9/11 Twenty Year Anniversary

 I had planned on offering a follow-up to my prior blog on abortion, when 9/11/2021 rolled by.  Looking from my balcony at night, I noticed a large searchlight going directly up to the sky, from the direction of DC.  It turns out that was the local area’s tribute spotlight honoring the Pentagon crash.

On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, I was working as an attorney for a sole practitioner (law firm with only one owner, no partners) whose office was across Route 123 from the Fairfax County (Virginia) court complex.  The Boss himself was down in Richmond for a bar meeting, so it was just me and one of the secretaries.   Sometime in the morning, the secretary notified me that “a plane hit the World Trade Center” (North Tower, 8:46 a.m. EST) and set up the firm’s small TV set, with rabbit ears, to watch the events unfold.  Sure enough, another plane hit the second tower (South Tower, 9:03 a.m.), a third plane hit the Pentagon (9:37 a.m., west side of the building), and a fourth plane crashed somewhere in rural Pennsylvania (10:03 a.m.) once the passengers figured out what was going on and charged the cockpit to take down the hijackers, at the cost of their own lives.

Before the second tower was hit, one of the news reporters remarked that “maybe” [the first] collision was an accident.  But you could see the plane flying directly AT the tower – obviously the pilot was deliberately targeting the tower itself.  When the second tower was hit, any lingering doubts should have been over.

What was really bizarre was watching the towers themselves actually collapse.  Before that point it was more along the lines of, “well, someone hit the building and put it on fire.”  The collapses really were the nail in the coffin.  Those collapses not only doomed the people still inside the buildings, but also the rescue crews who had been trying to save the buildings and the people inside.  The final death toll for all four attacks comes in to just under 3,000. 

Back in summer 1988 we visited NYC, and we got to visit the World Trade Center.  I found it underwhelming, compared to the deck at the Empire State Building (eighty sixth and one hundred and second floors), as the windows are back from the edge of the building.  While I was disappointed that the rebuilt WTC building was a single one instead of a pair, at least its observation deck is much better.

Living in Northern Virginia, Rosslyn to be exact, I had driven past the Pentagon too many times to count, most of them being past the face of the Pentagon (1 out of 5) which was struck on that day.  For awhile thereafter, the hole was there, but has now long since been patched up.

The major impact, so to speak, of 9/11 was to pull EVERYONE together.   Here was a terrorist act so brutal and compelling, our own generation’s Pearl Harbor, that even cynical liberal Democrats – at least most of them – were bludgeoned into sincere patriotism.  When it came to chasing down Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden, we were united.  For that matter, foreigners who were inclined to distrust us and look down on us, now took pity on us and we had effectively a blank check to seek revenge.  We liberated Afghanistan from the Taliban, tracked down and killed Osama Bin Laden (on Barack Obama’s watch) and soon after took Iraq away from Saddam Hussein.

Back home, Bush Jr. pushed through the Patriot Act and set up the Guantanamo Bay facility in Cuba to make sure Harold and Kumar weren’t planning any attacks.  Part of the danger of the attacks was goading us into becoming a police state – which we avoided – and overstepping our mandate, which we arguably did in Iraq. 

I don’t recall being any MORE or LESS upset by 9/11 than anyone else.  My hearing was still substandard, so volunteering for military service was no more possible than it was in 1986 when I graduated from high school and could not get into ROTC – or the National Guard.  I had no qualms or dispute about the Afghanistan operation, nor the subsequent Iraqi operation.  I suppose “liberation” still rings truer than “invasion” because notwithstanding our subsequent ball-dropping on nation-building in both countries, we were liberating each from a vile regime: the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq.  Of course, the then-threatened weapons of mass destruction Saddam Hussein supposedly had never materialized, and many would argue that we knew they did not exist when we invaded.  “Donald Rumsfeld” is a name I hear mentioned in that context. 

Did we know it would happen and let it occur?  Well, there were stories that the FBI received reports that the 19 flyers were learning to take off but not land the planes.  I don’t believe anyone has proved, conclusively, that the administration had clear and convincing evidence that 4 jets would be hijacked and crashed into major targets.  These were innovative, unprecedented attacks.  The 1993 WTC bombing may have lulled us into a false sense of security, writing off the terrorists as more inspired than competent.  But a slew of other bombings overseas should have put us on notice that not all terrorists were buffoons.  Bringing back Pearl Harbor, many accused FDR of sitting on evidence of the attack to allow it to go through, but the actual intelligence we had was only that the Japanese were up to something- the fleet maintained radio silence on its way to Hawaii and we had no actual warning of the attack – until it actually occurred.  Fortunately for us, our four carriers were out at sea and escaped the attack. 

The bigger picture is this:  when we ARE attacked, and are legitimately the victim of the attack, how do we respond?   After Pearl Harbor we fought back against the Japanese.  Oddly, Nazi Germany declared war on US, not the other way around.  Nonetheless, we managed to defeat both Axis countries and fight wars on both fronts simultaneously. 

With our recent withdrawal from Afghanistan, obviously the question is: did we waste our time there?  I think the real answer is not that it was a mistake to go in there to begin with, rather the follow-through was botched.  A recent article profiling various US troops who served there from 2001 to the present shows an inconsistent approach to destroying the Taliban.  “Clear and hold” is supposedly the optimal strategy, but that ultimately means you need to surround the enemy completely.  It seems the Pakistani border was too porous to allow us to close it off completely, meaning the Taliban could hide there until we lost patience and left.  Sadly, the Pakistanis themselves were complicit in harboring the Taliban.  How much we could actually accomplish without their full cooperation is a big question.  If anyone has the answer, by all means let me know.   

The biggest success story at shutting down an insurgency was Malaysia, but there the Brits had the ability to shut off the entire country and the rebels were ethnic Chinese, not Malayans.  In Vietnam we did not have the prerogative to shut down Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam up to the Chinese border.  In Iraq, we deposed Saddam but had no plan on what would replace his regime.  Bottom line is, FOLLOW THROUGH.  Do not exceed the moral authority we earned when those Towers collapsed. 

Finally, here’s a discussion of KSM, man behind 9/11.  Unfortunately it seems the FBI and CIA did NOT coordinate effectively.  My impression is that KSM decided to taint his confession to whatever he was actually responsible for by taking credit for many other things he probably had nothing to do with.    

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confessed to being the 9/11 mastermind. 20 years later, he’s still awaiting trial (yahoo.com)

Nine Eleven

 

Wow, the date itself gave me the topic!  How convenient.

At the time I was working as an attorney for an older, experienced sole practitioner attorney in Fairfax, Virginia, hereinafter “Bill”.   Bill was down in Richmond that day for a bar meeting.  One of the secretaries came in my office and told me, “a plane hit the World Trade Center”.  [North Tower, 8:46 a.m. EST]  A reporter suggested this might be an accident, but the footage showed the plane flying directly at the tower.  Soon enough, the second plane hit the second tower [South Tower, 9:03 a.m. EST], the third plane hit the Pentagon [9:37 a.m.], and the fourth plane crashed in western Pennsylvania [10:03 a.m.], brought down by the passengers themselves storming the cockpit, one passenger calling his wife to advise her the circumstances and to say goodbye to her.

My girlfriend at the time, Leila, lived in Pentagon City and worked in Rosslyn, a commute which took her past that face of the Pentagon, but she was at the office when the plane hit. 

I think I speak for everyone who remembers that day that we were ALL angry and upset.   This galvanized everyone, even Democrats who didn’t care much for President George W. Bush.   When he decided that we would liberate Afghanistan from the Taliban and track down Osama Bin Laden, he had pretty much unanimous support.   That’s why I’m puzzled by some people on the Book of Faces alleging protests in support of the people responsible for 9/11.

Where I live, Skyline at Bailey’s Crossroads, has a large segment of Muslims.  Whether they’re Sunni or Shi’ite, I don’t know.  None of them have given me any problems.  Nationwide, Muslims are 1% of the US population, 3 million out of 330 million.   The Fort Hood guy and the Boston Marathon bombers were Muslim, but we have plenty of homegrown, non-Muslim screwups blowing things up and shooting people. 

The liberation of Afghanistan went fairly smoothly (October 7 to December 7, 2001), but the Taliban simply retreated to the hills, and in parts of neighboring Pakistan, and continue to cause problems – helped by bounties from their erstwhile opponents the Russians.  Osama Bin Laden himself was taken out in 2011 by US forces – under Barack Obama’s administration. 

Two years later, upon GWB’s insistence (later disproven) that Saddam Hussein and his regime were involved in the 9/11 attacks, we invaded/liberated Iraq.   There, the much-vaunted Republican Guards vanished into the hills and we took the country fairly quickly – March 1 to May 1, 2003.  Then a protracted guerilla war erupted, presumably those Republican Guards taking to the hills instead of facing us directly.  Saddam Hussein himself was captured in December 2003, hiding in a bunker in the ground. 

Aftermath.  As noted, 9/11 certainly unified the country behind GWB and public support for the liberation of Afghanistan was fairly widespread, if not unanimous.   Saddam Hussein’s connection with 9/11 was somewhat more tenuous.  Ironically, one of the justifications for the invasion, that Saddam had “weapons of mass destruction”, later turned out to be bogus, and Saddam’s own generals, when our invasion began, asked him to deploy these alleged weapons – only to be told by him his hints of having them were merely a bluff to prevent the US from invading.  D’oh!   I do recall that support for the Iraq invasion was far less widespread than the previous operation in Afghanistan.  Partly this was due to tempers calming down over the two year period between 9/11/2001 and 2003, and partly was a suspicion that GWB was overplaying his hand on the matter.  Much of the goodwill we earned on 9/11 was squandered by our invasion of Iraq.  Having said that, I’m not seeing any domestic sympathy or support for the Taliban in 2020 or any time earlier – or for Al-Qaeda, for that matter.

Conspiracy.  Yeah, I zone out on the conspiracies that “9/11 was an inside job”, “jet fuel can’t possibly melt the internal structure of the WTC tower”, etc.  I put those in the same category as “the Civil War was about states’ rights” for credibility.  Getting back to that Suicide Pact book I’m reading, I’ve yet to reach Posner’s analysis of the Patriot Act; if 9/11 was orchestrated by the CIA or US forces as an excuse to impose a form of fascism on us, ostensibly to fight terrorism, we’d see something like a fascist regime in our country.  As yet, that hasn’t happened, but much of what Posner talks about concerns holding alleged terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.  Circa 2020 the main fascists are the President and his “he’s an asshole who gets things done” supporters who believe both the President and the police to be infallible.  Anyhow.

My Way and 9th Company

Now it’s time for another blog on obscure foreign movies, and as you may expect by now, they’re about WAR, which is one of my favorite topics.

The first is a South Korean film about World War II. 

My Way.  A Korean – Jun-Shik Kim (JSK) – and Japanese – Tatsuo Hasegawa (TH) start off as friends/rivals.  Both are good marathon runners and compete against each other in the mid-30’s leading up to the war, even trying out for the Japanese Olympic team, i.e. the 1940 games which were supposed to take place in Tokyo, but which were cancelled due to the war.  Tatsuo is the grandson of the Japanese military governor.  Korea was a Japanese colony from 1895 (the first Sino-Japanese War) until 1945.  The movie depicts the Japanese as arrogant and mistreating the Koreans as second class.

            They both end up in the Japanese Army in 1938. Tatsuo is an esteemed officer, while JSK is a lowly private; he and his fellow Koreans in the unit were conscripted as punishment and suffer the abuse you might expect.  TH and JSK don’t get along.

            Part I:  Up in Manchuria, the Japanese bump ugly against the Red Army.   “Banzai” suicide charges aren’t enough to defeat several waves of Soviet tanks (which look like T-26s).

            Part II:  The pair wind up in Siberia in a Soviet POW camp.  One of the Korean soldiers is now the block leader and browbeats the previously abusive Japanese, now POWs.   TH and JSK still don’t get along. The Germans invade, so the Red Army comes by looking for warm bodies to fight the Nazis.  Facing imminent execution for a prison riot, our two buddies quickly agree.

            Part III:  Stalingrad?  Sverdlovsk?  Who knows.  In some battered Soviet city, the Red Army schmucks are thrown up against a wall of Germans with MG42s and other fun stuff; from the timeline it’s still 1941, so the Germans are still very much in the game.  And the stereotypical Commissar is right behind them to shoot anyone retreating.  SOMEHOW, both guys survive this…slip into German greatcoats and uniforms…and trudge through the snow to the German lines.  They get split up at this point for the next three years, each not knowing if the other has survived, although JSK did help TH survive the battle and helped him escape.

            Part IV:  These two Asians in German uniform who speak no German eventually wind up in an Ostbatallion (mixed Wehrmacht unit of Arabs and other miscellaneous Russian ethnic groups all thrown together because the Germans have no clue who they are, only that they’re not European) at Normandy in June 1944, and finally reunite.  Guess what happens! 

An epic story, very long, but intriguing to see what happens to these two, sometimes at odds, sometimes rivals, but ultimately friends.  They have to depend on each other to survive in a brutal war on three different fronts in three different uniforms.

The second film is a Russian deal, in Russian with English subtitles, taking place in Afghanistan.

9^th Company (DVD).  This was in the previews which came with “My Way”.  Imagine your typical French Foreign Legion film:  various disreputable types flee to the FFL to escape either justice or boredom, get sent to the godforsaken desert of North Africa, and wind up practically wiped out by angry Arab tribesmen.   Got it?

            Ok, now instead of the French Foreign Legion, it’s the Red Army in 1988 – towards the very end of the Soviet Union.  Instead of North Africa, it’s Afghanistan.  Instead of Justin Bieber tribesmen, it’s the mujahedeen.   But almost exactly the same.  Some things never change, do they? 

            The funny thing about this film is that back in 1988, we’d be rooting for the mujahedeen against the Red Army.   Nowadays, knowing the “muj” (as the Russians call them) morphed into the Taliban?  Eh, not so much.  Most of the Russian soldiers are as sympathetic as Paul Baumer & his buddies in “All Quiet”, or the Band of Brothers gang, or any other close-knit squad of misfit soldiers who only want to survive.