I've been quietly absorbing 9/11 remembrances and reactions all day, trying to figure out where my own head is on this macabre anniversary, and I must admit that I began to feel a little guilty at times. I can't seem to find the immediate emotional connection that I had in 2001, and even for the next few years as 9/11 insisted on happening every 365 days. But today all I felt was a detached feeling, a lethargic apathy, even a mild annoyance at times while reading some of the more cloying and seemingly obligatory gravitas online.
September eleventh, two thousand and one changed me. Before that date, I was politically detached, vaguely liberal, and blissfully unaware of the bulk of what happened outside of my own NYC fortress of solitude. I suppose it was a terribly predictable psychological response to the trauma of that day to veer in a more bellicose and hawkish direction politically. Bush seemed to understand the symbolic power of what had just happened in a way that no Democrat seemed to be capable of vocalizing. And he was surely the only one who had the authority and will to make swift, decisive moves in response. My enthusiastic support for both Afghanistan and Iraq was based on a belief that he would do everything in his power to make his bold words effective on the ground, mustering the awesome might and formidable resources of the American military to wipe the slime off of those two portions of the map for good.
Five years later, it feels as if we are emerging from a fitful slumber to wake up with one of the worst hangovers in history. Afghanistan is slipping into the kind of chaos that made it ripe for Taliban rule the first time, and the Taliban has indeed already established itself once again in the northern province of Pakistan, our so-called ally in the nebulous War on Terror. Ironically, our addiction to the even more nebulous Drug War might be having the unintended consequence of driving the populace right back into the arms of the repressive Islamists that we temporarily vanquished. Opium production is at an historic high this year, while our blunt efforts to raze their cash crops indiscriminately has not led to very much goodwill between us and the poor farmers that rely on the opium yield to live. One is forced to wonder if parroting the same prohibitionary rhetoric as the Taliban itself in reference to opium is indicative of some rather deep flaws in the Drug War mentality itself.
I had a hippy history teacher in high school that taught us a very important lesson about the nature of repressive regimes. They often make the trains run on time and the streets immaculate she told us. She referenced Franco's Spain, but the parallel works in places like Afghanistan and now Lebanon just as well. Seeing people approach you with money, goodwill and plans for infrastructure building can quickly erase any reservations you might have about their stringent, or even homicidal, moral code. Our failure to fill the vacuums we helped create with goodwill and solid infrasructure ourselves is inexcusable.
Then there is Iraq. The fact that Bush and Rumsfeld have managed to make the strained Vietnam comparisons seem less strained enrages me. This was clearly no Vietnam. We had clear goals, and should have moved in with decisive force and then spent the time and money to do the necessary reconstruction that would have short-circuited the Shiite power play from Iran. But we went in with only the most barebones military strategy and absolutely no reconstruction strategy, and now it's becoming more and more difficult to tell people we're not lost in another nightmarish quagmire. For a hawkish libertarian like me who still passionately believes in the goal of establishing relatively stable societies in the middle east that don't use mass murder to regulate order, this is a tragedy on a massive scale. I am furious.
Iran is now in the best position it has been in since their revolution. Their lunatic President seems to honestly believe his own eschatological rhetoric, and is quickly amassing the hardware to do God's will and eradicate all non-Muslims off of the planet. They now have a strong foothold in Iraq and once again in Lebanon, and feel completely at ease invading Israel through their Hezbollah puppets. Even if he is all bluster, the Iranian regime clearly has all of the cards it needs to render any success we have had in that region null and void. My fear is that we will look back on this era of history much as we study the early geopolitical maneuvering before the first two world wars. The fault lines are being drawn, and with formidable powers like China and Russia growling a bit in our direction, a real nuclear world war is not nearly as far-fetched as many believe. I certainly hope it never gets to this point, and there is plenty of opportunity to make sure it doesn't, but one could safely argue that we are closer to that point now than we were five years ago.
Have I traded my robust optimism for a grave pessimism? It might sound that way, but I have not. I am merely adapting my feelings on these issues to absorb the difficult realities of what we face right now. Do I think there is a way to fend off global disaster and help steer the world in less barbaric directions? Certainly. Am I certain that the American empire will continue to dominate world affairs for the foreseeable future? Somewhat, but I am less sure now than I was five years ago. What I do still believe, and what ultimately makes me an optimist and a proud American, is that the idea of freedom is a Pandora's Box that can never be closed completely once it is tasted by those who have never experienced it before. For a great many people in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, China, Russia, and North Korea, freedom seems more real than ever before. More chaotic, less stable, and certainly more difficult on a day to day basis, but time and time again people willingly choose the more difficult path in order to feel free from the chains of religious, moral and political tyrrany.
Not all people, of course. Many people flee into the arms of that tyrrany, wrapping themselves in the warm, narcotic ease of strident fundamentalism. Death cults often prey on the downtrodden, the poor, and the desperate in order to swell their ranks. There is a form of mass psychosis infesting Islam, and I unequivocably denounce it and anyone who is seduced by this global murder cult. I may feel a sadness at their lot in life, but we must never forgive murderous rage simply because there may be a context to it. A serial killer is a serial killer, and whether or not he was abused as a child has nothing to do with the swift punishment his actions deserve. But it is the Islamist leadership that truly offends the spirit of everything I believe in. The once pampered elites of the Muslim world. Ivy League educated oil baron brats and diplomat sons. Disaffected and decadent, they developed visions of a radical form of global revolution, with pipe dreams of re-establishing a caliphate on the planet once again. It is for these international Islamist playboys, Osama and his ilk, that I reserve a particular rage.
But today is not for rage. It is for reflection, and my reflections today have been mixed, and not as emotional as I had expected. I am still a New Yorker, and I walk past the ghostly footprints left by two giants of cosmopolitan architecture many times a week. I can still remember the smell of burning flesh and paper that crept its way all the way into the West Village for weeks after we were attacked by an enemy that can't wait to do it again, on a much more devastating scale if possible. But I don't feel the acuteness of my emotions any longer, which is the inevitable decay that time provides. Some call it healing. I'm not sure if it's healthier in this case. But my resolve against the dark forces of evil that wish to turn back the calendar 500 years or more is still intact. My thoughts this year are forward-thinking, disappointed but hopeful. We must find leadership, amongst ourselves and within ourselves, in order to begin the long, arduous process of routing out the enemies of freedom wherever they may be, and leaving instead a taste of what might be for those who crave the messy jumble of liberty just as much as we do.
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