Mr. Auster links to a piece by Edward Rothstein, Amid the Memorials, Ambiguity and Ambivalence. Mr. Rothstein poo-poos the idea of blowback and criticizes Americans for their attitude of self-blame, looking at polls which indicate that this has only increased in the years following 9/11.
It seems as if every cultural institution, television network and book publisher feels duty-bound to produce some sort of Sept. 11 commemoration. Is there a precedent for this almost compulsive variety show about an attack on a nation’s people?
No examples suggest themselves. And in the United States, the attack on Pearl Harbor — the only incident remotely comparable — doesn’t seem to have inspired anything similar, even though that surprise assault initiated one of the most traumatic and transformative decades in this nation’s history. Did anybody think to have children make a “peace quilt” after that attack, as a war raged?
Of course Sept. 11 is something different. Most of us didn’t think we had such enemies or were subject to such an assault (though the accumulated evidence was clear enough). And reactions to Sept. 11 still depend on the extent to which we are thought to be in anything like a war, or precisely what the nature of its battles are. But the crossing of an American version of the Maginot Line undermined our implicit sense of the geographic exceptionalism of the United States, whose mainland has not been subjected to the bombardment or devastation known by nearly every other major nation of the modern world.
Had a bomb fallen on the twin towers, though, even that would have been less traumatic. This was something unforeseen, expertly planned, a jarring demonstration of vulnerability. So otherworldly did it seem when those planes were flown into their targets that their collapse came like a thunderclap of judgment. And that is how many immediately took it. “Why do they hate us?” was asked again and again.
And like theologians after the catastrophic 18th-century Lisbon earthquake, who saw the wages of sin in the disaster, many intellectuals didn’t wait long to assert that this blowback was payback. This is why this attack is often mischaracterized as tragedy, a drama that unfolds out of the flaws or failings of its victim.
That impulse of self-blame still runs through many cultural commemorations. Indeed, because little during the past decade was an unmitigated triumph, the impulse has even grown stronger. A poll from the Pew Charitable Trust this week shows that while in September 2001, 33 percent of those asked thought United States wrongdoing might have motivated the attacks, now 43 percent hold that belief. Many of the Sept. 11 books now being published are sentimental recollections of loved ones; another hefty segment is about criticism of American policy before and after Sept. 11.
This means that memorialization, rather than simply recalling the dead, or strengthening the resolve to pursue an enemy, becomes an opportunity to push these arguments further. Disaster becomes ambiguously commemorated. Any victory is also ambiguously celebrated because it is seen as scarred by sin (though surely no victory is ever unmarred). The delays in the reconstruction at ground zero are as much a result of these tensions as anything else.
You can see the same conflicts in the White House “talking points” for Sept. 11 commemorations that The New York Times reported on this week. The memos don’t suggest any cheering for successes of the last decade; there is even a hesitation to attract much attention, as if the White House were feeling ambivalent about the whole business, haunted perhaps by guilt. The memos also minimize any suggestion that military force had something to do with Al Qaeda’s suffering severe setbacks.
Moreover, they stress that commemorations here and abroad should “emphasize the positive.” The implication is made that at one time “fear” was the response to Sept. 11; now “resilience” is. And resilience implies a kind of firm passivity. This is strange, because anyone who has spent time undressing in snaking airport lines before undergoing the kinds of screenings once associated with convicted felons knows full well that this has little to do with resilience.
The memos almost treat Sept. 11 as if it weren’t Sept. 11. It is certainly not about Islamist extremism or the jihadist proclamations by its aspirants. It isn’t even really about us. We are told: “We honor all victims of terrorism, in every nation of the world. We honor and celebrate the resilience of individuals, families and communities on every continent, whether in New York or Nairobi, Bali or Belfast, Mumbai or Manila, or Lahore or London.” (Is it just an accident of alliteration that crucial cities torn by terror have been omitted, because that would have required acknowledging that Jerusalem or Tel Aviv faces something similar?)
Indeed, so anxious is the White House to filter out any historical aspects of Sept. 11 that it proclaims this anniversary “the third official National Day of Service and Remembrance.” It should be used to encourage “service projects” and a “spirit of unity.” Through such demonstrations, the memos affirm, our communities can withstand “whatever dangers may come — be they terrorist attacks or natural disasters.”
If that is the sense the national leadership finds in that day, why should we expect much more from cultural commemorations than miscellany, euphemism, self-effacement and self-blame?
Families of the victims and those who live in New York City or working at the Pentagon will remember and mourn their losses. What of the rest of us?
Critics of the National Government's foreign policy cannot help but to make associations between 9/11 and history. Then there is the criticism of domestic policy since 9/11, including the Patriot Act, and the inability of the elites to deal with the dangers of Islam as a religion or ideology. (For example, the Rockford Institute is having a special event on September 8 discussing the loss of civil liberties and the threat of Islam.) And there will be those questioning the official report put out by the 9/11 Commission. I think some measure of self-blame might be warranted given what the American Empire has done overseas. One can do this without subscribing to the view that all genuine Muslims are peaceful, or that they would have no reason whatsoever to attack the West had the West not become involved in the Muslim world in the latter half of the 20th century. Such violent responses should motivate us to examine whether our actions overseas were correct in the first place and to ascertain whether some of their grievances might not be legitimate.
Still, should we turn 9/11 into a national trauma? An occasion to be inspired for national service is what the administration wants to make this into. A bit of narcissism, a bit of the modern therapeutic culture at work here in the minds of the administration, both on the part of the planners and on what they hope to bring about? Mayor Bloomberg has gone so far as to exclude official religious leaders from the city's ceremony. Will the president pay lip service to religion and God on that day?
Let us accept that 9/11 was an concerted attack by a terrorist organization that precipitated wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. What is the appropriate Christian response on the part of Americans? To pray for the victims and for the country and its leaders, and for one's enemies. But I think that those who are not directly connected in some way to the events of 9/11 have not been impacted in the same way as those who are, and to pretend otherwise is problematic, manifesting the same ills associated with liberalism that Dr. Fleming has diagnosed in The Morality of Everyday Life. How would we be living that day without the organs of the state reminding us of what happened? How long before we are told that it is ok to let go of the past and to move on with our lives, like we have done with December 7th? (How was December 7th memorialized during World War 2? Was this continued after the war with Japan ended?) By keeping the 9/11 so prominent in the national media, is the National Government justifying perpetual GWOT?
Mr. Rothstein is hardly a spokesman for traditional conservatism. He is a liberal democrat (a neocon?), one who is willing to uphold an intolerant liberalism against all who are opposed to it:
But what might such commemorations look like if approached with more clarity? Some aspects would stay very much the same: this week’s miscellany, after all, is partly a reflection of the world that has provoked our enemies. For the Sept. 11 attacks were not just inspired by Islamist extremism. There are similarities in the motivations behind diverse acts of recent terror, including those of Timothy J. McVeigh, the bomber of the federal office building in Oklahoma City, and Theodore J. Kaczynski, the Unabomber. They all involved a disgust with modernity in the West and tried, in different ways, to destroy its culture and institutions. Democratic culture might seem innocuous to us, but it assaults fundamentalisms with its variety, unpredictability, contradiction, dissipation and possibility.
We'll see what the commemorations at school are like this week.
White House: Observing 9/11 With National Service
White House Issues Guides on Sept. 11 Observances
White House’s 9/11 Anniversary Guidelines Ask Officials to ‘Minimize References to Al Qaeda’
White House 9/11 Talking Points: Al Qaeda Is ‘Irrelevant’
White House Issues 9/11 Observance Guidelines (VIDEO)
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