Written 9/20/01, or at least began writing it then
First off let me state that I'm a U.S.-born, quietly patriotic American citizen. I would have been a member of
the armed services but for the fact that I was declared 4-F. In point of fact, my test scores for the USAF and
Navy were so high that both tried to get a Congressional waiver to ignore my injury. I'd crushed my right elbow
in an ice skating accident in 1969 -- I was 14 -- and it no longer straightened out; my 45 degrees of motion
never stopped me from playing pick-up games of football, basketball, baseball etc. but it was enough to keep me out of both
services despite everyone's best efforts. This was immediately after the Vietnam "conflict" ended (1975 or so),
a war which I vehemently opposed while still supporting our democracy. So I'd likely have been a terrible
serviceman but I *did* try to get in as I felt that it was my duty as an able-bodied (I thought) American to
serve my country.
Moving on...
The bombings of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the area 80 miles south of Pittsburgh were deplorable
acts of violence against utterly innocent individuals. They appear to have been committed by truly deranged men
and/or women in the name of alleged religion. The alleged part is an important disctinction, for those who have
any knowledge of Muslims or the Islamic faith realize that Osama bin Laden and his "followers" clearly have no
real interest in the Koran or its teachings.
People keep asking these few questions:
1.) How could anyone ever do something like this to innocent people?
2.) What did we ever do to them?
3.) What kind of mind even conceives of stuff like this, let alone plans and carries it out?
The answers are actually astonishingly simple, despite the fact that you've heard these questions posed again
and again in the past nine days.
Q. How could anyone ever do something like this to innocent people?
A. Bin Laden's crew quite literally could not care less about the life of any person living in America,
apart from their own followers.
Q. What did we ever do to them?
A. Nothing obvious. They simply hate us. They hate our way of life. They loathe our freedoms. They abhor our
culture: their perceptions of our movies (blasphemous), magazines (pure porn), clothing (revealing, tawdry,
self-centered) are skewed past the point of even having Pat Buchanan as their right-fielder.
Q. What kind of mind even conceives of stuff like this, let alone plans and carries it out?
A. The evil genius the likes of which none of the five James Bonds nor Tom Cruise have seen... bin Laden's minions brought the most powerful country in the world to its knees in a
matter of minutes, using OUR planes, OUR pilots and OUR targets.
More to the point, they stopped virtually our entire way of life for six days: no "normal" (read network) TV,
no sports, no work for many. During that entire period, all anyone could talk about was the horror. It was
all that was aired on television. And radio. And in offices and homes from coast to coast.
Then the media went to work, performing double-duty. First came the slogans (although unlike the Gulf War,
they all agreed on the same ones this time) -- "America Under Attack," followed by "America Unites" as the
flag sales soared (you'll pardon the pun), primarily to people who've never owned a flag, never flew it on
Veteran's Day if they DID have one; next up was "America Rising," so cute that it must literally have bin Laden
laughing his bony ass off, then "America on Alert" -- fuck it.
The slogan should be "America: We're Morons" because we're all ready to kill lots of people who've proven again
and again to be able to hit us WHENEVER they want. And because we're already saying that this is a war for the
ages. That we're in for the long haul. Christ, the name of the anti-bin operation is "Infinite Justice!" Bush's
approval ratings are at 85% (up FIFTY points) thanks to garbage like that.
Oh, and Dubya's been just "exemplarary," with witty quotes like "back in the old west in Texas we used to have
a motto -- it was called 'Wanted, Dead or Alive' -- that used to work pretty well".... yeppers George. Buttttt......
WHICH PART OF "THEY CAN HIT US AT WILL!" DID YOU MISS?
More later... till next time: pray for the victims... and for peace.
The 9/11/01 World Trade Center Bombing Aftermath
