9/11 - The Emergency # that’s Turned into an Obsession

Those who voluntarily put power into the hands of a tyrant or an enemy must not wonder if it be at last turned against them.

Aesop

If the events of 9/11 were the result of a natural catastrophe, the country would’ve rebuilt and continued, largely unreflectively, pursuing the American Dream. But the indignity of an assault on American soil has since become a national obsession, a thriving cottage industry for wild speculators, professors seeking fame, authors eager for a best seller, and, above all, politicians aiming for increased power. Fear among the middle and lower classes shifted unprecedented power to the top, which, expressed in a formula is simple, F = P.

The absolute worst consequence of 9/11 for the country at large was the opportunity it provided a rather small group of theoreticians, armed with a philosophical strategy for reshaping the world, especially the Middle East - the Neocons - to put their ideas into play. Unfortunately, America responded to 9/11 by, more or less, involuntarily placing excessive powers into the hands of the Administration, which in its woefully misguided response, has involuntarily conferred excessive power to a now increasingly larger faction known as radical Islam.

The unsuspecting masses, unfamiliar with the National Interest and the Weekly Standard, which, among other right wing journals, spent years rationalizing the Neocon agenda, had little understanding of what their world after 9/12 would bring. Just ask the majority of politicians who recklessly voted to give Bush and the Neocons free reign and are now deeply regretful that their foolish preemptive gamble didn’t succeed. So much information, so much pre-9/11 ideology, yet so little concern, so few paying close attention to a nascent coup via ideology.

If, as the "experts" claim, it’s the Information Age, then there’s a strong argument that bountiful information doesn’t easily transform into true understanding. We’d be much better off today with leaders like George Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and Lincoln who accessed limited libraries and never once visited an Internet site. But they were able to think critically and profoundly.

Yes, the Internet has united the world electronically, but not without making it abundantly clear just how polarized and fragmented it is. We’re now all so procedurally close yet philosophically very far away. And to a great extent this is due to a simple corrosive phenomenon - Fear.

In many ways the comparatively thoughtless America deTocqueville observed in the 1830s hasn’t changed much, but the infusion of luxuries throughout society has dramatically altered the character of Teddy Roosevelt’s rugged individualist into a nation of sheepish, fearful people all too ready to trade liberty for security, the high life for a meaningful life, a humanistic, relatively honest government for a corrupt, mean spirited body of politicians willing to approve unilateral imperialism, torture and severe collateral damage not for the sake of actually triumphing over what were the approximately 10,000 active and trained al-Qaeda "terrorists" (actually they’re anarchists) but for appearing to do whatever it seems necessary to keep Americans safe from noxious gases and suicidal attacks. Oh please, please, you evil jihadists, don’t poison our pools and bomb our private schools.

The topsy-turvy upside-down Neocon strategy has required such surrealistic rationality that today the "War on Terror" appears more like an absurdist black comedy than a true reality. How about, "Waiting for Logos" - in which Rummy, a megalomanic, drunk on power, runs a war based on Wolfy’s grand plan to rule the world by democratizing it through the efforts of Chainy, the Hamlet-like puppet master who always remains one length away from attaining real understanding about how human nature actually operates. Together they stand huddled under an overpass off the Beltway wondering whether they’ll ever stumble onto a logic that just might reveal the secrets of human existence so they’ll be able to successfully reorient the entire Islamic world into a peaceful democratic arena. You start it Off-Brodway, then refine it until the crowds swell. Maybe a hip-hop kind of track.

Sadly, as the Neocons have searched far and wide for that magic formula, credible estimates claim that over 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died since the war began. Not to mention all of those harmed by the sanctions over the years. How long is it going to take the Muslim world to forget these transgressions? And then there are legions of patriotic Americans headed off to do what they believe is "the right thing." For whom?

And for what? Revenge? What has American retaliation yield? The Taliban is now exporting more opium than Afghanistan did before the Taliban halted the growth of poppies in the name of Allah. Indeed, Ionesco made a good living on such absurdities.

Somehow, the "War on Terror" largely ignored the actual core of al-Qaeda activity - Afghanistan - and concentrated on Iraq. Now, Afghanistan is reverting to Taliban rule, one tribal area at a time while suicide attacks - an essentially nonexistent event in 2002 - have become uncontrollable. And Iraq, now officially ruled by a Shia theocracy, otherwise known among the hard of thinking as a democracy, is far more inclined to Iranian fundamentalism as it progressively breaks up into three distinct regions.

Turkey is set to invade the Kurds (soon to be Kurdistan) at some point when Kurdish terrorism in that country becomes unacceptable. Could it be that the Neocon strategy has backfired so badly that it will be responsible for instigating the Ottoman Empire redux? After all, Turkey’s going to find it difficult to surrender the Kirkuk oil fields once they’ve crossed into Iraq.

And what about the surrounding Sunni cultures, who had, like Jefferson Davis, kept the Shia - the boys on the farm - down on the farm? Will the basis of Muhammad’s lineage as opposed to Wahabbism rule as the prevailing standard of Islamic legitimacy? Will there be religious wars equivalent to the Protestant/Catholic wars to determine the superior forces? And if so, how could the West stay uninvolved while their precious oil supplies are in peril? Is it possible that WWIII will start because of an adolescent blogger posting portraitist of Muhammad on the Internet as a prank? It’s certainly not impossible.

In just five years much of the world has become stark raving mad. Now that fear dominates the public discourse, the power over the common person’s fate in this "democracy" has shifted to a unitary president who, in fact, abides by the simplistically formed wishes of an ill-informed Vice President (the name’s never been more apt) - the point position in a pointless enterprise.

But let’s be fair. The Neocon’s meant well: reshape the Middle East by spreading democracy, which, in turn, prods the Muslims to embrace modernity, making Israel safer, while the U.S., as Hegel put it, serves as God on Earth - the privilege of being the unchallenged superpower. On paper it sounds good: let them have what we have; let them live like we do. Likewise, on paper the tooth fairy also sounds good. The trouble, as always is: Reality.

It doesn’t work like the Neocons have expected it to, mostly because their plans were far too utopian. And no wonder! Sequestered within the boundaries of the Beltway, residing in gated or remote communities, working inside of sterile environments surrounded by multi-credentialed colleagues and subordinates, those theoreticians who’ve distanced themselves from reality have a difficult time acknowledging its intractable limitations.

Intoxicated by the powers of "smart bombs" and ubiquitous wiretapping, they have overlooked the value of real intelligence, the need for interpreters and aliens capable of infiltrating alien cultures, and the ability of traditional American ideals - fair mindedness, the Melting Pot, freedom from fear, legislative and cultural equality - to win the hearts and minds of the Muslim world. Instead, they expected military might to sway the unconvinced and are forcefully trying to impose democracy to maintain decency. It’s a formula for disaster.

What the world got instead of those utopian aims is much of the world turning away from America as a core model, Muslims who despise modernity while reactively resisting an association with American ideals, enmity that persuades mothers to strap on bombs to fight the infidels.

Five years later is the world safer? Quite the contrary. World war is much more likely now than it was during 99% of the Cold War. Has America vindicated 9/11? If you consider the incarceration of a few hundred captives, only a few dozen or so who were major al-Qaeda operatives vindication, then yes. But along the way, hundreds of millions of people, including Americans, have been victimized by the effort. And if things keep going the way they are, the democracy the founders fought and died for and that sustained a great nation for 220 years will, like all democracies in history, decline and fall. Because democracy is based on trust, or, D = T. When F = P overwhelms D = T , then Fear and Power at the top cancel out Democracy and Trust at the bottom.

The blatant deceptions, gross manipulations and ideological desperation to persist in a Crusader-like way by this Administration are signs of this democracy crumbling as it is. How will all the distrust between the government and the governed, between the politicians and the electorate be reversed? Is one bill going to change that? One speech? One politician? Hillary? Ha. It’s going to take a miracle, and, quite honestly, if you were the one responsible for handing out miracles how would you answer this question, Does America deserve such a miracle?