I have decided to call the obsessive tendency in the media to discuss, memorialize and analyze the events of 9/11 on the anniversary of that event nineelevenism. I'm seeing way too much of it – on the English language websites I visit, on English language streaming radio I listen to.
I'm sick of it. I remember that day vividly. I was working in the office in Burbank. Somebody got some still pictures of it on their computer, and somebody turned on the radio. Then one of the bosses had a television on. I made an utterly inappropriate joke, very dark-humor, about disgruntled architecture critics – "those buildings were always so ugly." Which I believed. I've always felt guilty for having made such an insensitive, inappropriate remark, before having realized the magnitude of the situation. I bear it like a little secret stain, a stolen moment of schadenfreude. Yet…
By the second day, I already saw the over-reaction taking shape. Yes, 3000+ people is a lot. But compared to wars and famines going on around the world at that time…
I wonder what date it was that the number of innocent, civilian lives taken by US / "coalition" forces exceeded the number of those lost on September, 11, 2001? I'm not talking about the lives of those who plotted, who combatted, who terrorized. I talking only about the collaterals. I've read statistcs that, between Iraq and Afghanistan, the number of collateral lives lost is in the hundreds of thousands. That seems plausible… and deeply inappropriate for a supposedly civilized nation to be implicated in.
I am not a pacifist. But this just isn't the right thing to do. It wasn't, not at any point.
By the end of the first year, I felt despair. I took to citing Luke 6:27-31 to people ranting on justice and vengeance – not because I am Christian, but because they claim to be.
27 ¶ But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you,
28 Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.
29 And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloke forbid not to take thy coat also.
30 Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again.
31 And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.
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The iconic image above (which I probably shouldn't reproduce but I can't resist) had an interesting write up in the Guardian recently. People love to rant about how inappropriate the mood of the photo is – this idyllic late summer scene, the smoke in the background. But this is humanity. Life goes on.
Look for beauty, don't dwell on suffering. Seeking vengeance will rot your heart long before it destroys any enemy.
I vaguely remember being cognizant of the date on which the number of civilians killed by coalition forces exceeded the number of people who died in the 9/11 attacks. I’m pretty sure this occurred near the beginning of the Afghanistan war, before the Iraq war was even started.