yonmei

yonmei @ 07:33 pm: Eight years ago today...
I left work at about four o'clock, realising at last that I would get nothing more done.

That was a Tuesday. I took the next eight working days off, dazed, shocked, confused, tired, unable to sleep, thinking, about almost everything "What does it matter now?"

Not because of the attack itself: because I was afraid, mortally, horribly afraid of what Americans would do in response to the attack. When the missiles began to fall on Afghanistan, not even a month later, in an odd and horrible kind of way it was almost a relief: you know how you feel when you realise that, do what you might, you have missed the train, or you have broken the crystal bowl: you must deal now with the world as it is. I knew the US response to this attack could destroy the world. It still might. Uncounted thousands have been killed in Afghanistan because of the attack on the WTC and the Pentagon - people who barely had a notion there was a country called America, who had no idea what the WTC looked like. Over a million people have been killed in Iraq. Hundreds of people have been kidnapped, imprisoned, tortured. The US government openly endorses kidnapping, extra-judicial imprisonment, torture, and murder: has openly claimed the right to aggressive war. A distinction without a difference, I might have said, ten years ago, since nothing the US has done in the past eight years was new: but it makes and made a difference that, once, the US tried to present itself as a country with standards. Once upon a time: before Mahar Arar was kidnapped and sent to Syria to be tortured, an act the US then and still defends as legal because a citizen of another country who is in a US airport but has not yet legally entered the country, has no rights in the US. Before the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay was built. Before the first prisoners were brought to Bagram Airbase to be tortured. Before the massacre in Dasht-i-Leili. Before the US, in a wave of bloodthirsty anger that seemed all but universal, began to make war on Afghanistan in revenge for an attack that no Afghan took part in and no Afghan could have stopped.

tzikeh just tweeted links to two things she reads every 9/11: I hadn't read For Thou Art With Us before - a first-hand account of downtown New York on the morning of September 11. (Related: Operation Find Don.) I had read the metafilter as-it-happens thread, or part of it, though not all of it.

I can't say there's any one thing I read every September 11. But there is one thing I do read often, from The Onion, September 26, 2001:

Responding to recent events on Earth, God, the omniscient creator-deity worshipped by billions of followers of various faiths for more than 6,000 years, angrily clarified His longtime stance against humans killing each other Monday.

"Look, I don't know, maybe I haven't made myself completely clear, so for the record, here it is again," said the Lord, His divine face betraying visible emotion during a press conference near the site of the fallen Twin Towers. "Somehow, people keep coming up with the idea that I want them to kill their neighbor. Well, I don't. And to be honest, I'm really getting sick and tired of it. Get it straight. Not only do I not want anybody to kill anyone, but I specifically commanded you not to, in really simple terms that anybody ought to be able to understand."

.....

"I don't care what faith you are, everybody's been making this same mistake since the dawn of time," God said. "The Muslims massacre the Hindus, the Hindus massacre the Muslims. The Buddhists, everybody massacres the Buddhists. The Jews, don't even get me started on the hardline, right-wing, Meir Kahane-loving Israeli nationalists, man. And the Christians? You people believe in a Messiah who says, 'Turn the other cheek,' but you've been killing everybody you can get your hands on since the Crusades."

Growing increasingly wrathful, God continued: "Can't you people see? What are you, morons? There are a ton of different religious traditions out there, and different cultures worship Me in different ways. But the basic message is always the same: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Shintoism... every religious belief system under the sun, they all say you're supposed to love your neighbors, folks! It's not that hard a concept to grasp."

"Why would you think I'd want anything else? Humans don't need religion or God as an excuse to kill each other—you've been doing that without any help from Me since you were freaking apes!" God said. "The whole point of believing in God is to have a higher standard of behavior. How obvious can you get?"

"I'm talking to all of you, here!" continued God, His voice rising to a shout. "Do you hear Me? I don't want you to kill anybody. I'm against it, across the board. How many times do I have to say it? Don't kill each other anymore—ever! I'm fucking serious!"

Upon completing His outburst, God fell silent, standing quietly at the podium for several moments. Then, witnesses reported, God's shoulders began to shake, and He wept.

Whereas in July four years ago, though all day I was checking to make sure everyone I knew and cared about in London was alive and well, I wasn't panicking. Not just because you can't step in the same river once, but because... well, this was Britain: this was my country. Make tea not war. I posted this on Metaquote from jslayeruk's journal (and of course a year later it was vanished because I was banned, but by that time it had gone global)

“When the news reporter said "Shopkeepers are opening their doors bringing out blankets and cups of tea" I just smiled. It's like yes. That's Britain for you. Tea solves everything. You're a bit cold? Tea. Your boyfriend has just left you? Tea. You've just been told you've got cancer? Tea. Coordinated terrorist attack on the transport network bringing the city to a grinding halt? Tea dammit! And if it's really serious, they may bring out the coffee. The Americans have their alert raised to red, we break out the coffee. That's for situations more serious than this of course. Like another England penalty shoot-out.”

Not that we're nicer people than the Americans. But we're not an Empire. Not any more.