"By their books, ye shall know them"In the years since, of course, we've been
deluged with a rich literature of post-9/11 trauma, from the eloquent The
Looming Tower of Lawrence Wright to the Scholars for 9/11 Truth, whose
supporters have told us that the plane wreckage outside the Pentagon was
dropped by a C-130, that the jets that hit the World Trade Centre were remotely
guided, that United 93 was shot down by a US missile, etc. Given the secretive,
obtuse and sometimes dishonest account presented by the White House -- not to
mention the initial hoodwinking of the official 9/11 commission staff -- I am
not surprised that millions of Americans believe some of this, let alone the
biggest government lie: that Saddam was behind 9/11. Leon Panetta, the CIA's
newly appointed autocrat, repeated this same lie in Baghdad only this year.
"But I'm drawn to Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan whose The Eleventh Day confronts what the West refused to face in the years that followed 9/11. "All the evidence ... indicates that Palestine was the factor that united the conspirators -- at every level,' they write. One of the organisers of the attack believed it would make Americans concentrate on "the atrocities that America is committing by supporting Israel'. Palestine, the authors state, "was certainly the principal political grievance...'
"The motivation for the attacks was "ducked' even by the official 9/11 report, say the authors. The commissioners had disagreed on this "issue'-- and its two most senior officials, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, were later to explain: "This was sensitive ground ...Commissioners who argued that al-Qa'ida was motivated by a religious ideology -- and not by opposition to American policies -- rejected mentioning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict... In their view, listing US support for Israel as a root cause of al-Qa'ida's opposition to the United States indicated that the United States should reassess that policy.'" [1]
A few days after THAT DAY we call 9/11, President Bush went on TV and told we
the people to "GO SHOP!" If we wanted to HELP and that "They hated us because
we were free!"
I did NOT want to shop!
I also did NOT react with FEAR to THAT DAY, but curiosity!
I wondered if "They' hated us so much to target and murder innocent people had
something to do with Americans mindless over consumption of the world's
resources and apathy towards the poor and oppressed.
Up until THAT DAY we call 9/11, I was a typical self-satisfied, self-centered,
uninformed, misinformed comfortably numb American Christian.
THAT DAY, changed everything, even though I did not know any of the innocent
who were terrorized, vaporized, agonized nor their families or friends, i had a
visceral connection and a dream the third week of June 2001, that made some
sense on THAT DAY we call 9/11.
THAT DAY also inspired me to begin to research so as to learn WHY did some
people in the world hate us so much that they could target and murder innocent
people?
I learned PLENTY!
Khalid Sheikh
Mohammad involvement in the terror upon America, "By his own account stemmed
from his violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel." [2]
Abdulmutallab's attempt to blow up a plane on Christmas Day in 2009, was fueled
by "his sympathies toward the Palestinians and anger over Israel's actions in
Gaza." [Ibid]
Khaled, now seventy-five and a newlywed since July, turned to Fatiha and cried,
"This madness must stop. Retaliation only ups the ante, and the wheel is still
in spin. But I am nearing my end. I have been dreaming of mass communication
for decades and olive trees my entire life; now, I must act!"
Within hours of viewing the tragic news that stopped the world on that Tuesday
morning, Khaled phoned his many friends: Jews, Christians, Muslims, and others
to gather in downtown Orlando at Lake Eola.
He told everyone, "Praying for peace without action is like praying to win the
lottery and never buying a ticket. But unless we work for peace, saying "peace,
peace, peace,' means nothing. If we want peace, we must work for justice."
Jack had been restless for three days. Julianne was in New York City at her
sister's home and wasn't due back for three more. His knees began throbbing more
the moment she drove out of sight on the morning of September 8, 2001.
After returning home on Monday night from the BLAC/Brother Lawrence Addictions
Center, Jack mindlessly ate two Lean Cuisines, then spent the rest of the
evening trying to read. He fell asleep just before dawn and dreamt he was on
the blacktop running track at the middle school where Julianne taught seventh
grade English, where they both roller bladed in the early mornings before the
students arrived on campus.
Jack spent a ten-hour day at the BLAC, as its founder and administrator. The
mornings on the track were when the couple had their best conversations. He
inhaled the aroma of tar as he wondered what was keeping Julianne from him. He
bladed for what felt like hours, when a silver spandex-clad apparition with a
golden helmet flew by, sharply turned, and with a backward stroke, called out:
"Hi, Jack, don't look down; don't look back; look out straight, Jack,
look out straight, don't look back!"
"Yeah, I can; I can do that," Jack replied, but the apparition had already
vaporized into the distance.
And then Jack rolled onto an exquisite grace, knees freed from bone-on-bone
grinding and not an ache in his fifty-three-year old body that had been abused
by two motor vehicle accidents and hours of overuse syndrome. Jack glided on
the blacktop effortlessly for hours, when suddenly, a roar of thunder assaulted
his senses, and his eyes were magnetized upward, to view two fireballs thrown
down from on high, miles from where he stood. He saw them hit the ground; one
traveled east, the other west, and then they circled back around, burning a
path straight towards him. Just before they collided, Jack woke up, not
believing he had only been dreaming.
Not until after he had downed a pot of coffee did the phone ring. "Jack? Are
you watching TV?" Maureen, the day supervisor at the BLAC inquired, as she
fingered the framed mission statement that sat upon every employee's desk and
on the north wall of every resident's room:
"Peace, peace, peace. God's peace be upon you. But living today in a time of
war, crying out peace, peace, peace, where there is no peace. Fearing age and
death, pain and darkness, destitution and loneliness, people need to get back
to the simplicity of Brother Lawrence.' [Dorothy Day]
Brother L was a monk in the 17th century, who lived in a monastery and was
consigned to the kitchen. He spent his life baking bread, chopping onions,
scrubbing pots and floors. He also ran all the errands, did all the shopping,
and always brought back the finest of wine. He loved his brothers deeply, but
they merely tolerated his many eccentricities, or he was totally ignored.
Truly, I tell you, if ever a saint was born to bring hope to the addicted and
those afflicted with obsessive-compulsive tendencies, he is the one. For
Brother L learned that by continually re-remembering the Lord, no matter what
the activity, or where one might be, the Lord was ever-present and a holy habit
was born, just re-remembering that.
Jack thrived on curiosity and spoke as he reached for the remote. "Mo, you know
I never watch TV in the daytime; what's up?"
"Well, isn't Julianne visiting her sister in the city?"
"Yeah, in fact, today's plan was to meet her sister's co-workers on Floor 101
of the North Twin Tower."
"Jack, turn the TV on."
"Oh, Mo, I just did; my God, is it the end of the world?" He spoke as he hung
up the phone and never heard Mo say, "I don't know."
Jack knew in his bones that Julianne had been vaporized as he recalled a song
he had first heard at a Bob Dylan concert in 1981:
See the massacre of the innocent
City's on fire
Phones out of order
I see the turning of the page.
Curtain's rising on a new age.
See the Groom+ still waiting at the altar.
And then, II Chronicles 6:1 welled up within him: "The Lord has said that he
would dwell in thick darkness."
Dr. Jake Hunter heard the news that stopped the world for a day from his third
patient of the morning.
Terese didn't know until Jake called her before his next patient.
Kat had been dancing in her loft studio in Panacea, Florida, all morning,
ignoring neurological symptoms. She did not turn her cell phone on until 11:45
a.m., and then gasped, "Christ, who died? The entire Hunter clan has called me.
I'll phone Mom," she said, just as "Let it Be" chimed from her cell.
"Hi, Kat, I have been trying to reach you."
"Mom, what's the deal? What's going on?"
"Turn the TV on."
Kat did and gasped, "Oh my God, is it the end of the world?"
"Nobody knows."
"Mom, I am coming home. I'll bring Bob; I think I'll stay awhile."
"Okay, okay, drive carefully."
Kat packed three weeks' worth of clothes, put Bob, her blue-eyed cat, in his
kennel, and wrote a sign for the front door that read "KATZ STUDIO CLOSED
UNTIL???"
She taped it to the door and never looked back again.
"Bob, I have been dreading telling dad about my symptoms, because I don't want
to admit them. But, I have been summoned from the land of denial and must face
the facts on the ground. If I have the dreaded Gehrig's disease like my cousin
Nick, I will be livid. He was a saint; I am not. I am not dancing as I once
did; I don't glide anymore, I have gotten clumsy, and all of these muscle
twitches are driving me crazy! I am pissed! I am too young for this! Oh Christ,
I hope it is just a bad cervical spine, like Dad's. I can live with the pain,
but I must be able to move about, or I'll go nuts. Nick was a saint even when
he couldn't move, but I will be an unholy terror if I can't dance. Bob, if I
have ALS, will you please just shoot me and put everyone out of my misery?"
Kat sighed deeply and popped in a favorite mix she had burned of Tom Petty and
U2, and then lost herself in the music until Bono began to wail:
If I could yes I would,
If I could, I would let it go
Into the half light and through the flame
Into the light and to the day,
Let it go and so to find the way,
To let it go, and so to find the way.
I am wide awake, I am wide awake, wide awake
If I could, you know I would:
Let it go:
Desperation,
Dislocation,
Separation,
Condemnation,
Revelation,
In temptation,
Isolation,
Desolation,
Let it go and so to find a way
I am wide awake,
I am wide awake,
I am wide awake, wide awake!
Kat mused, "Strange, how seeing that horror on TV woke me up to some things,
too."
The Sunday after that day the world stood still, the Hunters' seven children
and eighteen grandchildren had gathered together. Everyone was down at the lake
except for Jake, Terese, and Kat, who were in the family room.
Jake contemplated Kat's chances of having ALS or a bad neck, and brooded.
Terese said, "There's an interfaith gathering today in Shea Stadium, and I want
to view it."
She turned the TV on just as the shofar sounded in New York City, and hundreds
of priests, rabbis, sheiks, and clerics of all kinds somberly filed into the
stadium in front of a sorrowful nation. Kat became luminous. "Wow, look at how
beautiful all of that is! All of those holy ones in their uniqueness and all
the shades of people in the stands reaching out to each other -- how blessed we
are in America to live among such diversity, and how beautiful it is to see us
coming together out of such sorrow. This is the way we can let the pain go: by
reaching out to the stranger, we comfort them and heal ourselves. America's
worst day has brought us and the world together. Why, it's only a few angry mad
men who did the evil; the international community can confront this together,
by confronting this evil as sister and brother.
"What an incredible opportunity America has been given to lead the world
this way and not seek revenge. Imagine the dysfunctional family of Father
Abraham building on this momentum, to confront the evil that is terrorism, by
confronting it with good and unity among us. Didn't St. Paul say that the only
way to resist evil is with good?
"Imagine how much better the world will be when America chooses not to use
military power, now that we all know our nuclear arsenal cannot protect us
American's will want to discover why these mad men did this evil and go after
that! The global village is the community to address this issue; terrorism is
everywhere, and now America has woken up to the fact that we are not immune. We
are all in this world together; we will either learn to share this world as
sister and brother, or we will blow it up."
Terese responded. "Kat, human nature is to strike back and seek revenge, but we
have the witness of Christ, Gandhi, and Reverend King how to effectively
respond to violence. I hope and pray this president follows their ways, but I
see hawks circling."
Jake cleared his throat and intoned, "Another thing is that acting out of fear
makes one do stupid, irrational things. You know I have always said to never
ever react out of fear, for the gospel says fear not! And fear drives out
compassion and hardens the heart."
Kat was mesmerized by the TV, Terese sighed deeply repeatedly, and Jake
brooded.
In a log cabin nestled within the thickly wooded mountains of upstate New York,
Jack sat in a darkened room with the TV on, but he wasn't watching. When the
shofar blew and grabbed his attention, he froze until the ram's horn went
silent, and then popped open his sixth beer of the day, for Jack had fallen off
the wagon.
+The Groom in Christian lingo is Jesus Christ
1.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-for-10-years-weve-lied-to-ourselves-to-avoid-asking-the-one-real-question-2348438.html
2. Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, March 2010, page 35
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