9/12

So, another '9/11' has passed us by with no major drama, that I noticed anyway, and no major terrorist-attacks, bar of course those that are now routine across parts of the Islamic world thanks in large part to the destabilising efforts and warmongering of lunatic politicians in the West.  Whatever.

I've always held that the twelfth of September, not the eleventh, should be a national day of mourning and remembrance for the United States.  Not so much for the day itself, or any specific events thereof, but as a general symbolic signifier of all the insanity that proceeded from America's reaction to the traumatic events of the day before.  The Patriot Act.  The War in Iraq.  Extraordinary Rendition.  Illegal (for some of which retroactive amnesty was had to be later granted) spying on Americans.  Secret intelligence-deals with European countries.  The constant fearmongering.  The indefinite detainment in Guantanamo Bay of civilians without trial, often on the basis of mere hearsay; of individuals, many of whom were later found to be completely innocent.  The torture of inmates in prisons in Iraq.  The extrajudicial executions by drone.  The 'Axis of Evil' rhetoric and subsequent toxification of what had been thawing relations with Iran.  'Homeland Security.'  'Enemy Combatants.'  'With us or against us.'  'Old Europe.'  'Freedom Fries.'  The trillions of dollars wasted.  The Dead.  The Displaced.  The countries utterly demolished.  The encouragement and inspiration given to a whole new generation of would-be jihadis and extremists.  The rise of ISIS.

I was as horrified as anyone to see those towers fall.  To see the smoke rising from the Pentagon.  To think of the last moments of Flight 93.  To imagine what it would be like to be driven to jump from the windows of a fucking skyscraper, out of desperation to avoid the smoke and the flames.  Bodies falling from the sky on live television.

Today, I feel almost nothing when I think of '9/11.'  A numbness perhaps.  A cold emptiness ?  But mostly, nothing.  It happened.  It was horrible.  What came after, what was done in the name of that tragedy, that outrage, was infinitely worse.  And is with us still.  And in the name of the so-called 'War on Terror' that by definition can never end, perhaps with us always.

We need a name for the day perhaps.  Something to match the Orwellian monstrosity of naming the 11th 'Patriot Day.'  Something to memorialise the moment that the United States collectively lost its shit.  Abandoned perhaps forever the values that had made it the greatest beacon of liberal values in the world for over two-hundred years.  Shit, something, if nothing else, to remind us that there was a time when we weren't always at war.  When we didn't routinely give away our liberties without question and without protest in the name of 'security.'

We have a whole generation coming into voting-age who have never known anything else.  For whom the police-state and the endless war of the post-9/11 era is 'normal.'  Well, for my own part, fuck that.  No, it will never be normal.  It will never be right.