In spite of the United States' perennial self-pitying whining — about its alleged victimizations — there are three good reasons to remember 9/11

© 2021 Peter Free

 

06 September 2021

 

 

If we remembered painful things for the right reasons . . .

 

. . . maybe we would stop creating them for ourselves and others.

 

 

Take 9/11

 

Ordinarily, the self-pitying whining that goes along with commemorating 9/11 and Pearl Harbor — both instigated by 'foreigners' in response to the United States' own deadly actions — irritates me.

 

Nobody likes metaphorically fattish, pansy-assed, spoiled rich cry-babies.

 

Especially nobody who lives (or lived) where existential war's devasting circumstances has killed — and continues to kill — hundreds of thousands to millions of people.

 

 

That said — there are three good reasons to remember 9/11

 

First, sane people would (thereby) ask themselves why a small group of alleged terrorists might decide to steal airplanes. And fly them into tall buildings— just to incinerate thousands of ordinary folk — for (according to us) no good reason.

 

Second, Americans might (thereby) remind themselves what real courage looks like. As in the hundreds of lost First Responder lives that occurred that day.

 

All those sacrificed, without the slightest whimper or self-pity. Courage and nobility emanated (for Always) from those almost endless examples of duty and honor in action. This is the best that America has to offer.

 

Third, we might (thereby) start demanding accountability from the rapacious Goons who head the nation. You know, the folk and corporations who parasitize all that is good about this country for their own self-advancement. Those same Fat Cats, who knowingly victimize foreign peoples to add lucre to Elites' wallets.

 

 

Of the Justice and Accountability concept . . .

 

Peter Van Buren addressed the Kabul airport (American withdrawal) bombing the following way. Recall that the airport bombing was a direct outgrowth of the United States' 9/11-created Global War on Terror:

 

 

So it may be with the suicide bombing at the Kabul airport.

 

The pieces are all there: tactical fumbling by Washington, Americans out of place, civilians just trying to escape taking the worst of the violence, an enemy no one saw or knows well disrupting carefully planned out global policy goals, again.

 

There’s also the hero element:

 

The Americans were innocents, killed while trying to help the Afghans (albeit help the Afghans out of a mess created earlier by other Americans).

 

And of course, following the bombing, a revenge airstrike against ISIS-K leaders, or a random goat farmer or an empty field (we’ll never know) followed by another which killed ten civilians using a “ginsu knives” bomb which shreds human flesh via six large blades.

 

Have we finally stopped holding that devil’s hand?

 

The Kabul airport suicide bombing may be so jarring, so perfectly timed to illuminate 20 years of failure, that it will even be investigated.

 

Why have we not assigned blame and demanded punishment for the leaders who put those 20-year-old soldiers into the impossible situations they faced?

 

Before we throw away the life of another kid or another dozen Afghans, why don’t we demand justice for those in the highest seats of power for creating such fertile ground for atrocity?

 

© 2021 Peter Van Buren, The Worst Day in Afghanistan, American Conservative (06 September 2021)

 

 

The moral? — There are good reasons to remember national pain

 

But none of them (morally legitimately) have anything to do with whiny self-pity, self-justification and self-evasion.

 

Ask yourselves, for instance, how many of our Parasitic Elites would have rushed into 9/11's burning and collapsing buildings to save lives?

 

How many?

 

In 9/11, we clearly see the competing elements comprised of (a) US leadership's obscenely blood-sucking depravity and (b) this nation's generously bestowed citizen-heroism.

 

Choose leech-like Fat Cat-ism. Or heroic service to others.

 

We define the measure of our souls in making the choice.

 

There are good reasons to remember 9/11. Just not the ones that we conventionally burble for doing so.