9-11 Narcissism
by Michael Hammerschlag
HAMMERNEWS
The Oliver Stone movie World Trade Center is another moving hagiopic to the terrible
sacrifice of 9-11, designed maybe to redeem
him from the wilder theories of JFK. But it isn't the time for such a movie, we've been celebrating ourselves for being
victims in 9-11 for 5 years now, and it's
too much. It's time to stop congratulating
ourselves for something we didn't do.
And we didn't do many things. 9-11 was a
tremendous shock, an awakening, a spur to
fight our sworn enemies. But our pitiful
president sneered at the guy sent to tell
him, "Bin Laden determined to strike
inside America" in August. We didn't
stop the 2 hijackers on the watch list; the
FBI ignored 2 agents crystal clear warning
about suicide plane pilots in Phoenix and
Minneapolis and the incriminating info on
Moussaoui's computer, we ignored warnings
from a passenger who said "these guys
are terrorists" on their test flights
over the Boston to LA route, bureaucratic
hacks in the FBI destroyed James O'Neil, the foremost terrorism expert in the country
(who caught Ramzi Yousef in Pakistan as new
head of FBI counterterrorism, and would have
caught Bin Laden ); we didn't warn the planes
well enough to stop the last 1 or 2 hijackings;
we had only 7 jets in America on launch alert
and sent the ones we did out over the ocean;
911 operators who had reports from the 18
escapees never told other operators about
the one open stairway in Tower 2, leaving
600 odd to their fiery fate.
As for the response, let me say I love firemen-
they are the definition of selfless courage
and sacrifice, but the FDNY's reaction was worse than nothing. Chiefs set
up their command center in the bottom floor
of the WTC, equivalent to a wartime command
post setting up at the absolute front line
of a battle, rather than miles behind. They
couldn’t even see anything that was happening
above. That CBS French documentary that followed
a local fire company into the WTC revealed
the stunning fact that the commanders in
the second tower had no idea the first collapsed. We screwed up royally. The blunders were
manifest, if you read the agonizing book
102 minutes by NYT reporters Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn.
Doors to the roof were sealed, so even official
maintenance men couldn’t unlock them after
a searing choking climb to a possible escape.
The FDNY bosses didn't turn on the WTC walkie
talkie amplification system because they
wrongly thought it didn't work, so almost no one had any communications,
except some police, who couldn’t talk to
the firemen.
FDNY commanders sent firemen up a 110 story building
with 80 lbs of gear- till they collapsed-
only one firefighter ever made it to the impact
zones. They fought an explosion inferno in the
once highest buildings in the world as if
it was a 6 story apartment fire. A fleeing
court officer begged a collapsed assembly
of 100 firemen on the 19nd floor to get moving,
who were catatonically unresponsive- not
realizing that the first tower had collapsed.
They all died. Of the 58 firemen who made
it out of the North Tower, only 4 knew that the South Tower had already collapsed. The only thing most firemen that responded
to 9-11 accomplished was block the escape
of people descending on the stairways. It
was frankly crazy to be sending these poor
guys up there- what could they do- carry
people down 80 stories, and the possibility
of collapse was glaring.* To really be a hero, you have to be successful.
[But to go up into that inferno took almost
superhuman courage. Likewise the guys that
searched and cleared that nightmare jagged
poisonous wreckage, many foreigners, were
tremendously courageous and indefatigable.] Most of these problems still haven’t been
fixed, which dishonors their sacrifice..
but even talking about what really happened
is difficult with the worshipful mythic aura
that’s arisen.
For 5 years now, we've swam in this strange
bath of moralistic self pity and self-congratulation,
ignoring all the blindness and foolishness
that didn't stop 9-11, and allowing the Administration
to abuse it for their malignant purposes.
Initially that was somewhat healthy- a necessary
cleansing and mourning, but once it ended
we should have adapted and moved on, after
a year or so. Not to this inappropriate war on terrorism, which was a linguistic stupidity and a
deliberately endless task, but to a destruction
of the limited culprits and resolute strength
against the continuing threat. Al Qaida wasn't
50,000 or 70,000 members but a several hundred
dedicated fanatics, maybe a thousand, and
many trainees, most who thought they were
training for Chechnya, India, or Israel.
Had the Republicans not crippled Clinton
in a vicious 6 year jihad, he might have
dispatched them with commandos in 1998 after
the Africa embassy bombings.
Bush has ridden this automatic long burst
of patriotism like desert jockey, deep into
the Sahara, because nobody called him on it, but now we're way way out
with no water. He lied us into a criminally
reckless counterproductive war, endorsed
torture as a basic part of US military policy,
half-destroyed our military, crippled us
to any other threat, and has blithely refused
any reassessment. It's time to stop. The
Iraq War isn't patriotic, it was a catastrophic
blunder that will threaten and damage America
for decades and strengthens the terrorists,
and opposition to it isn't weak, it's strong. That's the lesson of Lieberman’s primary
defeat (though Joltin Joe hasn’t left and gone away- with the Ct. Republicans he could still retain
his seat). For every terrorist killed in
Afghanistan, we’ve generated 20 in Iraq or
in Palestine-Lebanon. Now 1/5th of the world hates us.
But escaping Iraq is a no win situation. We can stay forever and maintain the eroding status quo against ever increasing terror, or we can get out- leading to a 10 year civil war that will kill maybe a million Iraqis, create the unlimited training ground for terrorists that Bush claimed to be stopping, stop the 1.6 million barrels of oil a day coming from Iraq, and destabilize the entire Mideast. Or the swelling civil war will drive us out. Iraq is a jackpot that the ignorant arrogant fools of this Administration bullied, blustered, and badgered us into- without the slightest understanding of the consequences.
The handful of neocons that planned and carried
our this nightmare are America's Bolsheviks, radicals wedded to an extreme theoretical
philosophy that brooks no dissent, ignores
all evidence to the contrary, and chuckles
at the cost. The cavalier careless endorsement
of the Lebanese assault should be their death
knell. They are dangerous, vicious, deluded
fools, who have damaged our hopes and maybe
our future, with their lies and hijacking
of USA's foreign policy, integrity, and honor.
They should be treated the same way as the
real 40's Communists: driven out of government
life, investigated, tried, and blacklisted.
Hopefully that will start this November.
* In, of course, retrospect. But to go into that inferno took almost superhuman courage. Likewise the guys that searched and cleared that nightmare jagged poisonous wreckage, many foreigners, were tremendously courageous and indefatigable. I ate with them at a Ward St. diner after exploring the ruins a couple of months later. I admire firemen above all others. 102 Minutes, when done, will be the definitive movie on 9-11, which Stone should have done, rather than concentrate on 2 trapped guys.
For some reason, victim’s families deserved
hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars;
something never considered for OKC bombing
victims; as if the collective shock made
it so much worse, but I imagine the collectivity
of the devastation, that the entire country
was on their side, might have provided some
consolation to victim families.
Michael Hammerschlag's commentary and articles
(HAMMERNEWS.com) have appeared in the Seattle Times, Providence Journal, Columbia
Journalism Review, Honolulu Advertiser, Capital
Times, MediaChannel; and Moscow News, Tribune, Times, and
Guardian. He broke the first comprehensive story on media mistakes in the 2000 election, spent 2 years in Russia
as the empire collapsed, has covered Presidential
campaigns, and was scheduled to fly over Manhattan on 9-11. hammerschlagATbigfoot.com