September 11th remembered

In literature, a device termed a crux or peripetia is frequently used. This is where circumstances or fortune undergo dramatic alteration or reversal. The vertiginous situation of peripety often causes a moment of great realisation for one of the characters, termed an agnorisis. 

Twelve years on, September the 11^th is etched ever deeper into the fabric of our conscience. It is the great peripetia of our generation. The proud twin towers, symbol of a great city, brought down by suicidal fanatics using passenger planes filled with civilians as missiles. A gaping hole torn through the Pentagon, the heart of American defence with yet another life-expiring projectile. And if not for the valour of passengers on flight 93, a fourth plane, aimed at Washington, D.C., may well have, according to our best deduction, destroyed the United States Capitol, the seat of the U.S. congress, or the White House. I still recall seeing the images of that day: amateur footages from different angles of the soaring towers set against a cerulean morning sky and the silent silver arrow plunging into her side. Amid the bewildering, confused commentaries, with acrid black smoke billowing out of the first tower, another plane, in many ways the more heart rending and soul chilling – as it confirms the worst suspicions, arched eerily and gracefully with heart-sinking inevitability and incredulous speed, hitting the second tower in a massive explosion. Almost 3,000 people perished that day.

The subsequent agnorisis of Western society, however, is by no means lucid or partisan. A large section of the so called Liberals displayed appallingly masochistic tendencies in rationalising the attack. The general thrust of the casuistry was that this attack, this deliberate act with the intention to maximise deaths to civilians, was the natural result of American foreign policy. This disgusting propensity of blaming the victims is in part overcompensation for white guilt over Western imperialism and colonial history, and in part a misguided notion that Bin Laden is some oppressed revolutionary of the Middle East.

The unrest in the Middle East is largely a war within Islam, which the fervent participants have subsequently expanded globally. Al-Qaeda is an extremist Sunni fascistic militant Islamic organization. Originating in Pakistan sometime in the late 1980’s, Al-Qaeda is a stateless army calling for a global jihad whereby the world can be brought under control of a strict interpretation of sharia. It is very important to remember that Al-Qaeda has committed numberless acts of violence and terror on non-Sunni Muslims and others they consider kafir, or infidel. It was not Americans nor NATO nor the UN who bombed Shiite mosques in Iraq, or synagogues in Istanbul, or hotels in Yemen and Mombasa, or a nightclub in Bali, or a restaurant in Casablanca, or the Danish embassy in Pakistan, or trains and buses in Madrid and London. These are the methods of people with the most extreme, fanatical and backward ideologies who feel justified by their interpretation of religion to pursue their deranged ends by any means, however inhumane, however inhuman, however degrading and suicidal, spurned on by promises of virgins in paradise. This from people who see women as objects, kill apostates, including other Muslims, kills homosexuals, teach vituperative anti-Semitic diatribes, who yearn to constrain freedom of expression and even freedom of thoughts. 

To quote the great Omar Khayyam, writing in the 11^th century,

And do you think that unto such as you;
A maggot-minded, starved, fanatic crew:
God gave the secret, and denied it me?--
Well, well, what matters it! Believe that, too.

If you still feel sympathetic to this fanatic crew, you may have lost your moral compass. It is true that the Coalition War on Terror is filled with fantastically idiotic mistakes and crass miscalculations and moral quandaries. Although the weapons of mass destruction link in Iraq is not as invisible as most people might think, and Abu Ghraib under Saddam’s days, despite the revolting and shameful behaviours of US military personnel, would curl your hair - it was nothing less than an abattoir and concentration camp. The coalition would have done much better to go to war on no other and no less than moral grounds. Iraqi harbouring and financing of Al-Qaeda terrorists and its appalling, unspeakable history of acts against humanity, including using chemical weapons on its own Kurdish citizens (who are real rebels fighting for freedom and democracy in Northern Iraq without resort to any terrorist tactics – vindicated by a Kurd, Jalal Talabani, becoming the first democratically elected president in Iraq after the fall of Saddam.), horrendous acts that led to the unsalvageable destruction of ecology (draining of the Mesopotamia marshes to evict Shia Muslims and setting fire to the oil fields of Kuwait upon retreat after its invasion and subsequent ignominious defeat) and breaking of numerous international laws makes it an imperative that people of Iraq should be liberated from this tyranny. The Arab Springs is proof against pessimists and casual racists who used to say that ideas of democracy are not compatible to Middle Eastern mindsets.

So here is the crux and I hope it can provide a modicum of agnorisis if it were needed: The people who have perpetrated the crimes on 9/11 twelve years ago are the zealots of the most extreme front of a barbaric, iron-age ideology attempting a recrudescence in the 21^st century. They are not attacking the West for what the liberals may dislike about the West. They are attacking precisely what they do like about it. They are attacking the most precious things of Western culture: democracy, freedom of speech and inquiry, equality in dignity and rights, emancipation of women and separation of church and state – things we may take for granted but have come from centuries of bloodshed, debate, dialectic and reasoning. They are the enemy of everything good about Western culture and everything that deserves defending.

Writing in another September, some 74 years ago, when Germany invaded Poland, marking the beginning of the Second World War, W.H. Auden wrote: ‘The unmentionable odour of death / Offends the September night’. However, he ends:

Defenceless under the night

Our world in stupor lies;

Yet, dotted everywhere,

Ironic points of light

Flash out wherever the Just

Exchange their messages:

May I, composed like them

Of Eros and of dust,

Beleaguered by the same

Negation and despair,

Show an affirming flame.

On this day, we should affirm out solidarity with America and her people. Imperfect though she may be, she has shown during this trial by fire her great courage and fortitude. The working-class heroes proved their mettle – 343 fire-fighters died in performing their duties, including many off duty officers coming to help without their radios. It was the worst incident for fire fighters in American history. They have proven ultimately the reason why the American Revolution is one of the very few and the most important revolutions to stand the test of time. Built on a foundation of human rights and freedom summarised in its declaration of independence:

‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’

George Orwell wrote in his Homage to Catalonia of a freedom fighter whilst he participated in the Spanish Civil War against Franco’s dictatorship. He later added a poem which seems a very fitting tribute to those who have died in this fight against tyranny and bigotry:

But the thing that I saw in your face,

No power can disinherit:

No bomb that ever burst,

Shatters the crystal spirit.