Five Years Later

Today 3 Quarks Daily is exclusively devoted to original reflections on the attacks of exactly five years ago. We thank all our contributors. Their various pieces are listed alphabetically below by author's last name (and linked) for your browsing convenience:

Eating Our Popcorn While We Weep, by Karen Ballentine

Brief Reflections on 9/11, by Akeel Bilgrami

Years of Bullets, Years of Lead, by Michael Blim

Alienation and Violence in Kashmir, by Shiban Ganju

September Song, by Ruth Kikin-Gill

Islamism's Watershed Moment, by Alon Levy

Three Ways Out of Iraq, by Ram Mannikalingam

9/11: A fragment of Experience, by Morgan Meis

Whatever: A New York State of Mind, by Peter Nicholson

Empty Liquor Gift-Tins and the Horror of the Magyar Moment, by Jed Palmer

A Short Numerically-Flavored Rumination on 9/11/01, by John Allen Paulos

How We Became Important, by S. Abbas Raza

Remembering the World Trade Center, by S. Asad Raza

Perceptions: 9.11, by Sughra Raza

The Self and September 11, by Justin E. H. Smith

A Note on September 11 Fiction, by J. M. Tyree

Comments

[sara]

Previewing your Comment
I just had some insight as to how many americans might think of 9 -11 and the aftermath...
I am a teacher at a public school. While in the cafeteria this morning a mother came up to me. She was wearing a " never forget 9 - 11" t -shirt. Across the way, a mother (who's child has been going to the school for 3 years now, and who is a very active parent in our school commmunity) was eating breakfast with her daughter. This mother was traditionally dressed in Middle Eastern garb. The mother standing next to me said, "I am just so offended by that. I mean, how can they do something like that? People like that annoy and offend me. This is 9 - 11!" At first I didn't understand what she had meant. She was offended by this other mother's tradional dress? Then I realized that she had thought that the Middle Eastern woman had dressed like that particularly on 9-11 to make a statement, just as she did by wearing a 9-11 t-shirt. I told her that the other mother had been coming to the school for years and that she dressed like that every day. She was astonished. She had no idea that she dressed like that every day and had no idea why.

[opit]

Sara

You've identified one clear result of 9/11 : heightened intolerance of diversity in thought, dress, custom, religion or opinion. That does not work to promote peace.

Picking nits : s/b "whose child" : who's is the conjunction of "who is", "whose" is possessive. Couldn't resist a chance to zing the teacher.

[opit]

Ha. I need humility too, today. s/b contraction

[Enlightenment]

One thing that struck me as odd in the days after 9/11 was Bush saying "We will not tolerate conspiracy theories [regarding 9/11]". Sure enough there have been some wacky conspiracy theories surrounding the events of that day. The most far-fetched and patently ridiculous one that I've ever heard goes like this: Nineteen hijackers who claimed to be devout Muslims but yet were so un-Muslim as to be getting drunk all the time, doing cocaine and frequenting strip clubs decided to hijack four airliners and fly them into buildings in the northeastern U.S., the area of the country that is the most thick with fighter bases. After leaving a Koran on a barstool at a strip bar after getting shitfaced drunk on the night before, then writing a suicide note/inspirational letter that sounded like it was written by someone with next to no knowledge of Islam, they went to bed and got up the next morning hung over and carried out their devious plan. Nevermind the fact that of the four "pilots" among them there was not a one that could handle a Cessna or a Piper Cub let alone fly a jumbo jet, and the one assigned the most difficult task of all, Hani Hanjour, was so laughably incompetent that he was the worst fake "pilot" of the bunch. Nevermind the fact that they received very rudimentary flight training at Pensacola Naval Air Station, making them more likely to have been C.I.A. assets than Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. So on to the airports. These "hijackers" somehow managed to board all four airliners with their tickets, yet not even ONE got his name on any of the flight manifests. So they hijack all four airliners and at this time passengers on United 93 start making a bunch of cell phone calls from 35,000 feet in the air to tell people what was going on. Nevermind the fact that cell phones wouldn't work very well above 4,000 feet, and wouldn't work at ALL above 8,000 feet. But the conspiracy theorists won't let that fact get in the way of a good fantasy. That is one of the little things you "aren't supposed to think about". Nevermind that one of the callers called his mom and said his first and last name, more like he was reading from a list than calling his own mom. Anyway, when these airliners each deviated from their flight plan and didn't respond to ground control, NORAD would any other time have followed standard operating procedure (and did NOT have to be told by F.A.A. that there were hijackings because they were watching the same events unfold on their own radar) which means fighter jets would be scrambled from the nearest base where they were available on standby within a few minutes, just like every other time when airliners stray off course. But of course on 9/11 this didn't happen, not even close. Somehow these "hijackers" must have used magical powers to cause NORAD to stand down, as ridiculous as this sounds because total inaction from the most high-tech and professional Air Force in the world would be necessary to carry out their tasks. So on the most important day in its history the Air Force was totally worthless. Then they had to make one of the airliners look like a smaller plane, because unknown to them the Naudet brothers had a videocamera to capture the only known footage of the North Tower crash, and this footage shows something that is not at all like a jumbo jet, but didn't have to bother with the South Tower jet disguising itself because that was the one we were "supposed to see". Anyway, as for the Pentagon they had to have Hani Hanjour fly his airliner like it was a fighter plane, making a high G-force corkscrew turn that no real airliner can do, in making its descent to strike the Pentagon. But these "hijackers" wanted to make sure Rumsfeld survived so they went out of their way to hit the farthest point in the building from where Rumsfeld and the top brass are located. And this worked out rather well for the military personnel in the Pentagon, since the side that was hit was the part that was under renovation at the time with few military personnel present compared to construction workers. Still more fortuitous for the Pentagon, the side that was hit had just before 9/11 been structurally reinforced to prevent a large fire there from spreading elsewhere in the building. Awful nice of them to pick that part to hit, huh? Then the airliner vaporized itself into nothing but tiny unidentifiable pieces no bigger than a fist, unlike the crash of a real airliner when you will be able to see at least some identifiable parts, like crumpled wings, broken tail section etc. Why, Hani Hanjour the terrible pilot flew that airliner so good that even though he hit the Pentagon on the ground floor the engines didn't even drag the ground!! Imagine that!! Though the airliner vaporized itself on impact it only made a tiny 16 foot hole in the building. Amazing. Meanwhile, though the planes hitting the Twin Towers caused fires small enough for the firefighters to be heard on their radios saying "We just need 2 hoses and we can knock this fire down" attesting to the small size of it, somehow they must have used magical powers from beyond the grave to make this morph into a raging inferno capable of making the steel on all forty-seven main support columns (not to mention the over 100 smaller support columns) soften and buckle, then all fail at once. Hmmm. Then still more magic was used to make the building totally defy physics as well as common sense in having the uppermost floors pass through the remainder of the building as quickly, meaning as effortlessly, as falling through air, a feat that without magic could only be done with explosives. Then exactly 30 minutes later the North Tower collapses in precisely the same freefall physics-defying manner. Incredible. Not to mention the fact that both collapsed at a uniform rate too, not slowing down, which also defies physics because as the uppermost floors crash into and through each successive floor beneath them they would shed more and more energy each time, thus slowing itself down. Common sense tells you this is not possible without either the hijackers' magical powers or explosives. To emphasize their telekinetic prowess, later in the day they made a third building, WTC # 7, collapse also at freefall rate though no plane or any major debris hit it. Amazing guys these magical hijackers. But we know it had to be "Muslim hijackers" the conspiracy theorist will tell you because (now don't laugh) one of their passports was "found" a couple days later near Ground Zero, miraculously "surviving" the fire that we were told incinerated planes, passengers and black boxes, and also "survived" the collapse of the building it was in. When common sense tells you if that were true then they should start making buildings and airliners out of heavy paper and plastic so as to be "indestructable" like that magic passport. The hijackers even used their magical powers to bring at least seven of their number back to life, to appear at american embassies outraged at being blamed for 9/11!! BBC reported on that and it is still online. Nevertheless, they also used magical powers to make the american government look like it was covering something up in the aftermath of this, what with the hasty removal of the steel debris and having it driven to ports in trucks with GPS locators on them, to be shipped overseas to China and India to be melted down. When common sense again tells you that this is paradoxical in that if the steel was so unimportant that they didn't bother saving some for analysis but so important as to require GPS locators on the trucks with one driver losing his job because he stopped to get lunch. Hmmmm. Yes, this whole story smacks of the utmost idiocy and fantastical far-fetched lying, but it is amazingly enough what some people believe. Even now, five years later, the provably false fairy tale of the "nineteen hijackers" is heard repeated again and again, and is accepted without question by so many Americans. Which is itself a testament to the innate psychological cowardice of the American sheeple, i mean people, and their abject willingness to believe something, ANYTHING, no matter how ridiculous in order to avoid facing a scary uncomfortable truth. Time to wake up America.

[bloggy]

Enlightenment:

You are absolutely right- the kooky conspiracy theory touted by the mainstream press is laughably absurd (or would be if it didn't prevent us from going after the real villains).

Sadly most Americans seem to go along with it. Thus the biggest crime of the millenium will go unsolved, the perpetrators unpunished, and the victims unavenged.

[Kenji]

I simply believe that it is an elaborate plan between George W. Bush and the C.I.A. to rekindle the war between the US and the Middle East. Because I find it no coincidence that George H.W. Bush had a documented war with the Middle East, it stops after he is gone, and now that his son is in office, it starts again? I find this to be more than just "terrorists attacked us, so we must defend our selves."

I also agree with Enlightenment. Those people who were the said hijackers were caught on CAMERA! How much more proof do you need? They were seen getting on a plane, and then they appeared after the incinerated plane incident to say that they shouldn't be blamed? I also believe in these magical powers these people had, to survive something that the plane and the black box (which is nearly indestructible) didn't. And, the collapse caused by the planes started a uniform collapse from the top? Would the top of the building fall toward the side with the "giant" hole?

And the parts of attacking other locations will make even the most forgiving of people want to wage war against these people. I mean, of course, even with the army and air force so readily available, they weren't able to take out the hijacked planes?

And why is it that these miracle cell phone towers were in the path of the plane that could reach over 6 miles. Casual cell phone towers are spaced 3 miles apart at the most and yet they still have dead spots. Newer cell phones with GSM technology can reach 24 miles, but I highly doubt that nearly everyone on that plane had a GSM phone, and even if they all did, who recorded all of the calls?
People have said that I shouldn't listen to Michael Moore, but I have no idea what he thinks of everything. I have had a feeling from the get-go that something was wrong with everything. George W. Bush wasn't angry or upset, he was just there.

On a different tone, does anyone think it is a bit ironic (or planned) that it happened on 9/11 when the number for emergencies is 911?

[psikeyhackr]

If an airliner vaporized that would produce a lot of aluminum vapor in the air. But it would cool rapidly and condense out in the vicinity just like water condensing on the walls of a bathroom because of a hot shower. So where was all of the condensed aluminum on the surfaces in the area?

So why can't the media nitwits ask such obvious questions?

[bob]

A MOMENT OF SILENCE, BEFORE I START THIS POEM
by EMMANUEL ORTIZ, 11 Sep 2002

Before I start this poem,
I'd like to ask you to join me
In a moment of silence
In honor of those who died in the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon last September 11th.

I would also like to ask you
To offer up a moment of silence
For all of those who have been harassed, imprisoned,
disappeared, tortured, raped, or killed in retaliation for those strikes
For the victims in both Afghanistan and the U.S.

And if I could just add one more thing...
A full day of silence
For the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have died at the
hands of U.S.-backed Israeli
forces over decades of occupation.
Six months of silence for the million and-a-half Iraqi people,
mostly children, who have died of
malnourishment or starvation as a result of an 11-year U.S.
embargo against the country.

Before I begin this poem,
Two months of silence for the Blacks under Apartheid in South Africa,
Where homeland security made them aliens in their own country.
Nine months of silence for the dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
Where death rained down and peeled back every layer of
concrete, steel, earth and skin
And the survivors went on as if alive.
A year of silence for the millions of dead in Vietnam - a people,
not a war - for those who
know a thing or two about the scent of burning fuel, their
relatives' bones buried in it, their babies born of it.
A year of silence for the dead in Cambodia and Laos, victims of
a secret war ... ssssshhhhh....
Say nothing
we don't want them to learn that they are dead.
Two months of silence for the decades of dead in Colombia,
Whose names, like the corpses they once represented,
have piled up and slipped off our tongues.

Before I begin this poem.
An hour of silence for El Salvador ...
An afternoon of silence for Nicaragua ...
Two days of silence for the Guatemaltecos ...
None of whom ever knew a moment of peace in their living years.
45 seconds of silence for the 45 dead at Acteal, Chiapas

25 years of silence for the hundred million Africans who found
their graves far deeper in the ocean than any building could
poke into the sky.
There will be no DNA testing or dental records to identify their remains.
And for those who were strung and swung from the heights of
sycamore trees in the south, the north, the east, and the west...

100 years of silence...
For the hundreds of millions of Indigenous peoples from this half
of right here,
Whose land and lives were stolen,
In postcard-perfect plots like Pine Ridge, Wounded Knee, Sand Creek,
Fallen Timbers, or the Trail of Tears.
Names now reduced to innocuous magnetic poetry on the
refrigerator of our consciousness ...

So you want a moment of silence?
And we are all left speechless
Our tongues snatched from our mouths
Our eyes stapled shut
A moment of silence
And the poets have all been laid to rest
The drums disintegrating into dust.

Before I begin this poem,
You want a moment of silence
You mourn now as if the world will never be the same
And the rest of us hope to hell it won't be.
Not like it always has
been.

Because this is not a 9/11 poem.
This is a 9/10 poem,
It is a 9/9 poem,
A 9/8 poem,
A 9/7 poem
This is a 1492 poem.

This is a poem about what causes poems like this to be written.
And if this is a 9/11 poem, then:
This is a September 11th poem for Chile, 1971.
This is a September 12th poem for Steven Biko in South Africa, 1977.
This is a September 13th poem for the brothers at Attica Prison, New York, 1971.
This is a September 14th poem for Somalia, 1992.
This is a poem for every date that falls to the ground in ashes
This is a poem for the 110 stories that were never told
The 110 stories that history chose not to write in textbooks
The 110 stories that CNN, BBC, The New York Times, and Newsweek ignored.
This is a poem for interrupting this program.

And still you want a moment of silence for your dead?
We could give you lifetimes of empty:
The unmarked graves
The lost languages
The uprooted trees and histories
The dead stares on the faces of nameless children
Before I start this poem we could be silent forever
Or just long enough to hunger,
For the dust to bury us
And you would still ask us
For more of our silence.

If you want a moment of silence
Then stop the oil pumps
Turn off the engines and the televisions
Sink the cruise ships
Crash the stock markets
Unplug the marquee lights,
Delete the instant messages,
Derail the trains, the light rail transit.

If you want a moment of silence, put a brick through the window of Taco Bell,
And pay the workers for wages lost.
Tear down the liquor stores,
The townhouses, the White Houses, the jailhouses, the
Penthouses and the Playboys.

If you want a moment of silence,
Then take it
On Super Bowl Sunday,
The Fourth of July
During Dayton's 13 hour sale
Or the next time your white guilt fills the room where my beautiful
people have gathered.

You want a moment of silence
Then take it NOW,
Before this poem begins.
Here, in the echo of my voice,
In the pause between goosesteps of the second hand,
In the space between bodies in embrace,
Here is your silence,
Take it.
But take it all...
Don't cut in line.
Let your silence begin at the beginning of crime.
But we,
Tonight we will keep right on singing
For our dead.

Emmanuel Ortiz is a third-generation Chicano/Puerto Rican/Irish-American community organizer and spoken word poet residing in Minneapolis, MN. He is the author of a chapbook of poems, The Word is a Machete, and his poetry has appeared in numerous publications, including two books published in Australia: Open Boat - Barbed Wire Sky (Live Poets' Press) an anthology of poems to aid refugees and asylum-seekers, and Passion for Peace: Exercising Power Creatively (UNSW Press). His poetry will also appear in the forthcoming FreedomBook, an anthology of writings in support of Puerto Rican political prisoners. He currently serves on the board of directors for the Minnesota Spoken Word Association, and is the coordinator of Guerrilla Wordfare, a Twin Cities-based grassroots project bringing together artists of color to address socio-political issues and raise funds for progressive organizing in communities of color through art as a tool of social change.