The Fallout From 9/11
the real tragedy has not been recognized
2008-09-15
By DeAngelo Starnes

Seven years ago last Thursday, I was in a nice Southern California resort at an attorney’s conference.  Hanging out with some cool Canadians until the wee hours of the morning, I woke up three hours later with a hangover and late to the Conference’s first seminar.  Through heavy bloodshot eyes, I turned on the television in the hopes it would provide a jolt as I am not necessarily a caffeine drinker.  Trying to sober up quickly, I drank expensive bottles of water that I would later kick myself for consuming.  Soon, I thought I was watching a horror sci-fi movie until I realized it was a live broadcast of one of the Twin Towers burning.  Couldn’t believe my ears when it said a plane flew into it.  I flashed back to JFK, Jr.’s errant flight and thought maybe someone had a heart attack and flew off course.  Then another plane crashed into the other one. 

No need to recount what occurred next, except I was transfixed until the first building fell.  I ran to the conference to tell the other conference attendees what had just happened.  Didn’t even shower.  Conference ended – folks transfixed around televisions.  No one eating, but a lot drinking.  All kinds of us-against-them rhetoric thrown about.  Shortly, we found out the airport was closed.  Canadians invited me to stay, but I ended up driving all day and night back to Denver with my colleagues. 

Now, I’m not saying it wasn’t messed up what happened.  Thousands of innocent folk lost their lives as a result of those planes flying into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and the aborted hijack of United Flight 93.  But the real tragedy ain’t what happened that day.  It’s what’s happened since then.

This Administration has turned 9/11 into a guilt factory.  It has used it as a linchpin for mass fear creation.  Don’t blame Osama bin Laden.  Blame the Administration’s use of bin Laden. They told us Osama bin Laden was the culprit, but seven years later he’s still at large.  He sends us videotapes just in time for an election, but he ain’t been caught or killed despite the Administration justifying spending billions of dollars on the military and intelligence in pursuit of the Godfather of Terrorism.  Bush trots out every 9/11 anniversary and promises to bring “those responsible to justice.”  Has anyone asked how do we continue to get tapes from bin Laden but don’t know where they came from?  And then can’t trace those tapes to bin Laden. 

bin Laden must’ve known something we didn’t know about ourselves.  It wasn’t solely that the bombing would terrorize our country.  It’s what we would do to ourselves as a result of it.  We’ve acted like those families in that Twilight Zone episode where the neighbors turned on each other because they thought an alien had landed in their neighborhood.  We’re not fearing fear, but the creation of fear – the illusion of fear.

George Bush must be credited when he said, “Sometimes you have to repeat things so that the truth will come out.”  The truth is we are not a thinking society because we keep falling for these lines.  If we used our intelligence, we wouldn’t accept the pimping of 9/11.  Instead, we give in to the fear because we are shamed by words like “unpatriotic” when we question the Administration’s motives and slogans like “Support the Troops” when we want our money pulled out of this asinine exercise.  If my hero Howard Beale were still alive, he’s say we’ve suffered collective cognitive dissonance and amnesia.

Recall the timing of 9/11.  The U.S. and Israel had decided not to participate in the worldwide Conference on Racism.  Bush’s Administration was reeling from the corporate fraud committed by its major campaign contributors.  Then the planes hit and bin Laden’s family is flown out of the country while I was happy to have a rental car to drive home in.

Roll call for the 9/11 aftermath: the so-called War Against Terrorism.  The hastily passed Patriot Act.  Guantanamo.  Iraq Invasion.  Outing of a CIA agent.  Warrantless wiretapping.  Hurricane Katrina.  Blackwater.  Long lines at the airport.  The completely asinine decision to restrict taking liquids onto a plane.  Inundation of flags, Fox News, and finger-pointing.  Crayola-coded terrorism alerts.  Re-election of Bush and other Republican terrorism-fear-mongerers.  Money poured out of the country.  A recession.  The beginnings of depression.  Over four thousand Americans dead in pursuit of nameless, faceless “Islamofacists.”  Rendition.  Torture.  The loss of America’s standing among the international community.  Afghanistan but still didn’t find bin Laden when seven years later it’s public knowledge bin Laden is in Pakistan.  The threat of going into Iran.  Not an exclusive list and feel free to add your own.
 
The false linkage of bin Laden to Saddam Hussein can’t be understated.  We found Saddam relatively fast.  And his major crime was against the oil market.  He was a freelancer.  He would release oil on the market, which drove the price of oil down.  Bush’s Arab friends didn’t like that.  We spend billions of dollars a day on the Invasion of Iraq.  Iraq has a budget surplus; we have a record deficit as we slide into a depression.  But broke folks still say we need to be in Iraq to protect us against the “terrorists.”  Meanwhile, I miss a Saddam because our gas prices are extremely high – another by-product of 9/11.

How about the restriction of our civil liberties to “protect us.”  All the Patriot Act has done is give the government the excuse to achieve in a single stroke what Reagan and the Contract on America couldn’t.  It was another in a long line of deregulation, except this time police powers were deregulated.  As a result, the Administration broke the FISA law with impunity, your telecom company except for Qwest helped out, and habeas corpus was revoked.  Habeas corpus, the most long-standing of rights, a right that pre-dated our Constitution, was revoked because of 9/11.

How about the real tragedy of the first responders and the 9/11 cleaners?  They can’t get healthcare?!  They were allowed to go in there and clean up a mess breathing what is the equivalent of Drano?  They’ve been hailed as heroes but can’t get a break.

What about folks who sign up for the National Guard?  Not expecting to go overseas to fight an endless, senseless military exercise framed as a “war.”

Exploitation of the tragedy is the real tragedy.  The fact that we’ve allowed ourselves to be played by it is yet another. 

DeAngelo Starnes is an attorney and writer. He lives in Denver with his wife and son.