There’s a riot in the kitchen and the bed’s on fire - Cyndi Lauper,
(Sorry if I brought you here for Ohio State stuff and you stumbled onto this. Hopefully you’re down there enjoying the multimedia and never got here.)
Well, I almost don’t want to say anything on this 5th anniversary of 9-1-1. I didn’t lose anyone on 9-1-1, nor did I know anyone who did. I was affected in a pretty direct way, however, as I was working out of town when the attacks occurred on that sunny fall Tuesday. I watch very little television, even when I’m on the road in a hotel room, so I arrived at my client’s office ignorant of the unfolding events. As other employees arrived, the story of the first tower bombing was pieced together, and a TV was set up in the lunchroom just in time to learn of the second.
From the moment of impact, I felt unremitting anger and an unabashed desire for revenge. On a more practical level, I had a ticket to fly that Friday night, first to Detroit to visit my parents, then home to Seattle on Sunday. As flights were cancelled and the skies fell eerily silent, I wondered what my options would be. Hijacking my rental car and a 3-day drive to Seattle was one of the possibilities.
As it turned out, flights resumed on that Friday and I boarded my scheduled flight with a mixture of gravity and ebullience, with the attitude that I was going to live my American life and let no one intimidate me into fearful scurrying. It was also the fastest way out of town, and it was already paid for.
I felt temporarily avenged upon the routing of the Taliban in Afghanistan. They were repressive, anachronistic and had provided gleeful hospitality to all manner of Islamic terrorists. The fact that they were a sovereign government, and not our prime-target terrorist organization, didn’t really bother me all that much at the time. I probably didn’t make as much of a distinction between renegade Islamic elements and its more institutional/political forms because I simply don’t think religion should be involved in government in the first place. I’ll never be nostalgic for the Taliban.
The confusion of targets inherent in the Afghan effort, however satisfying the outcome, laid the groundwork for the drumbeat towards the Iraq invasion and the evolution of 9-1-1 from a national touchstone to a politically calculated wedge. Toppling sovereign nations, instead of the more difficult and less politically useful task of adopting an adroit global strategy, was now legitimized as the signature tactic to “fight terrorism”, and I believed from the start that this confusion vis a vis Iraq was perpetrated purposefully in order to advance other political and economic goals by an administration of hapless miners that had lucked into the mother lode.
So, at five years’ remove from that sobering Tuesday morning, the wedge has worked: I feel as disconnected from the co-opted sentimentalism and maudlin displays as I might from a quaint hero’s holiday celebrated in some far-off land. I felt it viscerally at the time, and feel the utmost sympathy for those who lost people. I’m also under no illusion that there is not a large group of people that has chosen me for an enemy. But 9-1-1 is simply not mine anymore.
