The End of Civilization

[The2ndWheel]

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0911-33.htm

To return in memory to that beautiful blue morning is to visit a lost country, a place as beloved as it is gone. The first thing to recall is how alike we Americans were in what we felt that day. Only months before, in the acrimonious aftermath of the 2000 presidential election, the nation had seemed so divided. It would seem so again. But during the hours of Sept. 11, 2001, we were brought together as we hadn't been in years, a people bound by fear and trembling. What a few saw in person, and what the vast population saw on television, was a glimpse of the human future to which, ordinarily, we are willfully blind.

It is important to distinguish between the event and the interpretation of it. The experience of 9/11 was one thing, the meanings imposed upon it afterward are another. Those meanings (``the clash of civilizations"; a Manichaean good-evil polarity; the rule of law versus the rush to war; blood for oil; imperial hubris or democracy now; Israel as cause or effect) are in dispute. America's enemy has triumphed already in the way Americans regard one another as enemies.

Abstracting from such painfully contested interpretations, can we return to the event that set all of this in motion? Today, can we leave the conflict aside to ask, Why was this nation's first reaction to the catastrophe of New York-Washington-Pennsylvania defined by the empathy we felt for one another? Indeed, empathy that day was nearly universal, including much of the world's instant identification with American anguish. Before we knew anything about Al Qaeda, bin Laden, the Cheney-Wolfowitz war plan, the new threat of global terrorism, the axis of evil -- the most important aspect of the event had already occurred. This aspect, however, the interpretations would ignore.

[Freedom_from_Chains]

1. ..

"Some (including me) have said that an inch below the surface of our horrified reaction was a long-standing but subliminal dread of a nuclear war, as if the smoke above Ground Zero were a mushroom cloud, the Manhattan Project come at last to Manhattan."

This is what Ward Churchill was talking about in his essay "When Chickens Come Home to Roost," which unfortunately most people did not understand. You just can't go running around the world doing whatever you want without there being consequences.

[yurbud]

5. connect people's belief that Iraq War will cause more terrorism to past

connect the dots for them.

Were people like Ward Churchill wrong, or just looking at details that most Americans don't but the people in the affected countries can't help but see?

[Freedom_from_Chains]

6. I thought Churchill was dead on the money.

When you oppress a group of people long enough, eventually they fight back. Seemed simple enough to me.

[yurbud]

7. that's Queen Elizabeth on the money and she's still alive--at least as

much as she ever was.

[bhikkhu]

8. or: what does it take to remove "the fight" from a population

Chomsky might say, what does it take to impose upon a people "the humility to submit to civil rule". There are plenty of examples of failed attempts in recent times - looking at the often violent ends to colonial adventures. One "success" that does come to mind is our Phillipine expliots. Around the dawn of the 20th century we took (purchased) the islands from Spain and began a brutal occupation, a scandal in those days, even without any easy means of communication. Some estimates are that 25% of the population was killed putting down a wide-scale insurgency, but then it seems that somewhat civil rule ensued.

So perhaps that is a ballpark figure for what it takes - kill 25% of the population. Far too great a cost - and what sort of monsters would it make us?

[kimmerspixelated]

2. Sometimes I think

the end of civilization happened when Georgie-porgy stole the first election, enabling the PNAC to move ahed.

[yurbud]

4. yep

[MISSDem]

3. A moment in time - in Memphis, Tennessee a few days

after September 11, 2001 this happened. Memphis is notorious for bad, rude, aggressive drivers but at a traffic light one day the American flag fell from one of the vehicles and traffic all four ways stopped completely while the person retrieved the flag. Would that we could be that way again.