9/11, the Anniversary

by C. A. Jones

On the 10th anniversary of 9/11 we look back in horror at the events of that day. We find the nation obsessed by vivid memories seared into our collective imagination. These are images which the media have utilized for ten years to hold our attention. They have kept this alive, vibrant, horrific.

The airwaves are filled with perspective and remembrances. The newspapers and news magazines deliver retrospective. Television, of course, fills the screen with images---the horror, the heroism, the drama. This salves our national ego, our sensitivity.

In an interview on the National Geographic channel last week, George W. Bush spoke of the incident, the defining moment of his eight-year tenure, in terms of history: “….a day eventually to be marked on calendars like Pearl Harbor Day: a day never to be forgotten by the people who lived through it.”

But on December 7, 1951, there was scant mention of “Pearl Harbor Day” in the news. Television, having not yet reckoned “news” as entertainment, was not geared up to cover that kind of perspective. The L. A. Times, under Norman Chandler, made no reference to the event in the first section. In the second section: "This is the day on which innumerable Americans ... will be tempted to go about boring other Americans to death with their reminiscences of where they were and exactly how they heard the news…" Norman was a staunch Republican.

Likewise, there was no front section article in the New York Times. In an editorial: “The meaning of Pearl Harbor.…since Dec. 7, 1941, it has not been possible for us to deny our historic mission in modern history — resisting aggression.”

Life (magazine) did not run a story on the anniversary, but Time did. It reported that "for the foreseeable future, Japan is solidly encamped with the free world," and "the U.S. must recognize that full and equal partnership is the only basis for mutual, long-term friendship…”

Well, we’ve never considered “Dubya” to be an acute student of history.

So what’s this about? Briefly, in 1951 we were back at war---against Communism in Korea. Japan was our ally, and we had a new enemy. Our political and commercial overlords wanted to focus our attention on a different front. But in 2011, we are still engaged in the fallout from 9/11. Our government and industry want us focused on that threat… These images keep us afraid… They energize and validate our campaign of hatred, fear and war against “militant Islam.”

To sort this out, you gotta ask Ole Charley (Jones).

In 1996, Osama bin Laden declared war on the United States of America. We arrogantly shrugged this off as The Mouse That Roared, and went about our business.

Bin Laden, from a long, typically rambling and tedious declaration:

“…the inability of the regime to protect the country, and allowing the enemy of the Ummal, the American crusader forces, to occupy the land for the longest of years….these forces became the main cause of our disastrous condition, particularly in the economical aspect of it due to the unjustified, heavy spending on these forces. As a result of the policy imposed on the country, especially in the field of oil industry…expensive deals were imposed on the country to purchase arms…”

Get the picture? His war was not about religion; it was about economics, politics. 9/11 was never about “militant Islam.” 9/11 was about our foreign policy.

Bin Laden told us that our nation, our lives, would never be the same. Does this sound familiar? For the last month the media have swamped us with images, and the message: Our lives are not and will never be the same. Who won this war? Bin Laden is dead. Has his death changed anything?

This is about politics! Our Republican leaders invoke nostrums of religious “truth” to manipulate us: Gays, abortion, family values, etc. Are those their religious truths? No, my friends; those are their political truths. These clever demagogues have no interest in Christianity; they use their conveniently slanted rendition of Christianity to motivate their foot soldiers: our great, meticulously-washed middle class of unsophisticated voters.

By the same token, while the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks spewed out prayers and slogans of religious piety and fervor, religion was not the motivating factor for the authors of 9/11. Osama bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri were motivated by social outrage generated by our abusive and colonial foreign policies and by the political exigencies of driving us out of their lands. This had nothing to do with “infidels,” per se. They used the religious zeal of their followers, their foot soldiers, to motivate them to their deaths, the same as our unscrupulous political leaders use it to manipulate us.

The message of 9/11, my friends, in 2011 as well as 2001, is that we must force our government to change its foreign policies. We must demand that our government stop treating the world like we own it and can use it according to our political whims. (See Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins.)

Yesterday we mourned again the loss of 3000 innocent lives in the 9/11 attacks. Not once during these solemn ceremonies was mentioned the hundreds of thousands of lives lost in Arab lands over the succeeding ten years at the hands of our military response. At very least ninety percent of those people were “innocents,” who at worst were caught up in the sweep of destiny and compelled to join the effort to drive us off.

The meaning of 9/11 lies within us…not in some exotic, foreign land. We will never heal our ailing social, economic and political society until we disengage our military forces and stop blaming others. We must allow those people to live their own lives, to seek their destiny, while we seek ours.

Many of us thought we had elected an "enlightened” man to the Presidency in 2008. Yet he has not fulfilled his “promise” to change the disastrous policies that are leading us to decline and ruin. These wars continue, even intensify. We may cut off the head of Islamic militarism, but we cannot destroy the roots, or the body. These forces thrive as our military efforts fertilize our own destruction. This was Mr. Bin Laden’s plan. We fulfill his dream, his life’s work.

C. A. Jones is a Robbinsense staff writer