Seizure
26 September 2001
Thoughts on the War
After the terrorist attack - the quartet of airplanes and their hour-long mathematical ballet - comes a stunned silence. I don't know what to say. The realization that there are people who want to kill me, based on what I represent to them, is sobering.
I have known for some time, after all, that my government is willing, if not eager, to kill. I have sometimes felt as though I am expected to believe that these killings are done on my behalf, to protect me, but I cannot believe that I need protection from Manuel Noriega, for example, or from Grenada. A great deal of what is done supposedly in my name remains a mystery. Did they lie to me about that plane that went down in Pennsylvania when they said that a team of brave Americans overpowered the terrorists and crashed the plane? When one of those brave Americans reported smoke on the wing and a jet plane circling the area? Was that plane actually shot down by the military? If so, was that lie told to me in my name, to protect me? To protect me from the truth?
In order to protest this next war, I can't just bring up from the basement the signs protesting the last war. Because my feelings won't fit on a sign. Because slogans are suddenly the problem, not the solution: to use slogans is to speak propagandistic sound bites back to propagandistic sound bites. Because even to argue against this next war is already to have lost the argument. Lost the argument, because someone asked you "are you still in favor of terrorist attacks?" (a trick question) and you opened your mouth to answer. Because by opposing this war, you are already surrendering ground, agreeing to skip the important question "what is to be done?" by acknowledging that the answer is already war. If you try to back up to that important and difficult question they will accuse you of trying to back up even further to the question "is anything to be done?" or even the question "is it alright to do anything?" "War, but not this war," your sign says, even though your sign thinks it says "No War Ever," because your sign does not offer an alternative to inaction. You are repeating a rebuttal at the exact moment that your opponent has changed his argument by filling in an important blank. War: because someone wants to kill you because of what you represent. This is a moment in history for you, but not for the terrorists, for whom it is three moments, in 1972, in 1978, and in 2001. It is a line pointing through history. Perhaps they have been planning the hijackings since centuries before the buildings were built, since before New Amsterdam was stolen and the Native Americans living there slaughtered. The terrorists believe themselves conduits of destiny. From the sunrise of time they have been coming to get you, even though you are only two and one quarter centuries old. Your people are a flight across history that has only just completed takeoff and reached cruising altitude, and you had just loosened your seatbelt and were starting to relax. All those other wars we fought and you protested, whether behind your heart or in front of the courthouse, were against an enemy that could never have killed us. Not Panama nor Iraq nor former Yugoslavia nor Sudan nor Afghanistan. Many of those enemies were even individuals, such as Qaddafi and Bin Laden, and so we bombed the people living in the same country as them, but the terrorists are a cancer that has metastasized, become undifferentiated, and sewn itself through the loopholes in our arrogance. They have no manifestos, no egos, no name, no borders. Victims of history, hypnotized with hatred, coolly executing effortlessly perfect murders. Living without lives, planning only for the day they die, leaving nothing but corpses and newspapers in their wake. Leaving us nothing to look at but ourselves and our fears and suspicions. And so this is a critical moment, during which our fears and superstitions are revealed to us, casting shadows against the rushing whitenoise of a blank media landscape in which evidence is withheld from us for our protection. Do we, America, accept ourselves at this moment, for if not, then everything is already lost and we are a nation at war internally. But, unlike those other wars that were all silly nonsense about defending countries you had to seek out on a map or about punishing former allies turned drug-dealers or about failing to bomb individuals suspected of being terrorists (but instead blowing up a pharmaceutical factory in one of the poorest countries in the world), this next war is being fought to save your life, which is tempting to believe, because there are people who want to kill you. "I don't want anybody to save your life," your sign says, though it thinks it says "I don't want people to be killed." A sign can have only two colors and signify, but this is not black and white: there are grey areas here and rich shades of brown. It is not black versus white, but it must be you versus them, unless you are suicidal too. Which side are you on? War, no war, war-driven economy, not war-driven economy, failing war-driven economy, not failing war-driven economy, the terrorists have won their argument by not having it. You will have a successful war-driven economy and avenge the terrorists' suicides by dropping fire on the terrorists' people, proving the terrorists' point.
Or not.
We have here a media spectacle, the ever recollapsing buildings a preview of the coming television war. The image that used to represent the imminent collapse of authority has become more expensive to produce, and its symbolism is now inverted, it is a collapse of entertainment, of distance, a shrinking telescope that brings the image through the lens and into our reality, one layer closer than it was before. Those in the front row seats have all died and return to the screen bearing crosses.
The president quotes passages from the Bible, he uses the word "evil," the word "crusade," the words "infinite justice." The terrorists and his handlers have cut the suit, and it fits him. Between cue cards he stumbles into long harangues, repetitive and looplike as he tries again and again to say the well-worn phrases correctly, his endless monologues preventing the intrusion of more questions from the press corp.
The passengers refuse to let the plane take off because there are Arabs on board. Conscientious people try to shuffle to the left and find that this issue runs perpendicular to their familiar axis, it is a fundamentalist clash.
So much seems out of balance. One wonders how many checks the planet earth can write. Eventually, we think, deforestation will slow down and stop. It will have to, eventually, since forests are essential for keeping the atmosphere breathable. Eventually, we think, air pollution will level off, and the hole in the ozone layer will shrink again, or at least reach a comfortable size and stop getting wider. Eventually - right? - the arms race will have to stop, because there must be some limit on how many weapons the world feels it needs. Sooner or later, I'm sure, there will be peace. And eventually we will have a president who is really, you know, likeable: someone you can really look up to. Eventually, right, this madness will slow down and stop altogether, right, because, after all, we aren't lemmings, we're people. Right? This is just a transition period, and once we're through it then we can overcome our differences, and everyone can work together to ensure a decent standard of living for all people. We will find cures for AIDS, cancer, racism, smoking, alienation, bad music, and poverty. So maybe, even if we don't oppose this war and the escalation it represents, the acceleration toward the cliff of our collective lemming destiny, everything will still work out. Maybe the war won't be that bad and it will solve the problem of terrorism, and somehow this will sober the president and his administration enough that they sign the Kyoto Accord and ratify The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and dismantle the obviously unpopular WTO and the IMF and the World Bank, and the next presidential election will be fair, with no ballot fraud, with no flashy commercials, no absurdly large campaign budgets, just good old-fashioned discussion of the issues, and the candidate who wins the largest number of popular votes will become president, without dispute, and then there will be world peace and TV will finally be good again. Because, let's face it, people might be greedy but they aren't suicidal.
Right?
Fasten your safety belt. Greet your neighbor. Be patient with those you disagree with. Try to read more about the history of the conflict. Extinguish all portable electronic devices. Keep your gas tank full. Learn the limits of your understanding of things. Return all tray tables to their locked, upright position. Think about how long it took to get to this point in history, and how long it will take to get out, even if we all, together, work very carefully and assiduously to extract the bullet of violence from the heart of the world. Prepare for liftoff.