9-11 5 Years Out

Today the US is marking the 5th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks. Many are discussing where they were ad whether or not the US is safer since then. I was on a highway on my way to work when I heard the boom and thought nothing of it. It was later that I found out it was a plane and even then I thought it was an accident, it's happened before. The second strike eliminated that one and all I could think of was "payback". Not the kind of payback many Americans were thinking of though. I was thinking in the Malcolm X vein of Chickens coming home to roost. That Friday at a poetry event I performed a piece I entitled: Beware of Low Flying Chickens.

I was was not shocked that somebody decided that it was time to take US policy back to "we the people". My only question was when and how. My uncle had long been saying that it wouldn't be until Americans felt the same thing that the people they kill for various raw materials, that they would see the error of their ways and that it would happen. He was apparently right on the "it would happen" point but woefully wrong on the "error of their ways" part.

While Disney-ABC tries to rewrite or reframe the history surrounding 9-11, with the cleverly titled "Path to 9-11". Americans are still as dumb and uncaring about non-Americans as they were prior to the strikes. Indeed for those of us paying attention we saw in the reaction of a great deal of Americans that they too would kill as many people as they deemed fit in response to a strike in their homeland by a foreigner. Indeed we see that the suicide bomber in Palestine and Iraq is really no different from the US military except in available arms and international "respectability" in the end, both parties have killed many many civilians in order to "shape the world" they way they see fit.

9-11 provided a unique moment for the United States to examine it's foreign policy and to make changes that would lessen the chances not only of terrorist acts but to remove much of the motivating factors. Instead the military and those private corporations that feed it wound up with a bonanza of profits while the U.S. Constitution was declared, by it's sworn defender to be a "piece of paper", and laws were passed that would have caused the ratification of the Constitution some 200 years ago to not have happened. We found that a large percentage of Americans polled, thought that citizens had too many rights. Indeed 9-11 showed that the U.S. didn't really love freedom so much as it loved profits and so called "safety".

As people ran out to purchase duct tape and a citizen died from duct taping her home because of an Anthrax scare that was snuffed out from the media once the trail went back to a Federal lab, the question put on everyone's mind was "are we safe" Even today drunk, nervous white men can have a Muslim barred entry onto a plane because he is wearing a shirt with Arabic on it. Idiots think they can profile only Muslims because they claim to know what they look like. Never mind that there are Muslims of every race and they all wear a variety of clothing. Never mind that the actual hijackers were wearing "regular" "western" clothing and were clean shaven. No, We'll pick out the Sikh because Americans are generally so culturally ignorant that they can't tell the difference. You are supposed to feel safe because you stand in long lines at subways and Airports before you can get onto a train or plane. Every now and then the government, in an attempt to scare the wits out of potential voters, will raise threat levels as was done recently over the "foiled" plot in London. never mind that to make a binary liquid bomb would be nigh impossible to make on a plane in any quantity that would kill anyone other than the person making the "bomb." you and I, with images of Die Hard III on the brain, are too stupid to question the "authorities" as they snatch the water we were just drinking out of our hands and throw it away.

But let's be honest here you are only as safe as it is difficult to obtain the materials needed to make a bomb and the imagination of the terrorist. Assuming one can get enough of the components to make a bomb, wouldn't that long ass line to get to the gates be a nice place to let one off? I mean all those people there for the killing. People enter airports with huge backpacks all the time. You don't even need to get a ticket to get in line for a screening. I've seen this at JFK myself. Similarly, people in NY are supposed to feel safe because the NYPD are spot checking bags. Are they at all stations? No. Are they at the busiest ones? Probably. If three people with bombs randomly picked stations to go to would they kill anyone? of course. If they got stopped, could they kill everyone in the vicinity? Yes they could. Therefore are you safer? No. You think you are because you see uniforms and guns. Let me tell you, I've been to countries where there are uniforms and guns all over the place and yet people get killed every day.

There is no military means to end "terrorism". Terrorism is a tool used by those who are in a militarily inferior position to inflict casualties on the enemy. It seeks to engage the political apparatus by pressuring the civilian population. The suicide bomber is the most feared tool, which is also the most wasteful use of human resources. There is, unfortunately a sense of pride, of comparing balls, going on here with the war on terror. The "enemy" cannot be negotiated with because the enemy has no valid claim to negotiate from. One does not have to agree that the US should fall under a caliphate in order see that there are valid reasons why some people would like to kill Americans. We just had a show of validity of certain claims when we saw Israel drop US made and purchased bombs on the homes of the Lebanese. Indeed had America learned anything from 9-11, it would have been the immorality of killing innocent people to achieve military aims. Yet all over the airwaves there were talking heads, mostly white, discussing the justification for the killing of 1000's of Lebanese and the wanton destruction of property in order to "free two prisoners".How did that help the US become safer? Explain that one. What then did Americans learn from the 9-11 Attacks. Nothing. Nothing at all. If Americans had learned anything from 9-11, George Bush and much of the Republican party would not be government. I'm not concerned whether the 2004 elections were stolen, the election, had Americans learned anything from 9-11, would not have even been close enough to steal.

The war in Iraq is yet another example of the fakery that is the "War on Terror". It is known and has been re-affirmed that Saddam had nothing to do with the 9-11 attacks, yet close to 50% of Americans believe that he was directly linked to 9-11. These American citizens believe this even though various administration officials have been caught lying on the subject. Even though Colin Powell, The man to "make the case" for invading Iraq, sat on national television and said he was wrong about the WMD's in Iraq. Even though none of the "40 minutes to launch time" missiles that Saddam supposedly had ready for American troops never materialized, upwards of 50% of Americans believe he was connected with Al-Qaida. That simply makes no sense. We joke about George Bush being stupid but what's the excuse of that 50%?

So 5 years out are you safer? no more than you were on 9-11-2001. Are "we", well..Americans different? No, Americans seem just as willing to kill non-Americans for "national interests" as ever before. If anything Americans have shown themselves to be undeserving of the freedoms their forefathers supposedly enshrined in the constitution. In the old Soviet Union and in Mexico recently, people toook the streets and shut things down for days over election fraud. Yet US citizens are apparently unfazed by the head of state breaking their sovereign document. However; Americans call people who question the Bush administration crazy, and vote them out of office. Yes, 9-11 hasn't changed Americans all that much really and 5 years out, that should really be the sad news.