A DUTY TO MOURN

September 11 passed this year with nearly nothing in the Australian press. Of course, we are a day ahead, so on the 12^th there was some coverage of the memorial ceremony at Ground Zero, and how no politicians spoke. And there was some comment about how the lead-up to the 10^th anniversary was so fraught and difficult but now, the 11^th, it is more of a relief to have passed the 10 years, and now it’s historic, rather than personal. It’s time to commemorate rather than mourn. And I thought, whoever said this and whoever wrote this, is an idiot.

I remember leaving a wedding hall the night of 9/11 in Melbourne and hearing some rumours of an aeroplane hitting the Twin Towers, and immediately thinking about the small aircraft that hit the Empire State Building some years before; must be some sort of accident. And then listening to the radio in the car on the way home. No, this was no accident. And then turning on the TV and seeing the horror unfold before my eyes. And knowing, even then, that the world had undergone an almost seismic shift, that something had changed profoundly and forever. That America, under the watch of George W Bush, had, not just ‘lost its innocence’, but had undergone an absurdly, horrifically well-organized attack and that nearly 3000 people, mainly civilians, had been murdered in an utterly heinous and evil way. And that the Arabs, the Palestinians, were dancing in the streets and were handing out sweets in celebration. That the Muslim taxi drivers in my own country were jumping for joy. The Great Satan was wounded. Well, reportage on that stuff was quickly suppressed, I guess to avoid hate-motivated race riots in Western cities, but it happened. I remember.

And then started the America haters, you know the ones. The ones who suckle on the teat of freedom of speech and personal and civic liberty and secular democracy of the West, a milieu that allows such creatures to exist, and who then use their powers to incite hatred and loathing for the very institutions that nurture them. Oh, we are so arrogant in the West. Oh, America’s policies in the Middle East. Oh, we had it coming.

No we fucking didn’t. 3000 civilians did not ‘have it coming’ the morning they went to work in the World Trade Center that sunny September day. Or boarded an aeroplane to go visit family, or do business, or whatever they were flying to. The people who say the US ‘had it coming’, are in my mind, not far removed from the ones who say that the Jews ‘had it coming’ after news of whatever atrocity that the Jews have suffered comes to air.

I stood in shul on Rosh HaShana that year weeping during most of the service. Not just for the Jews who were murdered that day, not just for all the human beings who were murdered on their home soil. I wept for the world. I wept for the knowledge that this act had empowered the bastards who know only how to destroy, who, with very little difficulty had initiated a successful strike to the sleeping enemy’s heart, a major first strike in a war which would never end. Suddenly the Jihadis and the Mujahedeen weren’t just some quaint sort of guerrilla wasp, which stings and then is slapped away and then stings again, all on the sidelines; suddenly, they were centre stage, and LOVING it, with the videos and the press releases with the backdrops and the robes, all so telegenic. There would be no stopping them.

Now there would be retaliation, because how could there not be? Should Bush have just sat on his hands after this attack? No. Was it handled properly? Was it wise to have war on 2 fronts, dealing with Iraq on bad intel, and fighting in Afghanistan, the ‘cemetery of empires’, too? I’m thinking no, but I’m no military strategist. Another quagmire, like Vietnam, but dusty; the Russians got their asses kicked, now it’s the Americans’ turn. But you can’t fight a war on an abstraction, a ‘War on Terror’.  War against the Taliban, that’s better; find Bin Laden and kill him, yes, good move.

But is the world now a safer place? No. Would it have been a safer place if Bush had done nothing? Certainly not. It could have been handled better. But the fact is that the West is fighting an implacable enemy who wants to destroy it and annihilate the culture of freedom, choice, secularity, separation of church and state, all the things we take for granted. Basically, what Israel has been putting up with since before statehood and forever.

9/11 was historical; but it is personal too. The attitude of detached remembrance, as if we are talking about the Norman Invasion or The War of the Roses, or Gettysburg, or Gallipoli on Armistice Day, or some thing where a bunch of people got killed, oh ho hum, people get killed all the time in earthquakes and stuff, lol; this attitude is deplorable. 11 years is nothing, it is a moment in time.

I’m glad that politicians didn’t speak at Ground Zero, because it would have probably been thinly-disguised electioneering, but they should have been there. President Obama should have been there.

And G-d bless America; I really mean that, I’m not being ironic. No place is perfect, but there are a lot worse places to live- just ask any asylum seeker or illegal alien. And it’s the only super-power we have, let’s face it. I would rather the Yanks run the show than the Russians or the Chinese. Forget Europe. So G-d bless America.

Lest we forget the 2,977 victims of the 9/11 attacks, the innocent casualties of an ongoing war on our civilization, a war that most didn’t know was happening.