CounterPunch
Special Report:
9/11 One Year After
September
7, 2002
When War Came
Home
by Bruce Jackson
9/11 was the first time we were attacked on our own
soil by anyone other than the British. Who, other than reenactors
who play dress-up remembers or cares about the War of 1812? Hawaii
was an American territory in 1941, not a state, and in that time
before jet travel it was, to most Americans a faraway island
abstraction.
But 9/11 was unambiguously an attack
on America and Americans in every conceivable aspect. There was
nothing faraway or abstract about it. We all saw it happening
in real time. The almost absurd devices the killers used--box
cutters, primarily--to turn our own domestic aircraft into terrifying
weapons changed the way we think about warfare, where it happens,
who does it, what it looks like.
Most of us, to that point, thought of
American involvement in war as a board game, reported by CNN
with streaming reports of the stock market at the bottom of the
screen. WW II, Korea and Vietnam were gritty and dirty and loud,
but they were long ago and far away, and our recent wars have
been hidden from almost everyone. The American government permitted
no direct press coverage of our last three wars, and the casualties
were minor and many of them accidental and by friendly fire.
Our troops might have to go somewhere and some of them might
get killed, but that had little to do with the rest of us. War
was something that happened elsewhere, mostly to other people.
Now an enemy we can barely identify fighting a war the point
of which we cannot name arrives in our greatest city and obliterates
that city's primary symbol of international commerce.
9/11 changed the course of George Bush's
presidency. It gave him something to talk about. We now live
in a time of perpetual potential for Wag the Dog. Bush talks
about initiating pre-emptive wars. Before 9/11 he couldn't have
uttered that term without causing an uproar. Now, Congress ups
the Defense Department budget and says "Thank you."
Bush talks about mounting a land war in Iraq because Saddam Hussein
might be having evil thoughts. John Ashcroft, defeated for US
Senate in his own state by a dead man, now dances in spiked shoes
on the Bill of Rights and hardly any newspaper in the land holds
him to account for it.
We lock our own citizens in unnamed jails,
forbid them attorneys and specify no charges--all in the name
of national security. Security from what? Isn't that what America
is supposed to keep us secure from? Social programs, education
programs, infrastructure programs, environmental initiatives
have all been mutilated by the shift in government resources
and attention to military matters. Oil companies again push for
drilling in the ANWR, this time citing the potential war with
Iraq, and the White House says, "Let's do it." The
White House abandons the international treaty not to further
pollute the fragile oceans, saying, "Our national interest
demands it."
We have become even less willing than
before to take a firm stand in the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
With the allegiances and alliances in the Arab world more complex
than ever, Bush seems unwilling to do anything that might disturb
our unambiguous alliance with Israel. Sharon treats our peace
initiatives with contempt. Before 9/11 Bush ignored the Middle
East; now he seems to be driven by Sharon's whims. Another tail
wagging another dog.
And there is a fear in the land--small
and fleeting at times, large and overwhelming at others. "People
in big meetings"--wrote my daughter, who works in Manhattan
and cannot stop remembering what she saw that September morning
one year ago--"all pause and look when one person looks
out the window for more than a second or two. We were always
safe here before--you'd see the buses and mall attacks in Israel
and think how terrible, and, thankfully, separate it is from
us. How it just would never happen here. I never understood why
it would never happen here, but still took comfort in it."
Changes in the sound of an airplane's engines and everyone you
can see stops moving or looks to the sky. A sudden bump in flight
and everybody in the plane looks up: what are the flight attendants
doing? are they really that calm or are they faking it? When
the subway stops between stations people no longer ignore it
or curse the city's incompetence. And how do you feel when you're
on the 70th or 80th floor of a skyscraper in New York or Chicago
or Toronto and you see an airplane turning, turning, turning?
There is, so far as I can see, a single
positive aspect to all of this: many Americans are now far more
likely to see themselves and their country as part of the world,
rather than a special place, free to ignore everyone else's needs
and aspirations and conditions. We are far less likely to think
of the world as simply us and everyone else. Those others have
been given faces and names. For a while after 9/11 we were paranoid
about everyone and the landscape was aflutter with flags, flags
and more flags, as if we had to announce to ourselves that we
were really still here. Most of the flags are gone. We're here.
And we are less naive than we were.
Bruce Jackson
is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Samuel P.
Capen Professor of American Culture at University of Buffalo.
He edits Buffalo Report.
His email address is bjackson@buffalo.edu.
CounterPunch Special Report:
9/11 One Year After
Bill Christison
A
Year Later: It's Happening Here
Alexander Cockburn
The
Tenth Crusade
Susan Davis
Mr. Ashcroft's
Neighborhood
Bruce Jackson
When
War Came Home
David Krieger
Looking
Back on September 11
Peter Linebaugh
Levellers and 9/11
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Trouble
with Normal
Tom Stephens
Rise Up...Dump Bush
New
Print Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- War Talk As White Noise:
Anything to Get Harken and Halliburton
Out of the Headlines;
- First Hilliard, Then
McKinney: Jewish
Groups Target Blacks Brave Enough to Talk About Justice in the
Middle East; Intimidation
is the Name of the Game; Smearing
"Insane" McKinney As Muslims' Pawn;
- The Missing Terrorist?
Calling Scotland
Yard: "Where's Atif?"
- They Never Booed Dylan!:
Tape Transcript Shows
Famed Newport Folkfest Dissing of Electric Dylan Not True. The Catcalls were for Peter
Yarrow!
- New Shame from the Liffey
Shrike
Remember, the CounterPunch website is
supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide
web audience is soaring , with about seven million hits a month
now. This is inspiring, but the work involved also compels us
to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make
a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe
Now!
Or Call Toll Free 1-800-840-3683
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|
September
6, 2002
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Stolen
Trust
Gale Norton, Indians and the Case of the Missing $10 Billion
September
5, 2002
Ben Tripp
Jesus vs.
George the Second
William Hughes
McKinney's
Defeat:
Undue Meddling
Gavin Keeney
Beaux
Reves, Citoyens!
Wayne Saunders
War
Begins; Nobody Notices
Irit Katriel
Drunk
with Power:
Israeli Chief of Staff Calls Palestinians a "Cancerous Demographic
Threat"
Gary Leupp
Who's Afraid
of Iraq?
September
3, 2002
Nabil Amro
Leadership
& Legitimacy:
An Open Letter to Arafat
Robert Fisk
A Forgotten
Holocaust:
The British in Palestine
Uri Avnery
The Return
of the Dinosaurs
September
2, 2002
Francis Boyle
Flashback:
US War Crimes During the Gulf War
Lou Cohan
Confessions
of a Downloader
Philip Farruggio
Labor
Day Antidote to Apathy
William Blum
Cuban Political
Prisoners
in the US
September
1, 2002
Dave Marsh
No Surrender:
Springsteen's The Rising
August 31,
2002
Gavin Keeney
Return to the
Charterhouse of Parma
David Vest
Porkland:
Confronting Republicans & Police in Portland
Ralph Nader
The Highway
Lobby
M. Shahid
Alam
CNN Reporting
(poem)
Neve Gordon
Sharon's
Subjugation Strategy
Dr. Susan
Block
The Gangbang
Asthete
The Sexual Life
of Catherine M.
Kurt Nimmo
Clueless
at the State Dept.
August 30,
2002
Alexander
Cockburn
American
Journal:
Hitchens, Kissinger, Springsteen, Haggard & Elvis
August 29,
2002
Chris Floyd
The Secret
Sharers:
The CIA and the Murder of Frank Olson
August 28,
2002
William Ring
War on Iraq:
The Brightest Scenario
August 27,
2002
Sam Bahour
The Violence
of Curfew
Wenonah Hauter
From Johannesburg:
Pacts with the Devil: Public-Private Partnerships and the Global
Environment
Jerre Skog
Wanted:
"Our Kind of Guy"
in Iraq!
Uri Avnery
Letter
to a Pilot
August 26,
2002
Sami Al-Arian
Fighting
for the Right of
Dissent and Due Process
Ruebner /
Turaani
What
is Israel Hiding?
Norman Madarasz
Brazil
and the IMF:
Democracy and Emerging Market Liberalism
Robert Fisk
War Crimes:
Reporters Aren't Prosecutors
Douglas Valentine
Phoenix,
CIA and Maj. Gen. Bruce Lawlor: From Vietnam
to Homeland Security
August 24
/ 25, 2002
Susan Davis
Proverbial
Wisdom:
Of Clogs and Enron
Falk / Krieger
No War
Against Iraq
Ceylon Mooney
Fasting
for Iraq
Jonathon
Wright
Police
Brutality in Atlanta
Ralph Nader
Congress's
Pay Raise Scam
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Chainsaw
George
Alexander
Cockburn
Alterman
Cheapens Holocaust
August 23,
2002
Dave Marsh
Selling
Out?
Anthony Gancarski
Super-Duper:
Oil, al-Qaeda and a West African Adventure
William Hughes
Lieberman's
Conflict
of Interest?
Kurt Nimmo
The Lapdog
Conversion of CNN:
They Didn't Want to "Criticize" a Popular War
Sean Donahue
Hardline
in Colombia
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By
Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
Read
Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
|