Calling for Another 9/11
08.12.07 - 05:23pm
Philadelphia Daily News columnist, Stu Bykofsky, wants another 9/11 style terrorist attack on the United States.
Yes, you read that right. Bykofsky wants thousands of Americans to die in a new terrorist atrocity; you see he thinks another major terrorist strike on the US is just about the only thing that can “save America” and it seems the Daily News is more than happy to give publicity to his lunatic ravings.
The biggest problem America faces, according to Bykofsky, is that it is “splintered” politically and has “forgotten who the enemy is”. He says:
Because the war has been a botch so far, Democrats and Republicans are attacking one another, when they aren’t attacking themselves. The dialog of discord echoes across America.
Turn back to 9/11.
Remember the community of outrage and national resolve? America had not been so united since the first Day of Infamy - 12/7/41.
We knew who the enemy was then.
We knew who the enemy was shortly after 9/11.
Because we have mislaid 9/11, we have endless sideshow squabbles about whether the surge is working, if we are “safer” now, whether the FBI should listen in on foreign phone calls, whether cops should detain odd-acting “flying imams,” whether those plotting alleged attacks on Fort Dix or Kennedy airport are serious threats or amateur bumblers. We bicker over the trees while the forest is ablaze.
America’s fabric is pulling apart like a cheap sweater.
What would sew us back together?
Another 9/11 attack.
Aside from the utter irrationality of actually wanting a disastrous terrorist strike so that everyone will rally around the flag in order to fight and prevent… um… disastrous terrorist strikes, isn’t there a nasty whiff of Nazi Germany about this? I detect echoes of the burning of the Reichstag here, the desire for a disaster that persuades the citizenry to abandon reason and morality, to abandon thought itself and hand themselves over completely to the determination of the state.
I would be interested to know what Stu’s Philadelphia readership think of his enthusiastic listing of possible targets for a new terrorist attack, which includes their own city subway system.
Americans have turned against the Iraq occupation, according to Stu, but they are not “anti-war”. Well that’s a relief, I am sure. No, says Stu, the war has just gone on too long. Americans loved the 1991 Gulf War, he says, because Dubya’s dad kept it short. Now the Iraq conflict has dragged on, the unity inspired by 9/11 has faded. He adds:
It will take another attack on the homeland to quell the chattering of chipmunks and to restore America’s righteous rage and singular purpose to prevail.
Those who oppose Stu’s determination to stick it to the terrorists (or at least have others do it while he supports them from afar) are “chipmunks”. And the talk of a “righteous rage” and a “singular purpose to prevail” cannot help but bring to mind jerky black and white images of Hitler ranting at crowds at Nuremburg.
Still, amid all this nonsense, Stu does have one moment of insight. He calls himself a “sick bastard”. And there he and I are finally in agreement.
The right have clealry decided the only way to win ‘hearts and minds’ (don’t flinch!) is to use fear, which rather makes them, erm terrorists, domestically and abroad. After all what is ’shock & awe’ but a terrorist strategy. Now they want to quell dissent as a consequence of a violent attack, which does reveal they are fascists.
Absolutely. I had exactly the same idea about shock and awe in the lead up to the war. And the pro-war lobby cannot help but look back lovingly at the time when they had the entire US population in their pocket after 9/11.
There is a pattern emerging, isn’t there? This was a new low, but other pundits have been more subtly suggesting that another Big One is on its way, and both Bush and Brown have been passing new State Of Emergency laws that allow them to capitalise on it when it happens. I’m skeptical about a lot of the 9/11 speculation, but even if they didn’t make it happen then they might well be contemplating it now?
Hopefully I’m just being paranoid. I also suspect that declaring emergency might be overplaying their hand, that overt dictatorship might be the straw that breaks the camels back, that people are finally unwilling to stand for.
I agree with your point about overplaying their hand. Even if there was another major attack like 9/11 I suspect that the political elite would continue to push through more restrictive legislation by increments.
This is the same reason I am highly sceptical every time I read a story about the possible reintroduction of the draft. I just cannot imagine the American public going for that, under pretty much any circumstance short of an outright declaration of war by another state or some kind of nuclear detonation on American soil.
I’m surprised that good old Newt Gingrich didn’t come out with something similar earlier. He’s keen to use the World War III rhetoric in an attempt to unite the American people around Bush. Sadly, this attempt has failed (although Melanie Phillips is sure to run with it). The reason?? Newt Gingrich is completely mad.
The draft is the last thing they want. The emergency powers are mainly there to allow federal troops to occupy any state that doesn’t go with the flow. It may well never happen, but if it does it will need a very compliant federal military; I gather the army now resent Bush and Cheney enough as it is, and if there were a draft they would then have to tread very very carefully.
Besides, speculating on draft distracts from the real way in which they make up the numbers, and without stirring up anywhere near as much resentment: with “contractors”.
Employing the military on US soil to suppress a state? I think we are a long way from such a level of dissidence in the US, certainly. And I agree with your sentiments about the psychology of the military; I hold out optimism that the military would, at least in part, revolt against such orders, and this danger would prevent the federal government trying it.
On domestic martial forces, they already deployed Blackwater in New Orleans. Plus the National guard forces have all been brutalised in Iraq and the police are paramilitary in equipment and training now. So I think there is a viable force of domestic suppression. But they don’t need it, that’s the simple depressing fact, they know they can, well, manufacture consent.
If an attack is needed, yes they have moral capacity to view lower classes lives as disposable, it’s called capitalism. So they can let one happen, it doesn’t take huge conspiracies of ‘black ops’ just ignore a few memos and don’t action some intelligence. No biggie. Any big organisation has lazy incompetent people in them, intelligence more so because it lacks effective oversight. And there is no shortage of righteously angry empire hating people, sooner or later some will succeed. Whether it was enabled by ignoring intelligence is not as important as the question of why does America’s foreign policy make peole want to kill Americans? They are not all mad or bad, people want to kill Americans because Americans are killing their loved ones (and often for no more profound a reason than money).
Conspiracy theories are in some way racist/nationalist, certainly selfish -killing foreigners goes on, but if we found out our govt was killing us, then we’d finally do something to stop them.
In nation-state theory it is worse because a national govt. is suposedly there to serve its people other nationalities are not in its purview, but on humanitarian grounds, murder is murder. What stops that being appreciated is patriotism. Which as we know is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
I don’t understand how the Montana-Militia type, though they hate the government and refuse to pay taxes, are willing to rally around the nation over one thing, patriotism. They’ll support “the war.”
If only the people in America could differentiate between the government and the nation. You think we’d be sick of the flag waving contest.
I dunno if that’s fair really, Aaron, seems to me that many on the libertarian Right - despite completely incompatible political projects - agrees with the anti-imperialist Left in opposing the terrifying growth of the Military-Industrial-Intelligence Complex.