Remembering 911 and other annual dates
I suspect this may not be taken very well, but it's one of those things I've been thinking about saying for awhile. It has to do with the remembrance of particular events that are revisited on a yearly basis.
One thing that always fascinated me when I was a counterintelligence agent was how often a yearly remembrance of some event would serve as the impetus for destruction many years later. During the 1980s, there were some huge riots taking place in South Korea. People in the states who talk about riots here have no idea what a riot is until they've seen one of these. During most of the year, at least back then, things ran quite smoothly, and then there would be a remembrance event of some police crackdown from a year ago or several years ago, and next thing you knew there were college students throwing Molotov cocktails through business store windows and groups of people overturning police cars. There would be spontaneous groups of tens of thousands of young people running and screaming through the streets. If you were a foreigner, and recognized as one, you could expect to be attacked at a moment's notice because a mob mentality is just that, a mob mentality.
Every time I think about a yearly remembrance event, I think about these riots. I think about how IRA splinter groups would celebrate the annual passing of an important event with a new attack. In the Middle East, it was quite common for a small war to break out over the remembrance of an annual event (from whatever side).
So, 911 has reared its head again, and people are starting the whole "where were you at when 911 happened" thing again, and it makes me suspicious most of the time I hear something like that. I mean, one of my friends posted it on her Facebook page, and to me, that's innocent. But it's the ones that start up all sorts of political causes that all seem to have something to do with remembering 911. From the protesters of the Iraq war to the people who want to protest Obama's health care ideas, people have a horrible tendency to take these things too far and try to link them with nonsense.
911 was a horrible event. But the attempts to compare it to Pearl Harbor and other such ineffective comparisons actually diminish the impact of the event itself. Some superpower did not just launch an attack and wipe out our entire Pacific fleet as a surprise attack. No, some really bad, hateful people decided to default on their humanity and treat innocent people as victims of their stupid cause. Basically, we were acting like an isolationist superpower country that had just been woken up by some kid prodding us with a stick, when in reality we weren't all that isolationist; we were just somewhat clueless as to how to handle ourselves on the international stage. The world had changed a lot since the days of Vietnam, World War II and the Cold War, but we were still in that same mentality. People watched news shows about how US soldiers fought with other countries or combatants, but the common person had never been required to personally acknowledge that there are some bad people out there. 911 did just that, and unfortunately, the US went off half-cocked after that until its people woke up and realized what they were doing. Honestly, I don't blame them, but unfortunately hindsight only happens AFTER a series of events.
My worry is that this attention on particular dates will lead to what it tends to always lead to: More anger and more justifications for things that don't need to happen. When you focus that much energy on wanting to "remember" what happened on a specific date a year ago, or years ago, you fall into the trap of continuing aggression when that aggression may not be necessary any longer.
My fleeting hope is that if people want to continue to remember 911, they'll do it from the perspective of how we can make things better, not so that we look back at it as how we're still angry. And there's nothing wrong with memorial services for those who lost their lives from the unjust attacks. You just have to be cognizant that there are those in the crowd who would love to use such events for nefarious purposes, and quite often we don't recognize those moments until the ship has sailed and we're suddenly realizing what our grief has brought us.
Stumble It!
One thing that always fascinated me when I was a counterintelligence agent was how often a yearly remembrance of some event would serve as the impetus for destruction many years later. During the 1980s, there were some huge riots taking place in South Korea. People in the states who talk about riots here have no idea what a riot is until they've seen one of these. During most of the year, at least back then, things ran quite smoothly, and then there would be a remembrance event of some police crackdown from a year ago or several years ago, and next thing you knew there were college students throwing Molotov cocktails through business store windows and groups of people overturning police cars. There would be spontaneous groups of tens of thousands of young people running and screaming through the streets. If you were a foreigner, and recognized as one, you could expect to be attacked at a moment's notice because a mob mentality is just that, a mob mentality.
Every time I think about a yearly remembrance event, I think about these riots. I think about how IRA splinter groups would celebrate the annual passing of an important event with a new attack. In the Middle East, it was quite common for a small war to break out over the remembrance of an annual event (from whatever side).
So, 911 has reared its head again, and people are starting the whole "where were you at when 911 happened" thing again, and it makes me suspicious most of the time I hear something like that. I mean, one of my friends posted it on her Facebook page, and to me, that's innocent. But it's the ones that start up all sorts of political causes that all seem to have something to do with remembering 911. From the protesters of the Iraq war to the people who want to protest Obama's health care ideas, people have a horrible tendency to take these things too far and try to link them with nonsense.
911 was a horrible event. But the attempts to compare it to Pearl Harbor and other such ineffective comparisons actually diminish the impact of the event itself. Some superpower did not just launch an attack and wipe out our entire Pacific fleet as a surprise attack. No, some really bad, hateful people decided to default on their humanity and treat innocent people as victims of their stupid cause. Basically, we were acting like an isolationist superpower country that had just been woken up by some kid prodding us with a stick, when in reality we weren't all that isolationist; we were just somewhat clueless as to how to handle ourselves on the international stage. The world had changed a lot since the days of Vietnam, World War II and the Cold War, but we were still in that same mentality. People watched news shows about how US soldiers fought with other countries or combatants, but the common person had never been required to personally acknowledge that there are some bad people out there. 911 did just that, and unfortunately, the US went off half-cocked after that until its people woke up and realized what they were doing. Honestly, I don't blame them, but unfortunately hindsight only happens AFTER a series of events.
My worry is that this attention on particular dates will lead to what it tends to always lead to: More anger and more justifications for things that don't need to happen. When you focus that much energy on wanting to "remember" what happened on a specific date a year ago, or years ago, you fall into the trap of continuing aggression when that aggression may not be necessary any longer.
My fleeting hope is that if people want to continue to remember 911, they'll do it from the perspective of how we can make things better, not so that we look back at it as how we're still angry. And there's nothing wrong with memorial services for those who lost their lives from the unjust attacks. You just have to be cognizant that there are those in the crowd who would love to use such events for nefarious purposes, and quite often we don't recognize those moments until the ship has sailed and we're suddenly realizing what our grief has brought us.
Labels: Politics
Stumble It!
posted by Duane @ 4:34 PM
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