Making Sense of the Senseless

The Real Lessons of 9/11

By Christian Probasco, 9-11-08

Several articles have already been published under the above title. Former Alaska Senator and supposed libertarian Mike Gravel had this to say about the lessons we should have learned:

“For decades the U.S Government has committed horrible acts around the world, often in secret but always in the name of the American people. In every region on earth, our government has overthrown or undermined democracies, aided brutal dictatorships, and funded guerrilla wars under the guise of fighting for freedom. Until the American people grapple with this fact, our government will continue to engage in activities that destabilize the world community and bring pain and suffering to millions, including our own citizens.”

Gary Kamiya of Salon published an article with the same title last year, which went something like this:

“Bush’s America responded to 9/11 by lashing out. We chose vigilantism over justice, instinct over reason. Bush demanded that America play the role of the angry, righteous avenger, and America followed him. But we were not taking vengeance on the guy who attacked us but on somebody standing on the corner.”

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul’s observations, meanwhile, jibe with my own in some particulars:

“Even though 40 billion dollars are spent on intelligence gathering each year, the process failed us. It’s likely to be said that what we need is more money and more efficiency. Yet, that approach fails to recognize that depending on government agencies to be efficient is a risky assumption.”

Imagine U.S. intelligence agencies having no idea, despite warnings, that a fairly large cell of terrorists has plans to fly passenger planes into civilian and government targets on U.S. soil.  The airport screeners don’t detain any of these terrorists when they board their planes. The terrorists take control of their flights using only box cutters, and possibly mace or pepper spray. The crew has been instructed by the FAA not to resist them. Three of the planes are flown into buildings and the forth is deliberately crashed when the hijackers believe they will not be able to fulfill their mission.  New York’s Twin Towers collapse after the planes’ impacts.

Imagine our president hiding in a bunker until the coast is clear.  In retaliation, he overthrows the government which harbored the terrorists’ organization, but isn’t able to capture or kill the group’s leader.  Then he invades another nation which had nothing to do with the attacks, because he happens to have the plans for such an invasion lying on his desk.  Meanwhile, the nation from which most of the hijackers originated, some of whose citizens may have helped fund their efforts, goes completely unpunished.  In fact, our president withdraws a military base from their soil, as per the terrorist organization’s original demands.

Imagine our “representatives” in Washington awarding broader powers to the organizations which screwed up in the first place, through legislation that no Congressman or Senator had read before voting on its passage.

If you had run the above scenario past me on September 10th, 2001, I would have said that your box was missing a few crayons.  I was doing an audit on a store in Salt Lake City when the planes hit and was told what had happened by a trustworthy Mormon associate. At the time, I thought he was on crack. Looking back, I now believe this is the best evidence we have that our universe consists of branching “parallel” realities, because we have ended up somewhere far, far from the probabilistic stem.

Now, what makes 9/11 a Western issue, in addition to being a national one?  The nature of the hijacking incidents fall at the moral nexus of old and new Western values.  Note Kamiya’s pejorative equation of vigilantism with “instinct” and “lashing out.” I’m pretty sure he didn’t intend to slight people who believe in “Old West” values, but he assumed that vigilantism can’t be synonymous with justice.  I seem to encounter this sort of knee-jerk reaction all the time, usually (but not always!) from pathologically authoritarian types.  The kind who really do believe that your boss, political representative, doctor, local policeman, bishop, etc. has, or can have, your best interests in mind, even when he/she is not directly under your employ, or that “our” legal system was designed to work in the public’s favor, rather than the state’s (they are nowhere near synonymous). 

In fact, had the pilots, stewards, stewardesses and passengers—every boy, girl, woman and man--on those four flights, immediately practiced Old West, cowboy-style vigilantism on the hijackers, as they should have, several thousand American lives, and possibly tens of thousands of Afghan and Iraqi lives, would have been spared.  And a war, and possibly two wars, might have been averted. And justice surely would have prevailed. The great remaining question for me is, why didn’t they act before it was too late?

It seems to me that the real lesson of 9/11, besides that terrible things can happen to innocent people, is not to depend too much on law enforcement agencies for your safety, or for rescue, and not to assume that government policies, such as, “switch the plane on autopilot and hand the keys to the terrorists” were necessarily developed for your benefit.  In regards to the aftermath, the lesson may be that we have to be more cognizant of what our government, no matter who is running it, might do to us for our own protection. 

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