Terrorist Action 11/9/2001 - Thread 10

This is part of what the past few days have done to me.

I got to see a lot of people I love and a lot of people I'm not fond of recount stories of terror. Ralph (Mr. Mancini) gave good speech, and Al (the Pres.) talked about the jaw-dropping largesse of our clients and furniture vendors. Salaries will go on as if nothing happened.

SEPTEMBER 1, 1939
W.H. Auden

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
'I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,'
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the dead,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

Perhaps you're right and hard things have to be said. Saying them to an irrational person who is grieving and drunk in a callous manner is fucking horrible. Grow up, you asshole.

Obviously, they were detained because of their race. But is that justified in this situation? Does the government at this moment have the right to question a group of Middle Eastern-looking men who are boarding a plane? This seems a difficult question to me. Obviously some civil liberties dissapear in times of crisis, but I wonder how far it could go.

Seems I can't keep entirely silent...

If 'protecting Americans' means unrestrained slaughter, *I* want no part of it. You can have it, BNW. You are more than welcome to it.

And to loop back in Mark's question above, I am truly fearful for the loss of civil liberties and how these will manifest themselves. While i certainly am glad that airport security is tightened, those bogus arrests are not far from 1940's interment camps, and other 'what-else-were-we-to-do' type justifications for throwing out human rights. Sorry - knee-jerk reactions here, but this is a dangerous and and slippery path...

At this point, I think you are arguing your position for the sake of your health; it seems to be your ILE-specific outlet for working through your emotions rather than a genuine attempt to communicate a point of view.

I really really don't want this to sound anti- American: because I'm not — quite the opposite — and because the attack on Tuesday was self-evidently an evil attack by fascists on civil life. But as it stands, I don't believe the proposed response WILL protect the America you — we — all love. I think it will crack it apart.

Um, I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I'd describe myself as on the liberal-left (more liberal than left). In general, the liberal- left has been ineffective politically, especially in situations like the present. So, um, my question, what to do? How to act in a way that doesn't repeat the same old mistakes?

Well, the news on that front would be:

Afghanistan: civil war. Taliban may control 90% of the land, but they have the support of probably less than 20% of the public. Under extraordinary circumstances -- i.e., the best-targeted and morally reasonable military action ever in all history -- I could see the Afghan public not really minding their efficient replacement. But then imagine where the Taliban's supporters would be left, assuming we're not going to slaughter nearly a fifth of the population -- very, very dangerous, no?

Sudan: civil war. Split 50/50, basically, but with all wealth and power in the self-proclaimed "Arab" north. So I can easily imagine half of the population being reasonably happy to see us there, but the other half would be a sucking-in nightmare with a huge potential for civilian involvement.

Pakistan: military coup, with general declaring himself president-general. Public support still decent, however, mainly as a result of tensions with India. (See how the band- together-to-defend-ourselves thing can mean people supporting things they really shouldn't?)

Iraq: support of Hussein still decent, and what else would you expect when the sole accessible conduit of information is state-run television? Have not heard of any reasonable opposition group to use against Hussein, so even if we could remove his support base, there'd be no one to replace him with apart from some U.S. puppet -- and do we even want to imagine how Iraqi civilians would respond to have their fates meddled with like that?

Almost as bad they've been playing a version of Ray Charles' "God Bless America" with Bush's Tuesday night speech overlayed on top. Like every hour.

Tho I did have to chuckle at its patronising diss of Japanese technology...

Yes, 'fundamentalist' was the wrong word to use there. Having said that the Iraqi regime is hardly averse to adopting fundamentalist practise when it suits them: "All over the Iraqi capital, billboards portray the president in full military dress, kneeling on a prayer rug with his hands raised in supplication. Government television breaks for prayers five times a day and features long lectures by religious sheiks. In recent weeks, public alcohol sales have been banned, and the government has implemented strict Islamic punishments - for thieves, ranging from hand amputations to death for repeat offenders - specified in the Koran." Also, the background, tone and ramifications [internal & external] of its anti-US stance is often of a kind with that of fundamentalist govts.

Having for a long time shared a household with an Afghanistani, a dissident Iraqi student, a Pakistani, and a half-yemenite I am more than aware of the diversity of peoples and beliefs within the islamic world. Kerry, do you ever NOT assume the worst of people you disagree with.

Re: resistance to fascism.

My point was not that American foreign policy has always been benign. Simply that in major instances it has been very much so while at other times it has had a mixture of positive and negative effects (eg innocent civilians being killed as a result of military action which also protects ethnic minorities within Iraq from possible genocide [however inadequate that protection was at first] and yes, American economic interests also). Which contrasts sharply (despite the talk of wishing to thoroughly examine nuances) with the relentlessly facile and complacent anti-americanism which has caused several posters to object to the smugness & self-righteousness numerous Terrorist threads became mired in. It may be the case that the bad outweighs the good. I just get the feeling that ideology is overriding any honest appraisal of these situations.

Hey, man, don't you know this sort of line always leads to ridicule??? Expect the following snotty, unfounded, stupid mocking retort: "Yeah, some of my best friends are Arabs!"

Cynical, typical bastards.

"A usually religious movement or point of view characterized by a return to fundamental principles, by rigid adherence to those principles, and often by intolerance of other views and opposition to secularism. "

Well I'm certain that's the Taliban. Kerry, do you not think that also applies to the government of Iraq? BTW, I don't think calling a country fundamentalist means all of those citizens share those views.

Especially the woman who says, "Go ahead and bomb us. This place sucks. Let the flames destroy us once and for all." And, for those interested, there's some informative links about the culture at the bottom of the page.

In those cases you want to distinguish between the regime and the people, though. Just a thought.

Personally, I'm suggesting complete amnesty for anyone (including myself) who has been rash or dastardly in any of these threads. Plus I think we should start a thread where we all chant I-L-E, I-L-E, I-L- E.

What bothers me is how one-sided these arguments often come off as. Chomsky makes no mention of atrocities committed by the Palestinian or militant Islamic people. Instead it is an entirely one sided view of what Israel and the U.S. have done. We could go pull the stats of how many Germans and Japanese were killed during WW 2 and make the States and Britain look quite evil.

That said, it makes interesting what Bush said about not only going after terrorists, but those countries that harbor them. You spin this the other way, and it seems the terrorists have already done this with America via its backing of Israel. Now it seems America is going to draw that line itself. Its scary stuff, I mean, you can see how the dominos begin to drop and international wars bloom.

I’m tempted to leave it at that, since what you say speaks for itself, except to point out that what you are doing is trying to give an explanation “why.” (And of course to explain something doesn’t mean that you think it’s justified.)

Principle: when I’m hurt, I want to hit back at something. But the something that I hit at (if I do hit, and don’t think) may not completely be related to what hurt me in the first place, and my hitting something isn’t likely to protect me from getting hit again, it’s likely to provoke someone to want to hit me again. This thread itself might serve as an example.

Not our space. Nobody was there, save for the electricians and telecom guys who registered amazement that they were actually working on the WTC relocation effort. The irony was that my company designed these interiors back when it still housed Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, not JP Morgan Chase. Some of the wool carpeting, custom Colonial desks and trompe l'oeil walls are stilll there, although very damaged from the move-out. There was nothing to do. I couldn't even pace around with all the people. I left after an hour.

I made myself pass by the Empire State Building. I wanted to touch it to make it real to me. Sirens and randomly-placed block-long blockades are everywhere in midtown. The blockades disorient. It's like driving in your car through a rain storm, and the way a fierce rainstorm can stop or start just like that: one block you get traffic, and another block peace and silence. There were one or two dust masks on the ground. Some posters of the missing. I couldn't look.

I went to Sunrise Mall in Massapequa Park (thirty miles from NYC) to distract myself. One of the biggest malls in America and it's a fuckin' dead place, totally dead. Some stores were closed. One store closed as I passed by, and this was at one o'clock or so. H&M was so empty there were times when I could look around and not see anybody else. (The visit also made me realize exactly what UTTER USELESS PIECES OF SHIT small-scale mall bookstores really are -- how could I possibly been so entranced with them as a kid?)

I've avoided the TV. Developments dribbled to almost nothing today. It was as if it was a rain delay in a war.

I'm not afraid about war yet -- though I can't believe I'm actually saying -- because the administration's course of action still seems pretty sketchy so far. It's just that I have no idea if an administration with a largely cold-war-era mentality (they actively pushed missile defense) is going to have the patience, sensitivity and willingness for compromise that seems necessarily for any kind of sustained military action in the hornet's nest of the mideast. Nor do I have too much faith in the media to communicate any of this to the public. Fuck, only last week the TV news was all sharks 'n' Gary Condit, a situation that was filling me with an almost implacable hatred.

Not a single conversation of any person around me avoided topic A.

There's a young woman named Colette who began a piece in her zine looks yellow, tastes red with this:

Last year I was taking a woman's studies class. I sat there for several hours a week with the same group of people, presumably reading the same essays and texts, hearing the same lectures and conversations, etc. And I remember one day near the very end of the semester where one girl raised her hand in our discussion section and prefaced what she was saying with a very loud and clear, "Well, I'm not a feminist or anything, but..." (on to prove, to her credit, a well-thought-out, enlightened point). What?

I could proudly say that I don’t tiptoe around the word feminist. I could say that I try to be quick to point out that assuming that "feminist" means "militant, man-hating feminist" is not unlike assuming "Christian" means "militant fundamentalist, abortion-doctor murdering Christian." But I know there is a lot I tiptoe around...

My initial wisecrack response to this was, "Well, militant feminists don't really hate men anyway; they're too busy hating other feminists." But a deeper thought was that feminists, despite all their diversity and all their conflicts with each other, are something of a social category – not that they all come from the same social class or social group, but that they are a social group – "feminist" – in the way that in a high school "preps" is a social group, and "jocks" and "dirtbags" and "skaters." And a woman who's a potential supporter of feminist social and political ideas might nonetheless say, "I'm not a feminist or anything" because emotionally and socially she simply doesn't feel like a feminist or identify with feminists. And she might not want to engage in political activity with feminists if she feels different and isolated around feminists, or frightened by them, or repelled by them. If she believes that she'll have to give up important parts of herself to become a feminist, then she's not going to become one.

Anyway, substitute the word "leftist" for "feminist" and you'll see what I'm driving at: "leftist" is something of a social category, and those not in the category don't want to make common cause with the left. (Yes, and of course I've greatly oversimplified, "left" is a ridiculously vague term for disparate sets of people, etc.) The left can't overcome being a kind of counterculture; it attracts people who want to be leftists, and so the attraction only reaches so far.

I bring this up in ILE not because ILM/ILE comprises an astonishingly diverse group of people, which it doesn't, but because there is something about ILE/ILM that reaches outward. E.g., people here are willing at least to consider that a Britney or a Max Martin or a Mariah Carey might be an artist or at least worthy of serious discussion, or that someone who posts here might be interesting because his ideas differ from other people's, etc. And conversations can go all over in tone and subject matter rather than everyone presupposing what is relevant and what's supposed to be excluded. Now, if activists could bring that attitude into their political organizing, then they could make effective coalitions for attaining political and social goals.

(Which still leaves the question, "What to do?" – but I'm going to sleep now, which I suppose is my political position most of the time.)

bnw -- I say this simply as a personal reaction and without antagonism, which I am too tired for, but -- this is just sort of a dumb thing to say. Thousands of people are dead, and you don't believe anyone should ask why? And more importantly, it's universally agreed that we should do something to keep this from happening again -- how can asking why not be an absolutely essential part of doing that? To use your own example:

When someone breaks into your house, kills a couple family members, and leaves; you don't sit around pondering his motives. You find him and kill him.

First: maybe you really think that way. I don't. I don't in the fucking least. My goal would be to make sure the rest of my family members are safe -- and if it seemed in any way that the reason that guy came and killed my family members was in any way related to how I'd treated him in the past, I fucking guarantee you I'd at least momentarily review those actions and try to figure out what I can do differently in the future.

But more importantly -- what you've just typed above is in essence a support of bin Laden. Surely you realize this. He is thinking exactly as you are: when the U.S. attacks the Islamic world, he says to himself -- when the U.S. attacks Iraq -- we shouldn't think about why (or else we'd come up with that pesky invading- Kuwait problem) -- we should just kill them. This is where you get when you lay down dogma without any fucking analysis of reality.

But I sense that what you're really saying isn't what you said above. What you're really saying is that you think we're right, and you personally don't want to waste time arguing that point with those who disagree. Which is fucking fine, really, on the level of any individual anywhere. But when a nation is preparing to take actions that will likely result in the deaths of innocent bystanders, maybe that difficult debate needs to happen, whether you personally want to be involved or not.

He is of the opinion that leftists today, if they are to re-engage with the dominant political discussions in America, and indeed reposition liberalism as the normal mode of discourse, must look to the history of leftist political reform, which has quite a strong history - he cites Dewey, Whitman, Irving Howe, among others. He's also a strong critic of a political focus on cultural shame, coming as it does at the cost of more unifying approaches to limiting suffering. I guess this is a common cry these days (cf No Logo's critique of identity politics, in the beginning, before it became unreadable), but I haven't seen much being done about it, i.e. everyone at my college at least is just as obsessed with media representation as ever.

What to do, and how to act, in the upcoming months and, likely, years? I have no idea either.. probably make sure that the left does not play into conservative hands and devote All of its energy (some, of course, is necessary) to ensuring that Arab-Americans are treated and represented properly, and none to mobilizing its citizenry. The recent unanimous votes in Congress (98-0 and 420-1) to approve the use of force against both individuals and nations are disturbing both for their speed of passage and for the absence of dissent; perhaps the most necessary thing right now is for some strong and respected voice on the left to make it clear that no such consensus exists among the American people, that we have no pressing desire to trade civilian life for civilian life.

Said it better than I could. I was encouraged by a discussion I overheard in a store today. Two guys, one middle-aged, one older, talking about possible reactions and actions. Initially I tuned it out, as it sounded like the usual aggrieved conservative foolishness around in OC, but I realized that what both were saying was what I was thinking -- namely, that the government *can't* just launch an attack, that it *can't* take the risk of, as one of them put it, killing a bunch of people and then saying 'oops.' They realized that there was not only no point in it, it would just make things worse.

I appreciate you've been right there for this whole thing, BNW, I'm not trying to deny your feelings -- but if as you say you're swinging between reason and fury right now, let the part of you that's reasonable accept that *we cannot rush into everything* right now. The fact that the government has in fact done a fair amount of that already above and beyond what I think are the only reasonable responses of tracking down accomplices, tightening airport security and assisting the rescue and recovery effort -- in otherwards, simply doing what you yourself insist is the priority, protecting Americans -- is the problem. It cannot be made worse or the consequences might be catastrophic.

I will elaborate on this sometime.

(ps Has anyone noticed how Nas vs Jay-Z just goes on like the energiser bunny, as if nothing happened...)

Joint Resolution To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States.

Whereas, on September 11, 2001, acts of treacherous violence were committed against the United States and its citizens; and

Whereas, such acts render it both necessary and appropriate that the United states exercise its rights to self-defense and to protect United States citizens both at home and abroad, and

Whereas, in light of the threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by these grave acts of violence, and

Whereas, such acts continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States,

Whereas, the President has authority under the Constitution to take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States.

Resolved by the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE

This joint resolution may be cited as the "Authorization for Use of Military Force"

SECTION 2. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES

(a) That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons. (b) War Powers Resolution Requirements (1) SPECIFIC STATUTORY AUTHORIZATION - Consistent with section 8(a)(1) of the War Powers Resolution, the Congress declares that this section is intended to constitute specific statutory authorization within the meaning of section 5(b) of the War Powers Resolution.

(2) APPLICABILITY OF OTHER REQUIREMENTS - Nothing in this resolution supercedes any requirement of the War Powers Resolution.

(2) is a subset of (b), but I gave (2) its own separate paragraph. My apologies to Congress and to the nation for harming the aesthetic integrity of the Resolution.

Less flippant point: by specifying an act of terrorism AGAINST the US, it actually opens up — rather than shuts down — the exploration of (and thus prosecution of wars against?) acts of terror sponsored BY the US. Previously the defn has been more slippy and nebulous (in a New Republic editorial, for example, terrorism is BY DEFN against the US and/or Israel). Making Law always has unexpected consequences: such as — will Kissinger be tried before he dies as a war criminal, in the Hague, say, as a consequence of the above...?

I read on the LIRR, sometimes crying, both Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (which I bought a WTC bookstore, oddly enough) along with Drabble's The Ice Age in the days after the Oklahoma City bombing.

http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/09/14/privacy/index.html

Hello Big Brother Bush...

Assume at this point that he's being diapered, smells stanky and is an embarassment to all around him. Who needs prosecution? ;-)

(But I don't know the War Powers Resolution, so perhaps there are more restraints. And if Congress changes its mind about the policy, it can always vote not to appropriate funds for it - and of course it could repeal this resolution.)

The resolution could have been far worse, and it goes way short of what the Administration was saying yesterday that it intended to do, which was to take out any nation that the administration determined had supported terrorism or harbored terrorists. This resolution only authorizes Bush to respond to the September 11 attack, and therefore (unless he declares a link) doesn't give him Congressional approval to invade Iraq, Iran, Sudan, or Pakistan.