On The 20th Anniversary of 9/11

How Did We Get Here?

I've written this before. I thought the 1990s were great. It was great in the wake of the end of the Cold War and many things seemed possible. Movies were fun, rock was resurgent, new things were going on in music, books were fun and interesting. It was like a flowering of ideas after a very long repression. I used to wonder how is this beautiful era going to end? I guess we found out with two things. The first was the election of Dubya, aka George W Bush as President. It was a cliff hanger that went to the supreme court and somehow the Republican lawyers wrested the outcome from Al Gore. It was the moment the Republicans allowed themselves to overtly break the rules and law to have their way. It would turn out to be an appetiser for the kind of shenanigans to follow. 

The second thing was 9/11. After the Twin Towers came down, all bets were off. The world changed overnight and suddenly we were 'at war' with 'terror'. A flood of rhetoric washed out from the White House that led to things like the war in Afghanistan (probably legit) and the Marin Iraq *definitely not legit) as well as a slew of anti-terror laws and overreach by surveillance. The last two decades continue to be marred by the responses to 9/11 which were more often than not over-reactions. Yes, nearly 4000 people died and a whole slew of system failures were exposed as well as giving birth to the internet conspiracy theory culture, but it has to be said the trillions spent on prosecuting the foreign wars and surveilling the domestic population is a ridiculously expensive price to pay. 

In that time America watered down its education and health to move money to its military industrial complex, and essentially created a generation of under-educated idiots susceptible to conspiracy theories on the internet. The worst aspects of that as blowback could be seen in the storming of the US Capitol earlier this year. 

Let's say that is all by-the-by. 9/11 happened because of a string of incompetent decisions as well and lack of leadership to act on reports. The FBI had reports it didn't follow up. The CIA delivered reports to the White House that the White House did not follow up. It was so slack entire areas of conspiracy theories have grown up around them but the essential truth is that the government of the day, the Bush Jr Administration, was largely asleep at the wheel. And when the dust settled, the republican administration used it as an opportunity to overreach on surveillance and expand powers. They say in politics one should never let a good crisis go to waste, but that sort of cynicism was exactly what characterised the events that followed. To protect democracy, they decided to circumvent democracy. We are still living with the consequences of those terrible decisions. 

My God What Have We Done?

There is a leader of Islamist thought Aga Khan IV who believes that 9/11 is a direct result of the world community ignoring the plight of the human tragedy of Afghanistan at the time. It is hard to argue with it if you remember what Afghanistan under the Taliban the first time around was like. It was repressive, regressive, iconoclastic, and most certainly toxic and misogynistic in a way that is off the scales for contemporary people living civilised society. 

Throughout the 1990s we sort of let all of that slide. They were very much on the nose but we had a way of pretending it was too far away to matter. I am certain that we will fall into that mindset again soon enough, but for the record most people didn't know where Kabul was on the map until the Americans finally sent troops.   

I think about that indifference a lot. In stark contrast to the globalised congeniality of the 1990s, there were plenty of people suffering under terrible regimes. We were very casual about the plight of people in the islamic world, partly because we didn't want to tell them how to run their governments. The world was celebrating and partying to the end of the Cold War. Bad Islamist governance in Kabul was like a distant problem we really didn't want to know about. 

There is a very telling episode of 'Seinfeld' from the 1990s that illustrates this point. It's the episode titled 'The Visa'.  It aired in January 1993 which feels like yesterday in some weird way; at least a lot closer to 9/11 than where we are today.  

George meets a lawyer named Cheryl (Maggie Han) who thinks he's very funny. When he tells Jerry and Elaine, they enthusiastically plan a double date, much to George's dismay, as he imagines himself being upstaged by Jerry. At the restaurant, Elaine asks Cheryl for advice on dealing with the lawsuit from Ping, the Chinese food delivery boy whom Elaine injured in "The Virgin". Cheryl reveals that she is the prosecuting attorney in the case, as Ping is her cousin. Jerry and Elaine joke about this coincidence, making Cheryl laugh hysterically. While she is away, George makes them promise not to be funny around her. Jerry overdoes it, making comments that are so morbid that Cheryl is depressed by the end of the date.

At Jerry's apartment, Kramer returns early from baseball fantasy camp, where he accidentally punched Mickey Mantle. Elaine sees Cheryl with George and thanks her for persuading Ping to drop the case. She says that she did that because they all seemed like such nice people. As Elaine is giving Jerry the mail that she has been holding for him while he was out of town, Babu Bhatt, the Pakistani who Jerry tried to help in "The Cafe", is hauled off by the INS. Jerry had helped him get a job and the apartment down the hall. Jerry and Elaine discover Babu's Visa renewal form in Jerry's belated mail; it had been delivered to Jerry's address by mistake. They go to the jail where Babu is being held. When they tell him what happened he becomes angry. Jerry promises to straighten things out.

Jerry has lunch with Cheryl, where he continues his morose façade, so that he can ask her to solve Babu's problems with the INS. When she sees George, she confesses that she is attracted to Jerry's dark, disturbed personality. George, realizing his scheme has backfired, tells her the truth. Stunned at this revelation, she gets up and leaves.

At Jerry's apartment, Elaine sees Ping and thanks him for dropping the case. He sneers and tells her the case is back on because they all made Cheryl mad due to Jerry's deception. Babu's brother enters and says Babu has been deported, since Cheryl neglected to follow through on the favor after George's revelation. Back in Pakistan, Babu swears eternal vengeance against Jerry.

Ouch. At the time I watched this episode, I really felt for Babu. I laughed - but I knew Babu's problems were very real, as opposed to the decidedly trivial preoccupations and obsessions of all of the characters in 'Seinfeld'. The reality gap as it were, was what made it very black humour. It turned out to be very prescient. When 9/11 happened, Babu came to mind. 9/11 was Babu exacting vengeance upon us for our indifference. 

How Did We End Up There?  

We may ask ourselves how it is we were still stationing troops in Afghanistan all these years later, until last month. The protracted history of bad decisions goes a long way back, but it may point to the funding and arming of Mujihadeen resistance fighters against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. By training those people and arming them, and then beating the Soviets out of Afghanistan they decided that the West could be beaten. And in abandoning Afghanistan to its own devices in the 1990s led to a Taliban government which saw fit to harbour Osama bin Laden and other terrorists. Without going into the various theories - conspiracy and otherwise - about whether Al Qaeda was really a thing or merely a designation/conflagration by the CIA, it is true that Afghanistan as a state went rogue and allowed itself to sponsor terrorism abroad, and it was this lack of judgement that led to 9/11 and the subsequent war and occupation of Afghanistan. 

That's all on one side. The other side is the utter lack of judgement on the side of the what became known as the Coalition of the Willing. That was the countries led by the USA that was happy to march into both Afghanistan and Iraq. Australia's part in it is pretty sorry. We sent our best troops and as they stayed and stayed, they became psychopaths on safari, committing acts that can only be described as war crimes. Nobody thought we would be there for so long, but without judgment there was no way of pulling out of Afghanistan without pulling down the state of Afghanistan we set up in the wake of the Taliban. 

It took a President even worse than George W Bush to get the USA out of Afghanistan and his solution was simply to give up Afghanistan to the very same Taliban the USA ousted in 2002. The mind boggles. It's as if Donald Trump slept through 9/11 and missed it completely. Or didn't really care. Maybe he did us all a favour in ending a forever war, and we are all looking that gift horse in the mouth. Maybe Afghanistan is better off under the Taliban, as a beacon of intolerance and religious extremism and medieval legalism. After all, why should we spend money on a place that doesn't want to conform to a civilised world? Maybe we can enjoy a decade of no wars; because I feel like we should maybe party a little bit like it's 1999, once this pandemic lifts. 

There are people in Afghanistan who are angry the West left, and let them in that terrible Dark Ages limbo. Yet it is easily arguable that we shouldn't have been there at all for as long as we were. At some point we can't fight the geopolitical gravity forever. Whatever goes up to Afghanistan must come down. 

So Will It Happen Again?

With any luck, with all the civil liberties we have given up, and all the compromises to our democracy, the one thing that won't happen again is a 9/11. Is it a high price to pay? Probably in as much as it still doesn't guarantee it won't happen again - but it is highly unlikely. Bitter lessons were learnt at all levels of government everywhere. 

As of that day, governments have given licences to themselves to compromise your privacy in exchange for security, and maybe we're all safer for it, but we are definitely not better for it. And I for one believe it when military people say we will be back in Afghanistan soon enough. It's just a terrible enough situation to draw us in. With any luck it will be the Chinese who end up trying to sort out that mess instead of us. That, would be a better outcome. Let somebody else suffer Afghanistan instead. 

Out of Afghanistan

End Of A Terrible Era 

Everything about the war in Afghanistan sucks. It went on for so long people kind of got inured to this phenomenon out there in the middle of Eurasia whereby USA and its allies stationed their troops, flew combat missions, trained a largely low-motivation Afghan military and for years seemed to feed the Hollywood fodder of a seemingly endless, pointless, witless Forever War. It got so bad it made a defective POTUS like Donald Trump look vaguely statesmanlike when he announced he was completely pulling out the American troops.Yes, the same president who thought sitting down with Kim Jong-Un was a good move. 

The cost of the war is staggering; the human carnage and damage is staggering; the very pointlessness of it is mind warping; and we have to wonder if any of it accomplished anything. We did learn a lot about the nature of war in the contemporary world. We can't go to war without legitimacy and this desire for legitimacy prohibits us from doing drastic terrible things. We can get all the air superiority win the world, but we cannot carpet bomb them all - we're not willing to do that any more. We say we want to win over hearts and minds, but the kinds of troopers we send over like the SAS seem to be high functioning psychopaths, out on a safari to shoot locals. There's no wining of any hearts and minds with all that. 

I've mentioned it elsewhere that the USA is not willing to pay for health and education in rebuilding Afghanistan because they don't even spend that money back home in places like Alabama and Louisiana. Why would they? So that shows to us that America probably shouldn't go marching into places it doesn't want to turning the 51st state of the USA.   

There's a weird irony that then day Kabul fell to the Taliban is also VJ day. Wars rarely end with any dignity or decorum. This one ends with the powers leaving behind a vacuum that will get filled by the flotsam and jetsam of world politics. The fearless prediction we can make is that the Taliban will rise to being a threat again. The Americans will go back again. There will be no plan next time either. 

How Do We Feel About This?

I started this blog way back when around the time they first sent troops to Afghanistan. Blogging was sort of new then, and it seemed like a fun thing to pass commentary upon. I was not a soldier, I was in do danger at all in this 'war on terror', so I had all the luxury in the world to snark away at the conduct of the conservative governments in USA and Australia as well as bitch about Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's ethically challenged Labour Government in the UK. Did the war affect me? It did in strange ways. I won't go into them all but basically I watched liberal democracy dismantle itself in the face of the boogeyman it created for itself. The arts and humanities got defunded over that time, and everybody seemed to lose interest in culture-as-national-project. In turn we've allowed neo-nazis and extremely rightists to gain access to the mainstream, and everybody seems to have forgotten about Marx and Engels. 

I have to admit, the going got so stupid around the early part of the last decade that I gave up commenting on politics. There's a certain kind of idiocy with leaders who choose ideological positioning over proper policy considerations, and such idiocies are too demeaning to analyse. If it can be said that you cannot polish a turd but you can roll fit in glitter; well, there's only so much rolling around the turd can take without losing shape. That's kind of how much our politics and polity devolved in the course of the Afghan War - it turned into a formless bit of turd.

In a way I am glad the USA is out of Afghanistan. It's no place to be, and no place to be dropping money. It is a thankless task to keep the peace in a country surrounded by countries that want to destabilise it or turn it into a puppet or colony. And truth be told it's hard to say for certain the Afghanis really liked having Americans there to keep the peace. The very fact that the Afghan government collapsed like a house of cards as the Allies headed for the door suggests the Afghanis themselves were far less serious about the value of the Peace being kept by the American presence. Now is the awful time of reckoning, The Taliban will come back and run their medieval government. There will be refugees headed for Europe and America and Australia. There will be leaky boats once more. We've lined ourselves up for another bout of history repeating. 

So What Now?

America will probably do a bit of soul searching about the twin follies waged by the George W Bush Administration. They really should. The failure is very real, although somewhat vague. As with Iraq, it was easy enough to dislodge the shitty government. What was hard was to set up a viable government in its wake. Worse still, they left the military there for a long time in a bid to shore up whatever democratic civil government they could. The fact that they did for nearly 2 decades may not actually be a straight up failure.

The Chinese government had talks with the Taliban. Presumably they want to back the Taliban government in the hopes of seeing stability. They might find the Taliban are a lot worse than having the Americans on their backdoor. After all, you're talking about a government founded on the idea that if you're not Islam, you're little people. Godless-Communists-As-Your-Friends might be a bit of a hard sell with these people. Your enemy of your enemy might be your friend, but something tells me the enemies of enemies like these might just be just another enemy. 

If there's one thing I'm willing to prognosticate upon, I think the Taliban will be just as dreadful this time through as they were in 1996-2001. It was a long time ago and people have short memories but, the Taliban were simply terrible. There will be pain.  

Last Thought On This Matter

You know what's amazing? There are still prisoners in Guantanamo Bay that date back to the early days of this war. 

The Torture Never Stops - Part 1001

David Hicks, Fighting For His Name

Long time readers will know I can't stand David Hicks. It's the one sticking point that makes me part ways with my fellow progressives. The illegitimacy of the wars and the charges and the torture at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay, are all things I agree that are terrible things. But every time Mary Kostakidis or some other progressive talking head gets on the TV and starts championing David Hicks' cause and claiming that what happened to him was unjust, I get cold feet and beset with the desire to run the other way with those cold feet.

The wave of sanctimonious gobbledegook that flowed in defence of the man was intolerable, at the time and even to this day. The only person who was in Hicks' corner that I could get behind was Major Mori who was the counsel assigned to defend David Hicks at the military tribunal. For him, I have an undying respect. David Hicks himself just leaves me cold. Now that his conviction has been overturned, there is talk of a government apology. Yet, much as I reviled the Howard government in its day and dislike this Abbott government even more, I can't help but agree with them when they say there won't be an apology coming from their government.

Have a quick look at this section of the article:

In a tense exchange with reporters at the end of the press conference, Mr Hicks hit out at his critics. 

"I think they're supporters of torture," Mr Hicks said. 

"The only thing that matters is what the US government has said." 

Asked what he was doing when he was picked up in Afghanistan, Mr Hicks replied: 

"Having a holiday." 

He said he wanted "to live a normal life and be a normal person".

Good Grief. 

I don't support torture, I'm against it. The "only thing that matters" to me is most definitely not what the US Government said or says. What he was doing in Afghanistan when he was picked up in the early days is contentious to this day. However we do know one thing. When the events of 9/11 were unfolding, we all went to work that day. We all went to school that day. We discharged our duties to society as was expected of us. Hicks chose to go fight with his mates in Afghanistan. That's how you get picked up by the US Marines. That's how you end up in Gitmo getting the iron sausage. I do think it was a travesty that kept him there, I think the military tribunal set up to try him was equally a travesty and I feel sorry for him he had to endure torture and the attendant legal circus. 

But I just can't think of a way to couch what happened to him other than he had it coming. It's exactly as John Lennon quipped, "nobody ever gets what they deserve, they only get what's coming to them". He walked right into it - it was his choice - and landed in hell. And now he wants an apology for his trouble? Please count me out, and please, not in my name. 

David Hicks should grow the fuck up and accept that what happened to him has to do with his own actions.  Somebody was going to pay for 9/11. The fact that he put himself into that picture is his own  stupid bloody fault, and it was no bloody accident. 

The Crappiness Of This New War

Nobody Expects The Spanish Inquisition

The old war of the 21st century, as in 'the Bush-Blair-Howard Misadventures In Iraq', (a.k.a. the Coalition Of The Unwitting Go To A Quagmire For A Bath) was characterised by a one-sided whup-ass of the industrially and technologically inferior Iraqi forces followed by years of door-to-door combat culminating in prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison. If it was meant to be morally edifying - and war rarely is such a thing - then the 'BBHMII' was a thoroughly miserable travesty in the morality stakes. Then they pinned it on a woman with low IQ and whistled by in their black limos. All  of which reminds us of the tremendous Monty Python sketch. Just as the Inquisitors start with fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, devotion to the Pope and red uniforms and then their claims degenerate in meaning, the 'BBHMII' started with Shock and Awe and eventually ended up with a brawling kind of war, the sort of which nobody could make any sense.

Then there is Guantanamo Bay prison where people are still kept without trial or warrants as somewhere between insane asylum of the 19th century and a torture chamber. Barack Obama came to power in 2008 promising to close the prison but of course it still exists today. One would think that Obama could easily and readily close that damnable institution by releasing all the prisoners with microchips in their skulls. At least the torture ought to end. The fact that it doesn't end is rather emblematic, and we come to realise Frank Zappa wasn't exactly kidding when he sang that Torture Never Stops. Yes, it's all been one long night of the iron sausage for all of us. It's hard to claim any moral ascendancy when what our side is offering is victimhood in a military prison in Cuba.

Now we're about to go back in and do it all over again, mostly because we can find even more moral revulsion in ISIL/ISOR than we could in Saddam Hussein. Not many people in parliament are expressing objections to the deep hypocrisy and great folly in going back to war in Iraq.

What we can deduce from all of this is that there are certain cultural tropes in our leadership and military that go right back to the Dark Ages, and despite our iPhones and internet connectivity and social media and Lady Gaga and Katy Perry freedoms, our leadership in war is ethically no better than the kind of medieval kings. It is no wonder that something claiming to be an Islamic State and a Caliphate becomes our opposite number and promptly started beheading people like this is the Fall of Constantinople, where the Ottomans fired chopped heads out of bronze canons. We are in essence replaying the nightmares of the past because it amuses us as entertainment in the news cycle.

They Think It's A Real Crusade, Not A Metaphorical One

Some weeks go I noticed ion Facebook that a couple of people with whom I went to school had served in Afghanistan (a.k.a 'The Other Crappy War of the 21st Century'). Couple of good old boys from Sydneys North Shore, 'Phil' and 'Potty' doing their bit for the cause of enduring freedom... I mean 'Operation Enduring Freedom'. There they were, one in the ADF as a soldier and the other as a chaplain. They were smiling like they were having a good time, and maybe they were on their boys' own adventure.

The bit that caught my eye was the big crucifix on the collar of the chaplain 'Potty', which got me thinking, was he walking around Kandahar or Kabul or wherever they were stationed in that uniform? Doubtless he was; and it struck me that he was the living walking talking crusader in a nation of Muslims, wearing that dirty big crucifix on his uniform - losing over the hearts that might have just been won over by our good efforts. It's like spending all the good will you're earning on the slot machine of faith.

How could the ADF not looked like a bunch of Crusaders come to the land of the muslims. It got me depressed. I understand that there are many religious people amongst our services and that they would require spiritual guidance in the business of shooting and killing people and still wanting to go to a Christian heaven (and I do mean that with the utmost ironic contempt). I pity the soldiers who would be getting this spiritual guidance from 'Potty' who in his days as a high school kid was about as emotionally evolved as a raging haemorrhoid; but be that as it may, it made me sick to the pit of my stomach that the ADF thought this was worth the effort.

So you can see I am really thrilled and excited about the prospect of sending 'boots on the ground'; and 'Potty' with them, to offer spiritual guidance to our Rampaging Crusading Christian Solders so they can still go through the eye of the needle into a Christian heaven having dispatched a bunch of Islamist Beheading Bastards to Allah. It's a great concept isn't it? When do they get to sack Jerusalem and fill the streets ankle deep in heathen blood? Looking forward to that in the news cycle!

No, really it's appropriate to say Jesus wept.