Yes, it’s 23 years after September 11th. For those who don’t know (and why don’t you?) my venue that day was at an office building on Church Street in lower Manhattan, at the job I lost that day after the building was closed for business for an inordinate period of time following the 9-11 events. I, of course, viewed the festivities from a 16th floor window.
The easiest explanation for what happened is blowback from having armed Islamic militants to take on the former Soviet Union who eventually settled in perennial failed state Afghanistan, along with Islamist grievances associated with placing American troops in Saudi Arabia, as well as overall American policy, particularly in the aftermath of the Cold War.
September 11th ended up extremely useful for both political parties, Republicans to usher in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib (oh yes… not just war in Afghanistan but in Iraq) and the Department of Homeland Security and the National Security State [TM], and then the Democrats to keep the party going with [my college classmate] Barack Obama to add drone attacks directed at killing American citizens, along with all of the foregoing, in the name of the principal Democratic policy (besides the culture wars), to wit, military Keynesianism.
As we approach the nightmare scenario of a restoration of the Donald Trump presidency potentially looming in a few months if an election now around 7 weeks away goes unexpectedly badly, I do not for one second mean to suggest that life in this country will be particularly good if the trajectory we are on continues– merely that we will dodge one particular nightmare, a nightmare we should be familiar with and which, shockingly, almost 40% of the country either can’t remember or is fine with (as long as it is tinged with racism, I suppose).
And as strong evidence of this, I go back to my usual hobby horse (that would be GTMO) and highlight two important stories, both perpetrated by Democrats. The first was a blocking of a transfer of eleven (out of thirty remaining) GTMO detainees to Oman as a matter of “bad optics” as if events in Israel are relevant to American policy (sadly, Democrats think they are). I know Republicans join in this– but their bad faith is assumed. The second was a blocking of a plea deal that would have largely resolved the cases of the alleged 9-11 perpetrators by the Secretary of Defense (meaning the White House). This was an almost identical deal to one previously proposed by (my law school classmate) Harvey Rishikoff, then the GTMO/DOD “convening authority,” blocked by Trump who then fired him. The result: no deal, no resolution of the 9-11 cases at GTMO which, because they are all tinged with torture, can not and will not ever proceed to finality. But I guess some of the 9-11 families are happy about this.
Which takes me to one of my pet peeves about 9-11. New York City lost several times as many people from Covid as were lost on 9-11, but there is no annual ceremony to honor them. And don’t get me started on things like AIDS or other plagues and what-not. As I saw the “towers of light” and heard the names of the 9-11 victims publicly read by their family members yet again, I realize that decades later, these families’ losses are just a useful prop for never ending American military adventurism (when Republicans do it) and military Keynesianism (when Democrats do it)– either way, the reason we don’t have and probably never will have publicly paid universal health insurance, or properly funded education, or infrastructure that isn’t falling apart.
And did I mention the national security state? Covid was a really useful opportunity to add censorship to the surveillance regime. But it wouldn’t have happened if that regime weren’t already in place thanks to 9-11.
I realize that at 61 years old, I’m just a damned dinosaur at this point– and got to spend the majority of my life in “the pre-9-11 world.” Not so for the young’uns like the Loquacious Pup, who wasn’t even two, and along with the rest of us has had to live in the post 9-11 environmental hellscape of NYC ever since. For all I know, this may have contributed to the illness she has had to fight this year (I am thanking the diety of your choice, btw, that she is doing much better, btw). But I remember a time when things weren’t like they are now (by which I mean FUCKING HOPELESS, and everything we thought we understood about this country turned out to be propaganda or lies).
And given how happy Kamala Harris was to accept the endorsement of at least two of the family members in this “Onion” postcard… if we haven’t done so before, let us celebrate irony as among the victims of 9-11.
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