Galactic Interactions

The other horrors of 9/11

Posted on September 11th, 2009 — permalink

Many people will consider this post to be in extremely poor taste.

But there are things that I think that we really need to keep in mind as we’re remembering the lessons that we learned, the tragedies and the horrors of 9/11. (And, this won’t be the first time I made a post that many considered in poor taste….)

To frame the whole thing, let’s start with what I call George W. Bush’s most egregious untruth— not a lie, for I don’t doubt that he meant it when he addressed the nation on the evening of 9/11, but what in retrospect turned out not to be true:

None of us will ever forget this day, yet we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world.

What was the legaciy of this moving forward to defend freedom, justice, and goodness?

• The passage of the PATRIOT Act, rushed through in less than two months, voted on so fast in a political climate where legislators would be viewed in a light similar to how this blog post will be viewed if they voted against it. It was a massive piece of legislation that incorporated all sorts of expansion of powers for law enforcement and limitations in the checks and balances. Many of the things in there would have been the subject of vigorous debate and public scrutiny if they had been proposed individually. Yet, in the climate of “We MUST do something” after 9/11, it was rammed through, and public opinion would have had it no other way.

  And, yet, despite how controversial the authoritanrian tenets of this act should have been in the “land of the free”, one senator and only 15% of the House of Representatives voted against it. Many (all?) of those who voted for it hadn’t read the act, and I wouldn’t be surprised of most of them didn’t really know what was in the act they were voting for.

  This kind of “must do something” response is the legacy of 9/11 that I hope we learn the most from. We open ourselves to manipulation from people who would love to pass all kinds of authoritarian laws when we respond in haste and in fear to a horrific event such as the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

• The Iraq war. Bush & co. were going to go into Iraq anyway. 9/11 made it easy for them. They could frame the whole war in terms of terrorism and defending America. A large proportion of American citizens were led into believing that Saddam Hussein was connected to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, even though there is absolutely no evidence for that. (The USA Today article I link to cites 70%; other numbers I’ve seen are closer to 1/3 or 40%. In any event, a significant fraction of Americans believed the lie.). 3,000 people died on 9/11. In Iraq, 4,200 Americans and something like 100,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the war. (And we won’t even talk about the cost of this war, rushed into, in compraison to, say, any potential cost of a much-reviled universal health care plan.)

  Was Saddam Hussein evil, and did his regime need to go away? Yes. Did the US make a complete mess out of the war, as a result of disastrous misplanning and lack of understanding about rebuilding after Saddam was ousted? Absolutely. I will say that over the last year or so, I’ve actually been almost optimistic that Iraq may be able to get back on its feet; I had not been for years before that. And, heck, the war in Afghanistan is looking scary now… I can’t help but wonder if much of that results from our redirection of focus from that war (which had broad international support) to Iraq long before the Afghanistan war was anywhere near complete.

• Many US citizens and many US politicians have started to speak out in favor of torture. Why? Fear. Because 9/11 has convinced us that we have to do whatever it takes to fight back against those who would do those sorts of things. Never mind that torture doesn’t work and generates bad intelligence. Never mind that it sullies the image of America internationally, gives those who hate America a great reason to hate America, and will only make things harder on Americans who get captured by terrorists. Never mind that it makes us evil that we do it. We want us our revenge. We suffered from the horrors of 9/11, so we want to make sure somebody else suffers in kind. We have seen it be effective week after week in the TV show 24, so we think we’re being courageous and doing the hard thing to support it. It makes me sick. I have some hope that perhaps we’re going to hold those at the top accountible for the decisions they’ve made, but for the most part, we’re probably going to throw some lower-level scape goats to the dogs as a way of pretending “accountability” while we still debate whether or not we should continue this barbarous and ineffective tactic.

• The end of due process. OK, that’s overstating it; due process still exists. And, as the link at the bottom of this paragraph shows, finally, years later, we’re reevaluating what we did and realizing that it was wrong. But there remain lots of ways for the government to work around it when they want to. Hoards of people picked up for the slightest suspicion have wasted away years of their lives in Guantanamo Bay as they are held without trial, without hearing. Yeah, they may not be American citizens, and thus not subject to protection from our authorities by our Constitution, but what of our ideals? What happened to defending freedom and justice? And, indeed, being an American citizen doesn’t stop you from being held without due process if the right part of the executive branch declares that you’re a material witness, without any proof whatsoever.

There are other things. The general paranoia we have about photography of public places, and how cops and security guards come down with unreasonable suspicion against those who are just taking pictures. The UK’s institution of universal surveillance and a lack of law enforcement oversight. The fact that anybody is still paying any attention to Dick Cheney as he tells us we should be torturing away as his administration always did. Folks’ laptops being seized, searched, and (effectively) confiscated at national borders without reasonable suspicion, in blatant violation of the spirit of the fourth amendment to the Constitution. The complete squandering of the sympathy and goodwill that the US had in the international community after 9/11 as a result of our aggressive and self-righteous posturing.

I believe it’s just a matter of time before some nutcase— be it a terrorist of the 9/11 variety, or a homegrown white guy of the Oklahoma City bombing variety— is able to get his hand on a “weapon of mass destruction” and blow it off in some highly populated area. And, I’m talking something nuclear here (be it a “dirty bomb” or a small nuke or some such), not just an airplane full of jet fuel— because the N-word makes everything so much scarier. And, I have to admit, I despair in the authoritarian rules that will be passed by widespread popular demand, quickly, in response to that.

We should never forget the horrors of 9/11. But we should also never forget the terrible mistakes we made in response to 9/11.

5 Comments

Proposed Blog Meme : How Big a Terror Suspect Are You?

Posted on December 19th, 2007 — permalink

Check out this post on Nobody’s Business (which I found via BoingBoing).

Here’s what we should all do. Go down the list on the flyer from the Chicago Police Department, and see how many of them we’ve done. Here’s mine:

• Physical Surveillance : oh yeah. I’ve done everything on the sublist. Binoculars, cameras, video (I think), and, hey, using maps (even though I am a man) in public.
• Attempts to gain sensitive information regarding key facilities : not so much. I don’t think. Not that I don’t anticipate I might do something like that that in the future; heck, when you’re a gamer and you run roleplaying games, finding things like the floor plan for the pentagon or a nuclear plant can be very useful!
• Attempts to penetrate or test physical security / response procedures : Yep. I’ve tried the locks on locked doors before. I’ve also used a coat hangar to open the lock on a car door. It was my car, but still. And I was doing this in public. They should have locked me up.
• Attempts to improperly acquire explosives, weapons, ammunition, dangerous chemicals, etc. : not so much. I have made a lot of attempts to improperly split infinitives, because I’m a Star Trek fan.
• Suspicious or improper attempts to acquire official vehicles, uniforms, badges, or access devices : a bit. I was a marine captain in a play once, and wore a uniform (sort of). When I was at Caltech, I (along with every other student, graduate or undergraduate) had and made copies of various master keys… which was a (successful) improper attempt to acquire an access device.
• Presence of individuals who do not appear to belong in workplaces, business establishments, or near key facilities : sure. Ever been asked if you were lost? Means you didn’t appear to belong. Honestly, I do agree that this is something people should be aware of… not for terrorism reasons, but for common petty theft reasons. Calling 911 may be a bit of overkill.
• Mapping out routes, playing out scenarios, monitoring key facilities, timing traffic lights : All of the above. Hell, every time I drive somewhere new, I map out a route. As for playing out scenarios, yeah, done that, generally using GURPS as the rules set…. Monitoring key facilities? I mean, I wouldn’t think anybody would want to, say, monitor the land (and water) near a power plant…. Timing traffic lights? Hell yeah. Every Monday night in grad school, coming back from orchestra rehearsal, I’d get on Green Street (a one way street) and hit pretty much every single light. It was awesome.
• Stockpiling suspicious materials or abandoning potential containers for explosives (e.g. vehicles, suitcases, etc.). Insert obligatory joke about living in the South and abandoning a vehicle on your front lawn. I’ve got quite a giant stockpile of boxes left over from the last move in my attic. Does that count? I’m counting it.
• Suspicious reporting of lost or stolen identification : I’ve actually done this, and it was even suspicious. See I had a credit card that was lost for a year. It was never misused, so it was really lost. Never found it. I mean, I still used it, because I knew the number, but the card itself was lost. Finally I got over the procrastinatory activation barrier and called the company to have a new number issued. Isn’t that a bit suspicious? “Uh, yeah, a year ago I lost my credit card….” Given that you can use credit cards as a secondary form of ID, I think I’m a full-on terror suspect here.

How did I do? Six (counting two “halves”) out of nine. Geez! If you aren’t alarmed by me, then you are not a Good American who cares about the safety of his or her country! Heighten your awareness!

3 Comments