Post 9/11 World

I spent the majority of my September 10^th evening immersed in 9/11 documentaries recalling the grief and heroic tales of sacrifice on that day. There were firefighters who continued up the second tower to save lives, knowing full well it would collapse. Employees who refused to leave each other behind as they descended 70 stories. I wrote most of the following article that same night, but left it for September 13th to post. (you'll see why)
50,000 employees worked at both WTC buildings. That is 10 times more than any skyscraper in downtown Toronto. Five years ago while walking down Bay St. in Toronto I looked up at the RBC building, and pictured the carnage of a jumbo jet flying into it’s 70^th floor. Walking down Bay St. with a turban and staring up at skyscrapers in a ‘post 9/11’ world is not the best idea, so I quickly looked down. Then I quickly looked straight, because after the London subway attacks looking to the ground might arise some suspicion too. I spent the rest of that 10 min walk to Union Station staring straight ahead, with no sudden head movements. 

Amidst the sympathy I felt for the innocent lives lost, I could not help reflect on how the last 10 years have unfolded.  The world had definitely changed, but this term ‘post 9/11 world’ bothered me.  It wasn't necessarily a reflection of reality, rather a depiction of western bias to how we have come to view history, and how it would be penned down for future generations. The events of Sept 11 had become a lens through which we see the world today.  The term itself divides history so that certain types of grief are marginalized while others are privileged.  As a result, this simple term has become an escape goat for atrocities committed across the globe, and victimizing other groups in the name of this perceived new ‘age’ becomes justified. Families living in war torn areas effected by this new era likely view history in an entirely different light, whether it is written or not. For them the last 10 years has seen casualties far surpassing those of the events on 9/11, and they become collateral damage in the ‘global war on terrorism’ which would not have had any life if not for the ‘post 9/11 world.’

The slope tends to get much more slippery once this ‘living in a new era’ narrative becomes the norm. Very quickly personal liberties are taken away, moral compasses don’t know the difference between north and south, and decisions are made on gut reaction without much concern for future consequences. This was clearly the case when a once morally reprehensible act such as torture becomes accepted by the mainstream and the political elite. The U.S. was publicly becoming the terrorists they had been attacked by. (As opposed to in secret, which they had established through years of oppressive covert operations)  Eventually this term led to the justification for lengthy wars, which are fought to the point where nobody can remember what they are fighting for. Wars that were entirely based on "truthiness" -  is a "truth" that a person claims to know intuitively "from the gut" in that it "feels right" without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts. In fact, the term truthiness coined by Stephen Colbert is a direct result of the post 9/11 era, because nobody would believe truthiness unless it was rooted in this era.
 One week after 9/11, war was declared before the guilt of the perpetrators had been determined. But it was the beginning of a new post 9/11 era for the United States, one in which proving reasonable doubt took a back seat to retribution. It is hard to lay full blame on the trigger happy Neo-Cons in the White House at the time, the most powerful nation in the world was brought to it’s knees and it’s citizens demanded revenge. And it was a great opportunity to secure global dominance with impunity. It was basic human instinct on display at a political level.

But the fear mongering associated with the ‘post 9/11 world’ gave the war effort an unstoppable momentum. Think of Barkley in his prime driving the paint. Feet planted or not he was going to run right through you. But unlike basketball, the rules of war didn’t call offensive fouls. Next was Iraq, which was largely conjured up on false claims of WMD’s. 8 years later and there is still no justification for leaving a generation of Iraqi’s in war. But there was no going back now, and the sheer momentum of the war effort left no option to turn back. When the East and West of Baltimore battled it out in a drug war on “The Wire” Slim Charles summed it up best, “if it’s a lie, then we fight on that lie”.  (for anyone who hasn’t seem ‘the Wire’, best show ever!)

One of the worst precedents set by the U.S.A in this new era was the breaking of international law which govern the rules of war across the globe. In the case of Osama Bin Laden, The American government committed a blatant assassination, with no trial, no medical examination and was a direct violation of international law. It was a dangerous precedent to be set for countries who brutally suppress opposition. How can the U.S government criticize the killing of prisoners with no trial, or Mid East dictators for killing leaders of dissent? Amanda Watson, a doctoral candidate at the University of Ottawa makes a good point when discussing the anniversary memorials of 9/11. She argues that the events of 9/11 seem to be depoliticized in public commemoration and presented as neutral for the purposes of grieving. “The political context of the attacks and U.S. foreign policy is washed away in favour of more sentiment,” she said, which itself obscures, silences and erases other kinds of associated grief that do not fit so well into the “mainstream master narrative.”

Consequently this type of grief fosters a dangerous nationalistic rhetoric that leads to xenophobia and feeds the  the war machine like Kevin Spacey fed the obese guy to death in "Seven".  

Ironically, the original 9/11 occurred on September 11, 1973, when the U.S. succeeded in its intensive efforts to overthrow the democratic government of Salvador Allende in Chile with a military coup that placed General Pinochet’s brutal regime in office. It was one of many attempts at propping up pro American regimes in Latin America, and in the process supporting the murder of thousands of innocent civilians. But was there a post 9/11 era for the people of Chile?

September 11^th was a horrible tragedy, and the lives of those 2,578 people will never be forgotten. But almost just as tragic is what Jon Stewart denoted as September 13/2011: “Remembering the Day We Forgot the Lessons of the Day We Had Sworn We Would Always Remember.”