of both Parties was so broken that they had to be jettisoned. Republicans mostly did this with the Tea Party revolt in 2010 - though that revolt mostly elected crazier Republicans (a natural byproduct of the closed nature of conservative media). Democrats, though, never really did that en masse.
So that's my 9-11 remembrance. We took a day of horror, watched heroes begin their long descent into horrible deaths as they tried to rescue their fellow New Yorkers, came together as a country, and completely wasted the experience. If you are a New Yorker, and you lived through 9-11, you should view it as a badge of honor. You survived. For the rest of us, the aftermath of 9-11 should be a source of shame.
No comments:
Post a Comment