Reflections on 9/11

Reflections on September 11

I remain puzzled by the conventional view that 9/11 was the most catastrophic event to face America since the Civil War. On what scale?

Let’s put the hijackings in perspective. The triple hijackings and flying planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon left 2,974 confirmed dead (with another 24 missing), including the 19 hijackers. In September 2001, 3,303 Americans died needlessly in traffic fatalities. If the horrendous nature of 9/11 was due to the mass deaths, why is there not a national cry for a 50 mph speed limit or safer cars or mandatory alcohol interlock ignitions?

The attacks destroyed the World Trade Center and did some significant damage to the Pentagon. Yet, on April 19, 1995, a couple of right-wing nut cases destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. People were upset by the Oklahoma City bombing but it did not even register on the same scale as the events of 9/11.

The attacks of 9/11 were a successful assault of Americans on American territory. And, for a few months after 9/11, people lived in fear of foreign attack. But the fact remains that no American has been killed on American soil by a foreign terrorist since 9/11 and, except for the World Trade Center Bombing of February 26, 1993 which killed 6, no American had been killed on American soil by a foreign terrorist prior to 9/11. Yet, many Americans have been killed by domestic terrorists, whack-jobs, criminals, spouses, and creditors before and since 9/11. Why are we so traumatized by foreign terrorist murder and so immune to domestic terrorist murder, such as the murder of Dr. George Tiller on June 1?

The conclusion I draw is that a cadre of right-wing politicians and venal economic interests carefully inflated the shock of 9/11 into a national obsession to fuel the drive to enact their own agenda. We all know what that agenda included: substantial increases in funding for the military, police, and prisons at the expense of funding for education, housing and health care. It included the passage of the Patriot Act to curtail our liberties. And, it set the tone for crushing dissent through freely made and never challenged claims of national security.

My concern is not to bemoan the damage to American society and the economy inflicted in the name of 9/11. My concern is that sane, intelligent people feed into this destructive force by making the attacks of 9/11 into something more than they were. By inflating the importance of 9/11 in American history, by repeating the phrase “horrendous”, by obsessing about today’s anniversary, we are doing the right-wing’s job for them. We are making 9/11 into the watershed event that it never should have been.

Indeed, not only are we handing victory to the right-wing, we are handing victory to Al-Queda and to all those Muslims who hate us. The damage of 9/11 to the buildings and to the 2,974 who lost their lives was minor compared to the damage of 9/11 to American as a civil society. And that latter damage was not done by Al-Queda or any foreign terrorist. It was done by us.