The Last Three Days

I Want to Torture YOU!


On the anniversary of September 11th one would expect some sanctimony, a lot of political posturing, unsanctimonious press coverage, and a generally quiet public, with most taking in the day with some reflection. Barflys across the United States probably decided that Monday was a good day for an early drink, to accompany the gripes about media organs wearing this tragedy like a Mardi Gras crucifiction float, the jagged, bravery of firefighters and ER teams, their pink faces among the wreckage like wounds, the walls of paper, the daydream of falling bodies, the grain of George W. Bush's face as he made his solemn vows, the clouds, the televisions, and the televisions still staring at them in the bar, the fuzzy eye that we all stared into five years ago and wondered, for most of us, and felt huge. I was working in a bar Monday, and some of these things crossed our minds, but not much. It has after all been some time and for many of us the wounds have come a long way. But they haven't dissapeared, for me at least. Only rarely am I irretrievably compelled to binge on the imagery, watching footage of the plane crashing into the tower over and over again on Youtube, the falling bodies never hitting the ground, the towers never really falling because they would be resurected again moments later, from one angle, another, my eyes like fingers running over the length of a scar, tearing at the rise and corrugation of it, twisting the skin. This is the awful fantasy that this tragedy presents us: the innability to bury the dead, the blind belief in a leader who replays the pit-stench fear of the day like a human recorder on loop, the orderly repetition of flags like a nationwide quilt, the bleeding miraculous idol of ourselves, the belief that if somehow we can conceive of the wrong then it will somehow resurrect the mass body of the rubble.

I stayed away from the media altogether Monday, and thought mostly about what I've said. I began reading the network news and blog features on Tuesday, only to feel anger clenching my chest. What a couple of days. Pakistan has decided to stop what amounts to the criminilization of rape in their country, which is the repeal of Islamic law which says women must produce four male eyewitnesses to the rape, or be prosecuted for adultery, an offfense punishable by prison; then there is the war in Afghanistan which was won handily and now, due to military incompetence, particularly regarding the "work" of Dyncorps Corporation there in burning the poppy fields of farmers and leaving them to starve, which recalls the finale of Frankenstein, only that seems too optimistic, now is being lost in slow motion. Worst of all, the president acting like a thug in his interview with Matt Laeur, who stood tall against him, of all people to surprise me this week. I didn't realize that on the anniversary of 9-11 he is pushing for a bill, which seems crafted in the strange basement of Cheney's mind, to bypass the Geneva convention. This is how it slips away, nearly invisible shades of grey. And Bush telling Lauer "Look, I protect you and your family at night, Matt, don't forget that." I can't hate the man, but I can be frustrated and God knows I will be. When 9-11 happened, I wondered whether that flight had been the one my parents, also flying out of Boston, were on. For the several hours I waited for their call I pondered the desire for revenge I felt, the futility of it, the moral stupdity of abstract pacifism, the inhumanity of waging war. I know Bush changed that moment too, but I think mainly the bully in him, his unthinking strength, was sanctified in his mind, given purpose by God. Five years later he celebrates the intelligence failure that was 9-11 with the flatulant trumpeting of false intelligence, as does Cheney, regarding the link between Saddam and Al Queda, and tells lies of political expediency to cover his zeal for breaking down the Geneva Convention, waterboarding it in legal babble until it says whatever he wants it to say, even as he ruins Blair, his truest ally in the war on terror. This is not about me or my job at the bar, or the others bathed in TV light wherever they are in America, it is about George Bush's God and Osama Bin Laden's God, and neither God endowed with the intelligence of belief. What a stupid entry for the history books these days are passing through.

The New Confusion

As President Bush continues his series of speeches concerning the Iraqi war leading up to the 9/11 anniversary, the Senate Intelligence Committee has found that there is "no link" between Al Queda and the Iraqi government. The committee found that Saddam and Al Queda were of completely different ideological "poles," with the Iraqi government repeatedly refusing requests to meet with any Al Queda representatives. What does this mean? As Tony Snow said, it is "nothing new", perhaps the most self-implicating soundbyte the administration has produced recently. If in fact this conclusion is nothing new to the administration, then Bush has been knowingly misleading the American public by making statements implying that there was in fact a link, and continues to do so across the country. It would seem that trumpeting poor intelligence is perhaps the worst way to honor the 9/11 dead.

One of the most articulate and usually informed neo-con is columnist Cristopher Hitchens. This new finding means that his main justification for the Iraq war over the last few years was predicated on a lie. Hitchen's response may be implied by his recent Slate column, where he shifts focus to Wassim Al-Zahawie, the Iraqi emisary to Niger. In his usual flare, Hitchens boasts of his ability to distill Zahawie's "clouds of verbiage" to give us the facts: that Zahawie met with Ambassador Rolf Ekeus, represented Iraq at the IAEA conference, and went to Hans Blix's WMD conference in Cairo. Hitchens concludes these interesting but not necesarily indicting facts with a crude implication; that Zahawie "stands by his earlier claim, which was that his visit to Niger in 1999 was solely for the purpose of persuading the Niger authorities to break the U.N. embargo on flights to Baghdad." This is the latest article in which Hitchens attempts to undercut the importance of the Wilson leak case, which Hitchens has referred to as "fantasy", despite an independent prosecutor finding the case quite different.

While the argument for Zarkhawie's connection to the Hussein regime grows dimmer, I think Hitchen's emphasis on Zahawie represents perhaps the next phase of Iraqi war justifications we will see in America. Rather then get to the bottom of anything, since if there were evidence to be gathered of Yellow Cake perusal on the part of the Hussein Regime, probably the CIA and not only neo-con pundits would be examining it. But the object of Hitchen's obfuscations on this point are not meant to get to the bottom of anything, but merely present the rhetorical flourish of trying to get to the bottom of things, meanwhile spreading the burden of proof thinner and thinner over the network of ambassadors, terrorists and beaurocrats, in a paranoid vision of culpability which leads endlessly back to an elusive Hussein-born threat to attack the Western world. A new confusion is what neo-cons have in their arsenal, and Hitchen's ultimately ironic article is a cloud of verbiage itself, meant to bewilder the opponents of his flawed and vulnerable ideology concerning this war. In a Zizekian argument, Hitchens would be one of the pathological supporters of this war, whose ultimate determination to "stand, train and kill" in Iraq is justified by the unjustifiable. If the offense Hussein comitted against the United States is so hard to find, at this point it seems wise to allow the possibility, and even probability, that there was no intial, immediate threat at all. Not to apologize for Hussein, but one can only say good riddance in his regard for so long.

The question for Hitchens, and Bush himself, is not whether they believe the war is going well, or is winnable (anyone of sound mind knows "winning" has nothing to do with this war), but how many lives the 9/11 tragedy justifies us to take. As was rightly asked of Muslims angry over the recent Israel/Palestine conflict; why was the outrage so strong over Muslims dying at the hands of Jews, when in nearby Iraq many more Muslims are being slaughtered daily by other Muslims? Is there likewise a cruel gap between a humanitarian vision and the United States (and Britain)'s nationalist ideology when it comes to the balance between Iraq and ourselves? In every war there is some such gap, that fills slowly with faceless, collateral bodies. Is there a point when there is no more room in that gap, when the dead overflow and cannot be ignored?