September the 11th, our private Ramadan
The destruction inflicted upon the United States on September the 11th, 2001 opened a physical and an emotional gash in this country. One year later, most, if not all of us, are trying to cope with what the event meant and what, if anything, we should do about it. The issue is highly abstract and terribly concrete. There is the “Why would anyone do this kind of thing,” and then “What should we do to prevent such an occurrence from ever happening again.” I don’t offer answers (otherwise I would be making money hand over fist consulting to the government), but rather a perspective, which, hopefully, may resolve this issue on an individual basis.
Perspectives on this event are unique – each one of us experienced it in his or her own way. My wife and I were caught in mid flight coming back from vacation. All of a sudden all the flight crew rushed to the back of the plane (pilots, of course did not). A few minutes later there was an announcement letting us know that we were being re-routed to London instead of proceeding to the States for security reasons. I observed that we should notice the time and made the assumption that a serious security warning caused the delay. The day before, the skies over St. Peter’s were dark like fumes, and dirt on the streets of Rome looked particularly ugly.
After landing at London, and learning of what happened (the working assumption was that the casualties were numbered in the tens of thousands) we were taken to some place called Chichester. I think that for the first time Americans felt themselves to be refugees. All acuity of perception receded into a sort of tepid mist. We were driven somewhere. We were put in a hotel. We were told that we had to leave the hotel the next day. We were on our own. We were homeless. It took us a full week to be able to book a flight back to the States. We were lucky enough to have American friends that took us in. The unity in grief was something that all of us were way too young to experience until then. In the background of the shock that rendered the world into a matted gray, that grief stood in sharp relief, giving a kind of outline to what has taken place, to what everyone felt.
No one had any idea what was going to happen, what was going to be done, and by whom. Strangely enough, the totality of unknowns (including when we were going to get back to the States, where the traffic flowed the right way) did not add up to doubt. Whatever emotions we experienced – bewilderment, anger, grief, despair – doubt was not one of them. We were all certain. We were not completely sure what we were certain of, but the flow of a current of certainty, a certainty not necessarily connected to anything but us and our feeling of being certain ran through us like a crimson thread.
We emerged out of the shock slowly and painfully, like from a womb. The events that followed are known and need no recounting. Right now, we are confronted with a myriad of choices regarding further actions to quell terrorist nests, fighting with Iraq and the sorting out of our economy. I have no definitive answers. The one thing I can try to deal with is how should we regard our enemies, and what they are to begin with.
Fanaticism stems from the assumption that any holy writ is a monolith rather than a compilation, an unequivocal signpost, rather than a constantly moving weathervane. If viewed in a literal way, Judaism is all about stoning (check out Deuteronomy – your hand will feel tired from the enumeration of crimes for which the punishment is death by stoning); while Christianity preaches universal forgiveness, at the same breath we are told the some will burn in eternal hell, and when a particular village did not accept one of the Apostles, he would condemn the entire place by shaking the dirt off his feet to indicate that this is a nest of sinners. With the bonfires of the holly Inquisition illuminating our past, I cannot, in good faith, cast a stone at a sister religion simply because some of its inherent inconsistencies were abused by misguided followers.
Changing my aim ever so slightly I could heave the proverbial stone at the misguided followers. I may not. Maybe in some instances I must not. In some scenarios I can see being justified in doing so. I agree completely with articulate babble’s web log entry: http://www.articulatebabble.org/archives/000079.php I don’t want to go to war either. The only point that I differ on is that I have to know why we do or don’t go there. If indeed our enemies are like the mindless destroyers of chat rooms on which I went on about yesterday then let’s get it over with – at the end of the day it is either us or them. If we are dealing with reasonable, half reasonable, hell, I’ll take even quarter reasonable people, then let’s use reason and not spill unnecessary blood. Whichever way we go, the decision has to be hours. The opinions of the British, French, Germans and the East Timorese are pertinent only inasmuch as they help clarify what needs to be done. Wide consensus may make our actions more popular, but it will not make them right. Wide consensus is a tactical issue, but it cannot be a strategic rule of thumb. We should do what we think it right, not what others presume is more appropriate.
I think the emotions cannot be summed up or even fully described. If the world becomes dim, let it.
7:42:34 AM 
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