9/11 - thoughts
Has it been five years already? I personally wasn’t going to do a piece on this as I realy didn’t think that I would have much to say.
Then I read Cian’s piece here and he got me thinking.
Broadly speaking I agree with his assessment. We are right. There is no God. Even the ‘religion’ of the west is broadly as he describes.
But there are things I disagree with or things that I don’t neccessarily accept.
I actually couldn’t watch any of the programmes that have appeared on the topic in the last month. I know it’s unfair and all, but I just couldn’t get over my knee-jerk reaction of ‘propaganda’ with whatever programmes there were. I know a reasonable amount about the facts as they stand relating to that day and to a certain extent a desire to not have to watch the same facts repeated over and over was also a factor.
And to be honest here - I find the necrophilia (for a lack of a better term presenting itself to my mind at the moment) that’s involved in 9/11 deeply unplesant. And i’m not using the word necrophilia incorrectly here - put politely it’s having a greater love for the dead than the living.
And personally, I think America has a bad dose of it.
I know that I’m being unplesant here but the constant vilifying if those who were lost in the attacks that day seems wrong to me. Most of the firefighters lost on that day died because they didn’t do their jobs right and let their emotions get in the way. The suggestion that we have a responsiblity to avenge their loss fails to account for the fact that many of them may have hated the idea of war, or have been terrified by the depavaties shown in Abu Ghraib. I cannot see how it can be so that having such a love for your own lost (to the point where you seek retribution for them) can allow the creation of more lost across the world. Or the nearly same number of your own lost to fighting battles across the world.
And for what?
Security? - Doubtful, the world’s more dangerous now than five years ago.
Freedom? - Then why allow such restrictions on your own peoples if freedom’s that important? To be free is to automaticaly accept a certain amount of dangers to your safety. Even Thomas Jefferson (and I’m paraphrasing here) acknowledged that there were many in the new America ‘who would prefer the Crown’s security to the possibily of failing while being free’.
The idea of ‘Human Rights’? - Then what about Abu Ghraib? The secret prison camps in Europe? The other ‘Unknown Unknowns’? (to rob Martin Amis’ phrase).
We’re not wrong. Muslim extemism needs to be confronted. Those who think their belief in a god (and I use the lower case ‘g’ deliberately) justifies any crime against another human being deserve nothing but a swift and brutal response. The onus however is on us to be better than them. The people who feel that their religion or god is better than our ‘westernism’(to borrow Cian’s phrase) can gain great strenght from the way that we ignore our own rules on the rule of law, the rule of human rights and the rule of democratic behaviour.
However it is up to us to accept our own limitations and to attemp to maintain that part of us - the secular,liberal,democratic part of us which makes us better than them for without that we have no reason to even fight them.
But, the use of an ‘eye for an eye’ which has appeared with 9/11 does not help.
Anyway, apologies if this does not make complete sense - I’m out of practice with long, original pieces.