Like many people not just in the US but around the globe, I became interested in Islam and the Middle East only after September 11. Grappling for some understanding, I reached for the Koran, and history books, and even Disney movies if I thought they could help me glean one ounce of clarification for the acts that had so hurt the United States. While history is full of tales of savagery of Islamists, stories from 700 years ago didn’t seem to have any relevance to the acts of 2001. There was no guidebook to the modern terrorist attack, and I was left foundering.
It has been nearly 3000 days since September 11, 2001. Seven years. I’d like to think my education about war, terrorism, and psychology has improved during that time. I can’t say I understand 9/11 any better than I did on 9/12, but what I do know is this: there is nothing new under the sun.
I have come to understand that we, right now, are the anomaly. For our entire history has human beings, war is the norm. And it still is – right up until today. Do you know how many wars are happening today? I don’t, but I can name a few hot spots where they’re happening: Columbia, Haiti, North Korea, Mauritania, Liberia, Zalambessa, Biafra, Algeria, Congo, Darfur, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, India, Pakistan, Napal, Burma, Sri Lanka, Kargil, Thialand. And I’m sure I’m forgetting some. But the point is, war is the normal state of affairs. For at least 80% of the world, starvation, massacre, rape, 9-year old boys with Kalashnikovs is just an average day in the hood. And I’m not talking only about sub-Saharan Africa. Imagine being from a country where 2,230,000 people are buried in the ground upon which you walk every day, a place such as Belarus. Rotting layers of soldiers, twelve deep, for miles and miles, nourishing the roots of your grandmother’s apple tree. This was World War Two, and even though the movies from that time are in black and white and we tend to judge the passage of time by the technology available to us, it wasn’t such a bloody long time ago. Only sixty years; a single lifetime. Other places – Germany rockets to mind – live with the clanging memory of war every day. Germany now grovels for forgiveness, and it should, but there is no way to separate being German from the fact of Germany’s crimes. The history lives in the roots, the hardpan earth.
And then there is us. We are, relatively speaking, pretty clean. Gettysburg, Fredricksburg, the Texas Border with Mexico – we have blood here too, but it can’t compare with the truly astonishing orgies of war that took place before we Americans even got our dancin’ shoes on.
Oh my God, how beautiful we are. Can you imagine some 14 year old from Biafra seeing San Francisco for the first time? The ocean, a bridge painted red, the trolleys and the rainbow flags everywhere; it must look like God’s secret clubhouse. The beauty we have here justifiably astonishes even the richest despots. Lexus automobiles, clean air, air planes, air conditioning, roads that flow in an orderly fashion, streets free from human waste, boats made for leisure, radio, blogs, clothing, food… it’s a goddamn wonderland is what it is. In 1989, Boris Yeltsin visited a Randall’s grocery store in Houston, Texas. He looked at the kaleidoscope of goods available to ordinary citizens and had an epiphany; he knew things in Russia had to change. I don’t know that they did, actually, but I think if the CIA had kidnapped Saddam in 2000 and airlifted him into a Ralph’s in Malibu, much of the same reaction would be had. I do not believe groceries prevent genocide. But I think the wealth, beauty, and sheer bad-assed-ness of the United States is witnessed right up close would have a sobering effect on anyone.
So why don’t we fight? I realize we have our grease-fires over in Iraq and Afghanistan – but even those are tidy by even any modern comparison of war. And in the US, we have murder, of course, but aside from a few liars and thieves, we obey the laws and have insurance in case the shit goes down at the Kwik-E-Mart on the bad side of town. We don’t fight. We don’t hold grudges for generation after generation over some dusty parcel of real estate. We just get on with the business of living.
It was because of this comfort, this feeling of isolation from the rest of the world and its nasty wars, that I was so astonished when the planes came. Sharking in low over our skies, eating our skyscrapers, killing our people… of course I was shocked and so were you. You and I, we don’t get that sort of behavior. Not at all. It failed to compute in our American brains. But if we’d been in Somalia on any given day, by 8:46am, we’d have already witnessed a few crimes against humanity, probably in the form of something like a Stinger mounted on the bed of a Toyota, or a flurry of bullets and dust when a bread truck is spotted unattended under a nice tree.
I still don’t know why 9/11 happened. I don’t know why someone would want to take one of the prettiest places on earth and destroy it. I just know that I still flinch sometimes, like when I saw
this headline today: Two Jump While Trying To Escape Manhattan Fire. I still find myself looking at the pictures and weeping, or marveling at the Falling Man, or missing the Twin Towers the way I’d miss actual twins.
But I think I’ve stopped bleeding. I think I have a scar where all my 9/11 pain is healing up. I think what helped me stop being so raw and hurt over it was that I realized in the scope of humanity, it was the norm. It was only shocking to me because I was expecting to see Martha Stewart’s tips for a great fall pie at 8:46 in the morning instead of people dying. It shouldn’t have been shocking – I should have been a little smarter about the world back then. I should have remembered that war usually looks like 9/11 and not like Omaha Beach. I should have known my history.
That being said, I don’t want to quit being shocked. If, God forbid, it ever happens again – or when, I should say – I don’t want to yawn and say, “That was totally expected.” I want to be outraged. It is the thing that kept me sane that day. It’s the voice that raged louder than the stupid peaceniks who were, at 10am, saying, “Let us not rush to war!” and “it’s time to move beyond anger.” It was the pure, wholesome moral outrage that kept me calm enough to watch the President’s address. It was outrage that made me weep, and later, the same tears would cleanse. I was outraged somebody would do this to innocent guys and women and children, that they’d do it in America, in the best American city. That they would try to despoil this beautiful place.
We are so cute. Americans. We are going to build a nice memorial with a pretty garden. A place to remember what happened, to remember the people who died that day. The funny thing is that we actually need it. Because in a place like America, we could almost forget.
5 Comments
July 10, 2008 at 6:46 am
No question, there are a lot of people who want to believe that 9/11 was a fluke, a one-time thing, and we don’t need to worry about it happening again. Soon after the event, for instance, there were several cases of people applying bizarre pseudo-statistical reasoning, purportedly demonstrating that your chance of being killed in a terror attack was much less than your chance of being killed in a car accident.
I wonder, though, if many people who at a *conscious* level feel safe from terrorism do not, at the *subconscious* level, feel at all so secure, and if this doesn’t account for a certain amount of the general tension level in our society. See this chilling metaphor from Arthur Koestler.
July 10, 2008 at 12:19 pm
[...] see this Food for thought July 10, 2008, 11:19 am Filed under: Uncategorized In my book this is a must read post over at Cara Ellison. “Imagine being from a country where 2,230,000 people are buried in the ground upon which you [...]
July 10, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Thanks for not letting us forget. We all know where we were on the day of JFK’S assasination, when the space shuttle exploded, when Ronald Reagan was shot, and “9/11″.
July 10, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Beautiful post, Cara.
July 16, 2008 at 12:43 am
i also pray that there doesn’t come upon anybody a day when they fail to be shocked by such horrific events. however, as you note, horror has already become the life of millions of people around the world.
i come with a perspective originating in a place half way around the globe. i also grew up in a culture which viewed the west with suspicion just as the west has been suspicious of mine. 9/11 was still shocking for me, however, for reasons quite different than yours.
i did not frantically search for an explanation. i knew very well why it happened. not just i knew, everybody knew. nobody in my circle was scrambling to find reasons. yet everybody was shocked.
i suppose our reaction can be likened to a person who is in the habit of driving while fatigued and drowsy. he realizes full well the dangers associated with careless and inattentive driving. yet, as he continues to log trips safely in this state of drowsiness, he begins to wonder if the danger is in fact real. until one day his concentration lapses for a moment too long and he finds himself in the middle of wreck.
the situation had been ‘calm’ for so long that we had decided that perhaps nothing was going to happen. until we were shocked out of our make belief.
while you look out through your window and observe the violent world outside. it is curious to note that many people who had grown up in my culture similarly look out over to the united states and think, ‘what barbarians!’
they cite of course the extermination of native people. the dozens of wars that the united states has engaged in since its inception, almost always fought on foreign territory. one the highest rates of rape and crime (top ten) anywhere in the world. they have, in their minds, normalized the excesses of their own culture.
unfortunately i feel that the 9/11 memorial is not going to be the only reminder of that horrific day if things continue to develop in the fashion that they have been.