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Well, they finished it
Jul. 22nd, 2004 12:38 pmThe Septermber 11th Committee or whatever they are officially called have finished their work. Check it out on NYTimes or CNN.com, 'cause I'm too focused on getting this down without getting upset to link you.
Yeah, so, reading the Times' summary of the findings didn't really register with me. I mean, I read it, I could tell you what it said--how we ignored some pretty obvious hints, about the terrorists' weak spots in their plan, the non-partisan and toothless nature of the report (need I say that no president at all, let alone the current one, was faulted?)--but it just didn't register. I looked at what the essence of it was and wanted to cry:
....these attacks could have been prevented.
No, the article steers clear of assessing this fact, makes a point of saying 'there was no way to know if blah blah and blah could have stopped the attacks,' but that doesn't matter. In some alternate universe, those attacks didn't happen because Clinton and Dubya listened to intel and some security guard in Washington said to themselves, "You know what? I just don't think these guys setting off the metal detector was a fluke." The point is that there was a chance, and in this reality, we blew it. No, we didn't, not us as citizens, but we were let down by the people we trusted.
And all I could think about, what really, really made me sad, was that there is no more of that world before September 11th, 2001. Not any more. I thought about it when I thought about the possibility of the attacks being prevented, thought about what it would have been like if that year of college before the attacks had kept going into this year. Just what if the worst thing ever was the scandal in Florida and just what if it was still funny and quaint that GW Bush worked 9-to-5 as opposed to the work-a-holic Clinton?
The saddest part was that I couldn't do it. I have a pretty good imagination and I couldn't, even for a moment, divine what the world would be like now. Worse, I started to get teary and mad at myself for being so stupid: how could I just wish away what happened? No one could, wake up and quit dreaming. But that was the thing, I couldn't even dream that the towers were still there to this day, that my Dad didn't have to work in Midtown for a year and a half, that so many people were gone. Loss is a black hole, a void, and it sucks things in. However, even Stephen Hawking has recently admitted it's not a just a void that never lets anything out. Loss lets stuff escape, just like a real black hole, it's just that what gets out is horribly mangled as a result. The past, that year at college that was fun and fancy-free seems like walking in the land of sweet ignorance. Remembering September 11th is dangerous because it's so dark and raw--when people say 'did you do anything to commemorate?' or ask for moments of silence, I start to cringe because I won't remember correctly--I'll remember mangled, I'll remember fear, I'll remember crying, I'll remember hurting, I'll remember everything but it will be so much worse because I will be remembering from a point of thinking I'm safe and then realize that in no way, shape or form am I any bit safer now--those memories still hurt and the future could be worse.
However, not all mangled memories are bad. Even remembering back to this past winter, when they caught Saddam, I can remember how I felt at the time, but I can't understand myself. At the time, I'd just gotten in from Australia, John Howard was on TV in the States (which screwed with my system almost as bad as jet lag seeing as I don't recall ever seeing him on TV at home before), and I couldn't believe what they were saying. I remember thinking 'oh no, now we'll never get rid of Dubya' because he'd come through, he'd gotten his man. "Ladies and gentlemen: we got him." Looking back now, with him still struggling to justify the deaths of people who are not officially at war any longer, to publically denounce movies that disagree with him because he has little else he can do to improve his image, to prove the WMD angle (helped by the commission somewhat but they still ultimately deny tangible evidence of a connection), I can't believe I was worried. I was right to at the time, but hindsight distorts. Distorting that memory makes me hope that maybe others are wondering, too, wondering how they ever believed in GW, maybe. Maybe. Dear Lord, please...
Yeah, so, reading the Times' summary of the findings didn't really register with me. I mean, I read it, I could tell you what it said--how we ignored some pretty obvious hints, about the terrorists' weak spots in their plan, the non-partisan and toothless nature of the report (need I say that no president at all, let alone the current one, was faulted?)--but it just didn't register. I looked at what the essence of it was and wanted to cry:
....these attacks could have been prevented.
No, the article steers clear of assessing this fact, makes a point of saying 'there was no way to know if blah blah and blah could have stopped the attacks,' but that doesn't matter. In some alternate universe, those attacks didn't happen because Clinton and Dubya listened to intel and some security guard in Washington said to themselves, "You know what? I just don't think these guys setting off the metal detector was a fluke." The point is that there was a chance, and in this reality, we blew it. No, we didn't, not us as citizens, but we were let down by the people we trusted.
And all I could think about, what really, really made me sad, was that there is no more of that world before September 11th, 2001. Not any more. I thought about it when I thought about the possibility of the attacks being prevented, thought about what it would have been like if that year of college before the attacks had kept going into this year. Just what if the worst thing ever was the scandal in Florida and just what if it was still funny and quaint that GW Bush worked 9-to-5 as opposed to the work-a-holic Clinton?
The saddest part was that I couldn't do it. I have a pretty good imagination and I couldn't, even for a moment, divine what the world would be like now. Worse, I started to get teary and mad at myself for being so stupid: how could I just wish away what happened? No one could, wake up and quit dreaming. But that was the thing, I couldn't even dream that the towers were still there to this day, that my Dad didn't have to work in Midtown for a year and a half, that so many people were gone. Loss is a black hole, a void, and it sucks things in. However, even Stephen Hawking has recently admitted it's not a just a void that never lets anything out. Loss lets stuff escape, just like a real black hole, it's just that what gets out is horribly mangled as a result. The past, that year at college that was fun and fancy-free seems like walking in the land of sweet ignorance. Remembering September 11th is dangerous because it's so dark and raw--when people say 'did you do anything to commemorate?' or ask for moments of silence, I start to cringe because I won't remember correctly--I'll remember mangled, I'll remember fear, I'll remember crying, I'll remember hurting, I'll remember everything but it will be so much worse because I will be remembering from a point of thinking I'm safe and then realize that in no way, shape or form am I any bit safer now--those memories still hurt and the future could be worse.
However, not all mangled memories are bad. Even remembering back to this past winter, when they caught Saddam, I can remember how I felt at the time, but I can't understand myself. At the time, I'd just gotten in from Australia, John Howard was on TV in the States (which screwed with my system almost as bad as jet lag seeing as I don't recall ever seeing him on TV at home before), and I couldn't believe what they were saying. I remember thinking 'oh no, now we'll never get rid of Dubya' because he'd come through, he'd gotten his man. "Ladies and gentlemen: we got him." Looking back now, with him still struggling to justify the deaths of people who are not officially at war any longer, to publically denounce movies that disagree with him because he has little else he can do to improve his image, to prove the WMD angle (helped by the commission somewhat but they still ultimately deny tangible evidence of a connection), I can't believe I was worried. I was right to at the time, but hindsight distorts. Distorting that memory makes me hope that maybe others are wondering, too, wondering how they ever believed in GW, maybe. Maybe. Dear Lord, please...
