Let’s Cancel 9/11, Bury the War State's Blank Check at Sea [View All]

[stockholmer]

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175437/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_tear_down_the_freedom_tower

Let’s bag it.

I’m talking about the tenth anniversary ceremonies for 9/11, and everything that goes with them: the solemn reading of the names of the dead, the tolling of bells, the honoring of first responders, the gathering of http://articles.cnn.com/2011-07-29/us/new.york.9.11.ceremony_1_ceremony-terrorist-attacks-city-mayor-michael-bloomberg?_s=PM:US ">presidents , the dedication of the new http://www.dallasnews.com/travel/coast-to-coast/20110901-preview-the-911-memorial-plaza-in-new-york.ece">memorial, the moments of silence. The works.

Let’s just can it all. Shut down Ground Zero. Lock out the tourists. Close “Reflecting Absence,” the memorial http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/september11/la-na-911-memorial-architect-20110826,0,7520092.story">built in the “footprints” of the former towers with its grove of trees, giant pools, and multiple http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/memorial_fountains_flow_UBDbmfsTZnQXglL8bnU68I">waterfalls before it can be unveiled this Sunday. Discontinue work on the underground National September 11 Museum due to open in 2012. Tear down the Freedom Tower (redubbed 1 World Trade Center after our “freedom” wars went awry), 102 stories of “the most expensive skyscraper ever constructed in the United States.” (Estimated price tag: $3.3 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/18/business/18nocera.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all">billion.) Eliminate that still-being-constructed, hubris-filled 1,776 feet of building, planned in the heyday of George W. Bush and soaring into the Manhattan sky like a nyaah-nyaah invitation to future terrorists. Dismantle the other three office http://articles.cnn.com/2011-08-31/us/911.memorial_1_ground-zero-freedom-tower-paula-grant-berry?_s=PM:US">towers being built there as part of an $11 billion government-sponsored construction http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/20/opinion/nocera-911s-white-elephant.html">program. Let’s get rid of it all. If we had wanted a memorial to 9/11, it would have been more appropriate to leave one of the giant shards of broken tower there untouched.

Ask yourself this: ten years into the post-9/11 era, haven't we had enough of ourselves? If we have any respect for history or humanity or decency left, isn’t it time to rip the Band-Aid off the wound, to remove 9/11 from our collective consciousness? No more invocations of those attacks to explain otherwise inexplicable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and our oh-so-http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175416/tom_engelhardt_obama%27s_bush-league_world">global war on http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/08/201182812377546414.html">terror. No more invocations of 9/11 to keep the Pentagon and the national security state flooded with money. No more invocations of 9/11 to justify every encroachment on liberty, every new step in the surveillance of Americans, every advance in pat-downs and wand-downs and strip downs that keeps fear http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175325/tomgram%3A_engelhardt,_the_united_states_of_fear/">high and the homeland security state http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-911-homeland-money-20110828,0,3913741,full.story">afloat.

The attacks of September 11, 2001 were in every sense abusive, horrific acts. And the saddest thing is that the victims of those suicidal monstrosities have been misused here ever since under the guise of pious remembrance. This country has become dependent on the dead of 9/11 -- who have no way of defending themselves against how they have been used -- as an all-purpose explanation for our own goodness and the horrors we’ve visited on others, for the many towers-worth of http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175343/tomgram%3A_engelhardt,_alien_visitations/">dead in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere whose http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174954/tom_engelhardt_the_wedding_crashers is on our hands">blood ............................................


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Note on further reading: I recommend two recent pieces that, amid the mountain of usual writing about 9/11 ten years later, have something out of the ordinary to say: Ariel Dorfman’s “Epitaph for Another September 11” in the Nation magazine on the two 9/11s and how differently two American nations reacted to their disasters, and Lawrence Weschler’s “Memory” in the Chronicle of Higher Education on the shame of a squandered decade.

http://www.thenation.com/article/163056/epitaph-another-september-11 “Epitaph for Another September 11” The Nation magazine

http://chronicle.com/article/Era-in-Ideas-Memory/128498/ “Memory” Chronicle of Higher Education