Eight years ago, 2,600 people lost their lives in Manhattan, and then several million people lost their story. The al-Qaeda attack on the Twin Towers did not defeat New Yorkers. It destroyed the buildings, contaminated the region, killed thousands, and disrupted the global economy, but it most assuredly did not conquer the citizenry. They were only defeated when their resilience was stolen from them by clichés, by the invisibility of what they accomplished that extraordinary morning, and by the very word “terrorism,” which suggests that they, or we, were all terrified. The distortion, even obliteration, of what actually happened was a necessary precursor to launching the obscene response that culminated in a war on Iraq, a war we lost (even if some of us don’t know that yet), and the loss of civil liberties and democratic principles that went with it. [continued…]
I was one of the fortunate few to escape from the WTC on 9/11. To this day I keep asking how 4 planes were taken-over, each in 10 min? In 1970s, during a rash of skyjackings, a rule was established to make the pilot’s cabin impenetrable. Flying coast-to-coast First Class, Atta noted the pilot cabin’s door always wide open in flight. On 9/12 an airline exec on the Today Show explained that people pay a lot for First Class so they deserve to see a human being flying the plane. Were the rules obeyed, 9/11 would never have happened. But we prefer to image alQaeda as some genius monster than admit our reckless corporate mentality; it was cheaper to disregard the impenetrability and two skymarshalls rules on every plane.