Aftermath.

 

Here we are. September 12, 2023.

Welcome to Oakie's very own 9/11 rabbit hole.

Yesterday, on the 22nd anniversary of the attacks, I spent the day as I usually do, every single year. Thinking about it, reflecting about the lost lives, and those who tried their best to save them, many of whom joined them in death. There is no way to lighten up, to brush it off, to put a shine on it, to make sense of it, to be nonchalant about it. It is a tragedy. And like all good tragedies, the follow up was even worse. Much worse. And again, keep in mind this is my opinion, and my opinion only, it is not gospel, nor the "truth" you may be seeking. Seek the truth elsewhere. All I ever do with my writing is to point you in a given direction, I am not even telling you it's the "right" direction. It's one of many you can follow, in your own, private, individual search for the truth. Beware the false prophets who tell you they hold the answers you seek, for they do not. And I am certainly not one them.

 

The year was 2001. I lived in Portugal. That September day I was at home, doing God knows what, when the first plane hit the North Tower. The rest is history. Or is it. At the time I was willing to green light a squadron of B2 bombers to Mecca. That's all I saw that day. Saudi fucking Arabia had to pay. I saw that immediately. I was furious. I was a New Yorker, and by God, I would have my revenge! But I wasn't a New Yorker. I was just some guy, over 3,000 miles away from Manhattan, who got blasted away by the most horrific images I had ever seen on live television. Yes, I saw images of the horrors of the Holocaust, when I was very young. I saw images of Cambodia, after fucking McNamara was done with it. I saw televised images of fucking Arabs killing Israeli athletes in Munich in '72. I knew horror. Intimately. But I had never seen in real time someone choosing to drop from a 110th floor because it seemed like the only way out. And those images I can never shake away. They will haunt my mind forever. No redemption. No relief. No peace.

The horror... Apocalypse Now comes to mind, now that I mentioned McNamara. The complete and absolute horror we are capable of. There are no surprises there. We are like that. All of us. Yes, you too. You and your Christian-Jewish values and Western Civilization morality. You and your Buddhist prayer beads. You and whatever religion or philosophy guides you, or rather allows you to sleep a little better at night. You and your charity. Yes. You too. The horror is within us to cause, as much as it is to avoid. You just have to choose one or the other, but don't think for a minute you would not seize a plane and fly it against a fucking building. Given the right circumstances you would have that choice. And may your God have mercy on you and your decision. Fucking Saudi Arabia. September 14, 2001, the FBI publishes the complete list of 19 hijackers. Soon after that, 15 of them are identified as Saudis. So yes, fuck it, let's invade Iraq. 

The world was united behind the United States, right after 9/11/2001. I think it was six months later, there was a worldwide minute of silence for the victims of the terror that took place in America, that fateful day. I was in Lisbon with my then girlfriend, at the lobby of a German insurance company, where we were to meet with the marketing director, involving a sponsorship that had to do with Fantasporto, Porto's Horror Film Festival. I remember that well because of what happened. It was time. And all of a sudden, one of the busiest downtown locations in Europe was just silent. I walked outside. Everything was standing still. The cars were stopped on the streets, people were silently standing on the sidewalks. A few pigeons flew by. We were united, all over the world. My God, I thought, we can achieve anything.

 

That feeling of unity and purpose was doomed. Only the pain in our souls from watching those terrible images, again and again, kept us from realizing it then, but not for long. I watched as Collin Powell, of all people, reassured Congress that, yes, Iraq was a clear and present danger, and we were all going to die. First clue something was very wrong. The Iraqi goat herders were coming to kill us all, let's deploy the 101st Airborne now, before it's too late. And let's throw in some Cruise missiles, and some stealth fighters, in case the fucking goats are as mean as we believe them to be, via satellite photos. Fucking goats!

 

The war that raged on, producing none of the WMD's so revered and advertised by the Dubya administration; and the flag-draped coffins started arriving at Ramstein AFB, in Germany. It was a shit show. I was actively blogging in Portuguese at the time, publishing what I called "Diary of an illegal war", as I followed the reports from the ground, and yes, everyone and their fucking uncles was there, including Portuguese reporters, "embedded" with the invading forces, going live 200 miles from the front lines, with Kevlar vests and helmets on, as if a sniper goat was right there, checking them out as they "risked their lives" to bring us all the "real time, play by play" account of the operations.

Here is a sample:

An Illegal War Journal, day 12, 2003/03/30 

On the twelfth day,
Evidence... 

(The Infante Bridge, between Gaia and Porto, is open to traffic. I cross it from south to north for the first time. Soon it will be farewell to the beloved D. Luís I Bridge; by then only available by subway or on foot.) 

Something is going very wrong in Iraq for the coalition forces. The images speak for themselves - I now disregard the comments of journalists and commentators. Iraqi TV shows new Apaches shot down - the first they showed was shot down by "friendly fire" - and more armored vehicles out of action (M1s and Bradley's). A Fedayeen suicide bomber, posing as a taxi driver, detonates his taxi at an American checkpoint, taking five soldiers with him and injuring others, in the first act of this kind since the invasion began.
Washington and London speak with two voices; Rumsfeld denies what is confirmed on the ground: a temporary operational pause of a few days (battlefield commanders talk about 3 to 4 weeks), while London suggests that positions are being consolidated to allow for reinforcements to arrive.
Without sound, which means no war movie-style music and no outlandish comments from the news anchors (on [Portuguese] national television), we see British soldiers searching houses on the outskirts of Basra and taking some prisoners or controlling civilians trying to leave the city in search of water and food for their families. They are mostly men. A large number of them, on their return, are prevented from entering the city (where their families await them). They have been detained by the British for four days and are losing patience. The nervousness, in some cases extreme, of the young British soldiers is evident and indicative that the situation is far from being under control.
Further north, an American column (...) advances under the cover of night. (...) Tracer rounds fire from the column's armored vehicles on both sides of the road. Suddenly, a huge flash! One of the cars appears to have been hit head-on. At the same time, the image is cut. It's not a live broadcast, of course (these must be images from yesterday).
The decision not to take the cities caused panic and revolt among the Iraqis. Under the pretext of weakening enemy troops, the coalition made sure to cut off water and electricity to the besieged cities, and as a result, any kind of inbound humanitarian aid is stopped. 

[inserted photo]

A British soldier controls an Iraqi woman on the outskirts of Basra at a time when its residents are trying to escape the besieged city.
Sunday, March 30, 2003. Image: AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus
On TSF (Portuguese radio), Lobo Xavier and Pacheco Pereira demonstrate how to deal with the fait accompli of the invasion: "The proposal to withdraw troops at this point is pure demagogy - it leads to nothing" or "The allies do not enter Iraqi cities to avoid causing casualties among the population, this much is evident," are just two examples of how the "Flashback" [title of the radio show] is nothing more than the radio broadcast of café conversations between ignorants. You can "live" recall the wisdom spouted by these pseudo "opinion makers" right here.

[link published to]
(Flashback, TSF, Sunday, March 30, 2003)

And it went on for months of war. And disappointment. At some point, everyone had boots on the ground in Iraq. Portugal's selection at the time was like baffling! Of all our military and para-military units, the one the Portuguese government saw fit to send to Iraq, as part of the coalition forces, was the fucking National Republican Guard. I shit you not. Named exactly like Saddam Hussein's shock troops. Pretty neat, huh? Even fucking Kazakhstan sent 29 troops. And then, as sure as the sun coming up, it all went away, and only George W. Bush and Tony Blair were still pushing the damn thing forward, as illustrated so perfectly by George Michael's "Shoot the Dog". It was over, and boy was America not having it! The fucking French abandoned the war effort? No more fucking french fries! Take that, you fucking frogs! Do you even realize how fucking stupid America looked back then, as seen from Europe? Seriously, do you?

 

But what really hit me like a freight train was the fact that 9/11 washed away not just the stupidity Europeans attributed to America, but also the American government's insidious cruelty. It really did. We all put those aside, and it was like we had no memory of what happened after the invasion of Kuwait by the exact same Saddam Hussein, back in 1990. But it came back to me real fast.

And, to me, it had a face and a name: Madeleine fucking Albright. CBS 60 Minutes, 1996. Question by Lesley Stahl: “We have heard that half a million [Iraqi] children have died. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima, and, you know, is the price worth it?” Answer by Madeleine Albright: “I think that is a very hard choice but the price, we think, the price is worth it.” Sure! Make it a round million. Fuck it, make it two million, why not?

 

It was all going to hell. The war had no end in sight, the enormous asinine display of how to be a dumbfuck by Dubya, on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, on May 2003, while a banner hovered over his head as he made his victory speech, reading "Mission Accomplished". Remember that? How did that one work out? The examples of all the things that went terribly wrong in Iraq seemed never to end, like a recurrent nightmare with new sights and sounds, but the exact same feeling. And just as the Gold Star families began to rise in number, other facts started to transpire. The number of Arab casualties. 650,000 dead between 2003 and 2006 alone. If you think the Iraqi army had over 700,000 men in 2003, you must be one of those who believed in sniper goats. It was abysmal. The war was officially declared "over" ten years later. You do the math. On both sides. But let me break down our side for you. According to official DOD numbers, 6,859 Americans lost their lives in the War on Terror, up to December of 2014. Nearly 7,000 Gold Stars hanging on someone's house, all over America. 

The sacrifices our men and women at arms make for their country are independent of the rights or wrongs of politics. They go where we, the people, send them. And they do their duty as expected, for they pledge an oath of honor to serve us, wherever we decide to send them, for whatever reason. Their blood was, is, and forever will be on our hands. Not on the hands of the politicians who send them to die, and not on the hands of whatever Commander in Chief they happen to have when their marching orders come. On our hands. For it is we who elect the politicians. It is we who choose their Commander in Chief. Make no fucking mistake about that. And if you did not vote, don't dare say it's not on you. It is on you! At least some of those who voted tried to pick a better man or woman for the job. You, who wasted your right to vote, didn't even bother about the fate of our troops, or the fate of those who they would inevitably kill in war.

War is hell. That's their reason. You, who did not vote, have no reason, and certainly no excuse. But, myself included, neither do any of us, even if we voted for the right one, the just one, the one we needed, because if he or she was not elected, we didn't do enough.

If you are still reading this, congratulations. There is still hope. But wait, I didn't mention my fucked up ride down the "Loose Change" hole, the Noam Chomsky books on 9/11 "inside job", the "demand answers" shit show. Oh, yeah. That which you criticize, and despise? I was in it, neck deep. You have no clue what you are talking about. For a while, I entertained the notion that "asking questions" about 9/11 was necessary. So I bought the damn official Nine Eleven Commission Report, and read it. And I also was interested in the infamous documentary written and directed by Dylan Avery and produced by Korey Rowe, Jason Bermas, and Matthew Brown. I was corresponding with Tim Sparke, who was involved in the third edition of the damned thing, for fucks sake, and even sent a copy I burned myself on a DVD to José Mourinho, the renowned F.C. Porto and Chelsea F.C soccer coach, a Champions League winner, no less. So, yeah, been there done that, asked my own questions and told them all to fuck off. Pricks.

I like questions, only good questions, and the answers better not be "because the CIA does that all the time". Don't say that to me. You have no fucking clue what the CIA does, you are just a douchebag in your mother's basement. Grow up.

Grief is a long process, and I came out of it in 2008, by the pen and the word of a man named Barack Hussein Obama. A black man. He made me believe that America, as a Nation as well as a People, was redeemable. She could look back and endure the facts. Face the crimes committed alongside her glories, learn and move forward. A black man was elected President of the United States (*). There was hope. I could not vote for him yet. I became a citizen later on. But he was one of the reasons I aspired to become an American. Because once, he paused during a speech, February 4th, 2010, and said something extraordinary. His words would stay with me, comfort me and give me a sense of pride in becoming an American, at last. "This is what we do, as Americans, in times of trouble. We unite, recognizing that such crises call on all of us to act, recognizing that there but for the grace of God go I.", he said as I watched. This is what we do, as Americans. This is what we must do. And keep doing it, until we win our future back.

 

[finis]

(*) The Wide Receiver. (see blogpost here).

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