The second anniversary! Blah-bitty-blah buhdang adang ditty. Here in New York, we'll have the four moments of silence, and it would be fine with if that were it. Unfortunately there will be ribbons and marches and protests.
Christopher Hitchens tries to argue the same point in Slate, but his essay quickly devolves into a defense of the war in Iraq. Which may sort of sum up how muddled the war on "capital-T terrorism"--as Stanley Fish called it--has become.
What a revolting attribution to have to type. Why? Because when I came to NYC in 1999, I taped two men's pictures above my workdesk: The good man was John McCain, symbol of all that was Teddy Rooseveltish in the world. The evil man was Stanley Fish: an english professor who became a department head with an eye for hot talent and then a frighteningly influential dean and intellectual. He seemed to leave nothing but godawful relativism and racially/genderly/sexual-preferencely riven English deparments in his path.
Skip forward two years to October after the attacks. My buddy Tim enthusiastically emailed me a piece by Fish about the war. I read it, confirmed that it was horrible and evil, and then began typing out some bile to zip back to him. The sentence of Fish's that I felt was most in need of evisceration was:
"If you think of yourself as the target of terrorism with a capital T, your opponent is everywhere and nowhere."
Who the hell was talking about terrorism with a capital T? said I. Nobody. We were talking about bombing our enemies and the guys that harbored them and regrettably some of the civillians in Talibania. What kind of a cracksack would ascribe anything else to it? I closed my reply message with "Never send me anything by Stanley Fish again."
Now two years out, we've got Bushies pointing to Saddam regime's history of "sponsoring terror," as if paying off Hamas wingnuts in Israel were the same as bankrolling Qaeda to bomb Atlanta. I hear Rummy talk about the terrorists in Colombia and my legs go limp. Today I feel like I signed on to big-T in Terrorism and got taken for a ride.
Note: I am very happy to say that I still find most of the ideas in Fish's article to be patently wrong. But still troubled.
Now see? I have the same problem as Hitchens: I start talking about the anniversary and you get all sidetracked into political venting.
So back on topic: the best reason not to commemorate the anniversary with anything more than moments of silence is that it's already been done with all the class it deserved. Everyone on the street here felt the spook in the air last year: people didn't want to go to work. Those who watched the TVs got goosebumps when the funeral wind ripped through the WTC site. I was walking downtown with the bigpipers, watching a spontaneous mourning mob form behind them.
Most to the point, last year everyone knew we were still in the shit and it was time to keep moving on course. Last year was a snapshot of feeling, like a picture of cheering men on V-Day or brokers collapsed on Black Tuesday. Not today. For me, today's about waking up next to Stanley Fish and worrying about what in the hell I've gotten myself into.
