Terrorism: September 2003 Archives

My immediate family doesn't like to do the funeral thing. We don't go for the open caskets, don't go to church or synagogue... when my grandmother died, she was cremated — her firm choice, even though we're Jewish. We chose to have her memorial service in the back yard of her home. Friends and relatives gathered to tell stories about her. I wore a blue dress because she always hated black. Anyway, we wanted to celebrate the good years of her life rather than dwell on the sad way it drew to a close.

So naturally, this attitude towards funerals and death has seeped into me. (Not completely — I do love a good walk in a nice cemetery!) I see the photos of people gathering at the World Trade Center site, and I read about the plans for a memorial to be established there, and in some ways I understand it... it's like trying to take a place where something horrible happened and purify it again, the way that people leave flowers at the site of a horrible car accident. But in other ways, it completely puzzles me.

Because such memorializing can only commemorate the tragedy. It can't truly commemorate the lives of the people who died that day.

Think about it. Would you like people to think of you only in relation to your workplace or commute path?

So I think they should make plaques — I always liked those little blue historical plaques all over London, etc. — and place them in the places where those people lived and played. Places that meant something to them. Include a few autobiographical details. "Joe was a guitarist and liked to play poker and watch South Park. This is the bar he used to hang out in with his buddies." "Sarah loved spending time with her kids and her kids' friends. This is the park they used to spend Saturdays in."

Sure, the effect would be less dramatic, more diffuse... but people would notice them from time to time. Maybe they'd even stop and read one.

And those people would be remembered, not once a year on September 11 or whenever the president wants to promote another distasteful policy, but in the places they loved.

So we now have a president who says marriage ought to be restricted to being between a man and a woman, and folks like Santorum who compare gay sex to child molestation and "man on dog"... a slap in the face of people like Mark Bingham's mother. Bingham was a hero, but he got overshadowed by his planemate, Todd Beamer, who apparently coined the would-be-patented phrase, "Let's roll" as they tried to take back the doomed plane from the hijackers two years ago tomorrow.

And apparently, there are people all over New York who breathed in poisonous dust in the weeks after the towers collapsed, reasured by the EPA that it was safe. We won't know the true toll of that noble act for years, but we can guess... there was a lot of asbestos in those buildings. That's how the White House treated the victims of terrorism.

And our brave fighting forces? Hopefully they'll do better than Vanessa Turner, who collapsed from the heat while on duty in Iraq, was in a coma and suffered leg damage, and ended up homeless back in Boston with her daughter. (Thanks to media attention, she's finally getting some help...)

Why was she there anyway? She was part of an invasion that seems to have exacerbated a bad situation — if there weren't Al Queda terrorists in Iraq before, there sure are now. (Yes, Saddam was/is a bad man, but that wasn't the point, was it?)

And I haven't even gotten to the Patriot Act, which Congress, thankfully, is trying to tame — and Bush is threatening to veto their attempts. Or the Benladen family members that were escorted out of the country without questioning. Or the 9/11 report with all the information excised.

Meanwhile, another video arrives from Osama...

It should go without saying that the 9/11 plotters and their deeds were horrible beyond belief. They hate us and want to destroy us.

Does this administration have to help them achieve their goals?

--> "Two years later: A steely resolve, borne of anguish; Alice Hoglan, mother of Flight 93 hero, turns focus on airlines, gay acceptance", San Francisco Chronicle, September 10, 2003, www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/ archive/2003/09/10/DD308737.DTL

--> "9.11.01: Two years later: Ground zero air quality was 'brutal' for months; UC Davis scientist concurs that EPA reports misled the public", San Francisco Chronicle, September 10, 2003, www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi? file=/c/a/2003/09/10/MN266317.DTL

--> "Congress uses scalpel to cut up Patriot Act; Bills would repeal parts of anti-terror law, but Bush threatens vetoes", San Francisco Chronicle, September 10, 2003, www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi? file=/c/a/2003/09/10/MN268312.DTL

--> "The Nation’s First Homeless Veteran of the Invasion of Iraq Speaks Out", Democracy Now, September 2, 2003, www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/02/1416256

--> "A Guide to the Patriot Act", Slate, slate.msn.com/id/2087984/

--> "Iraq-Terrorism Link Continues to Be Problematic", WXXI, September 9, 2003, www.publicbroadcasting.net/wxxi/news.newsmain?action=article&ARTICLE_ID=543517


Edited to add: Mark Fiore feels the same way! www.markfiore.com/animation/twoyear.html

So there's an article in today's Chronicle about how some fringe environmental folks are increasingly turning to blowing things up as a form of protest. Some are saying that since there have been crackdowns from the government on legimate forms of protest, they are left with little choice.

I have to confess to a twinge of amusement when I heard about the SUV and Hummer vandalism a few weeks ago. (I hates me some Hummers — what a pointless form of transportation. The Hummer started getting marketed to consumers after the first Gulf War. Nuff said.) But still, bombing offices? Or worse, going after executives homes, which is supposedly the next step in the Chiron protests?

What happened to civil disobedience? Or Michael Moore-type tactics, like bringing the Washington D.C.'s Gay Men's Chorus to sing "On the Street Where You Live" at the home of Jesse Helms?

Once you start viewing the world as being at war, it's very hard to turn that off, and it unleashes all kinds of ugliness. I don't think there's a single terrorist alive who thinks "I'm going to go do evil things today!" Nope, they think they're part of "Operation Just Cause" (say, what a great name for a military action.)

Yes, I'm against animal testing, or at least for doing as little of it as possible, in a humane way. Yes, I hate SUVs and I worry about global warming. I'm angry at our government, oh yeah. But I want to yell at those stupid violent protesters, "Gee, THANKS A LOT FOR MAKING OUR SIDE LOOK BAD!!!"

A few weeks ago I had dinner with my parents and a friend of theirs who was visiting from New York. She kept mentioning her friend Kathy who was in prison and coming up for parole soon... turns out it was Kathy Boudin, who used to be a member of the Weather Underground, was in hiding for ten years, and finally got caught after a violent armoured-car robbery with the Black Liberation Underground. (She didn't shoot anybody.) My parents' friend explained that since she was on the run and the FBI had infiltrated the mainstream liberal organizations, she was pretty much driven towards the more extreme fringe groups. She's apparently a great person, and her life has been ruined... and she hasn't gotten to do all the great things for the world she probably hoped to do.

People just don't learn from the past, though...

--> "Activists see more violent activity from extreme protesters", September 6, 2003, San Francisco Chronicle, sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/09/06/MN258847.DTL

--> "The Object of the Outrage", Anna Quindlan, Newsweek, September 8, 2003, www.msnbc.com/news/959312.asp