Posted on 09/10/2002 3:08:44 PM PDT by nickcarraway
What is remarkable about the anniversary of 9-11? For the past year I, personally, have not heard anything new about the attack. The 19 attackers remain 19 unknowns, except for the data on their airline certificates indicating that 15 of them were Saudis. On the other hand, fictions spread by officials, public figures and authors, as well as the "hosts" and "guests" of the mainstream media, are spread today as intensely as a year ago.
The root of these fictions is the inability of these officials, public figures, authors and TV hosts and guests to understand suicide sublimated into terrorism. They have never attempted any suicide. They take their own lives for granted. Nor do they read Dostoyevsky to understand a "self-murderer" as Dostoyevsky understood him on the basis of the Russian suicidal terrorism of the "revolutionary movement," in which he had been personally involved and, indeed, barely escaped the death sentence.
On 9-11-01 and thereafter, the U.S. mainstream media even spread the opinion that the suicidal terrorist attack of 9-11-01 was an act of cowardice. That is, some of those who did not have the courage to declare publicly something that runs counter to a prevalent conformity regarded themselves as heroes, while the 19 Moslems rushing themselves into the hellish fire, to be pulverized into fiery dust in order to kill as many infidels as possible, were regarded by them as 19 cowards who are not worth knowing anything about except that they are cowards who perpetrated an act of cowardice.
Accordingly, suicidal terrorism has been visualized by the U.S. politico-cultural establishment as follows. The key figure is the invented boss or chief, like the invented bin Laden, Saddam Hussein or another fictitious figure having a remote connection with those bearing these names. The boss-chief compiles a list of those who are to ram hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. "How many men do we need for this operation?" he asks his chief expert, who produces his pocket calculator and after some fingering of it, brightly answers: "A score or so, Boss!" Whereupon the boss-chief orders: "Call 20 or so suitable men to my office one by one!"
Now, some of those called to the boss-chief's office seem to be reluctant to part with their lives. But good heavens! How the boss-chief bawls them out! He even threatens to deprive them of the bonuses this year or demote them! Cowards as they are, they hide their reluctance and fulfill the boss-chief’s orders, about which one boss-chief (bin Laden) produced even a videotape, proving that he had nothing to do with the attack of 9-11-01.
It should be noted that in the imagination of the U.S. politico-cultural establishment, all these bosses and chiefs giving orders to (suicidal) terrorists as to their low-level subordinates or soldiers are "linked." Thus, bin Laden is "linked" with Saddam Hussein. Hence, a poor terrorist faces a global terrorist superbureaucracy ordering him about. How can he (a coward!) disobey its global orders?
Let us now suppose that Dostoyevsky was to describe the scene: a (suicidal) terrorist being bawled out by the boss-chief (like bin Laden) of the global terrorist superbureaucracy. Dostoyevsky would have described how the suicidal terrorist would have taken the megalomaniac liar bin Laden by his theatrical Islamic beard and bashed his head against the wall (whereupon this feeble-minded and physically sick "warrior," playing at terrorism, would have croaked, without any consequences to history).
Dostoyevsky would have explained that a suicidal terrorist is more powerful than any emperor and freer than the freest human being ever envisaged by any libertarian: a "self-murderer" can do anything with impunity, for he has sentenced himself (or herself) to death and can execute his (or her) sentence whenever he (or she) pleases.
In the past 150 years or so, when suicidal terrorism has been rampant, it has been carried out by the suicidal terrorists, not by bosses, chiefs, heads of governments or terrorist organizations, or any other bureaucrats cherishing their lives and hence often incapable even of understanding the suicidal terrorists they allegedly order about.
Yes, the suicidal terrorists may take money, needed for their terrorist project (rather than earn it as American taxi drivers, for example). But those who give them money do not acquire any power over their fatal will and decision to do and die – and know why.
In 1934, Stalin's subordinate ruling Leningrad, Sergei Kirov, was assassinated by a minor official named Nikolayev. Stalin said that Nikolayev was Trotsky's agent, while later it was said that he was Stalin's tool. Actually, Kirov had seduced (raped?) Nikolayev's wife. Possibly Nikolayev was genetically inclined to suicide. His genetic inclination sublimated into the suicidal murder of his rival (a common case on the police blotter of any country). The rival personified the injustice (inequality) of the new Soviet society. Neither Trotsky nor Stalin could force Nikolayev, who had sentenced himself to death.
So, what is the moral of 9-11-01 a year after the event?
The suicidal terrorist act was committed by 19 suicidal terrorists, not by bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Trotsky, Stalin or whatever fictitious "bosses” the U.S. politico-cultural establishment may invent. Some of these 19 terrorists were graduates of one of the world’s best technological institutions (in Hamburg). They needed no bosses at the other end of the world.
Nineteen suicidal terrorists acting as a single being, with precision and without hesitation, is unique in the history of terrorism in the past 150 years. Using bioagents, they could have killed not 3,000, but 3 or 30 million Americans. Instead, they (fortunately) used hijacking, known since 1931, and ramming, about which every Soviet schoolboy knew in the 1940s, since it was used by Soviet pilots in World War II.
What is in store? This depends neither upon governments like Saddam Hussein’s nor upon "terrorist" organizations like "al-Qaeda" (a fraud), but on the number of Moslems genetically inclined to suicide and to sublimating their genetic inclination into suicidal terrorism, making them martyrs bound for paradise. The number is unpredictable, but some members of the U.S. administration seem to be determined to increase it.
The shift of attention from the suicidal terrorists to their imaginary bosses or chiefs offers great advantages to the U.S. administration. The "anthrax terrorist" has not been apprehended by the FBI or CIA. On the other hand, nothing is easier than to have a "nice little victorious war" against a small defenseless or weak country to "punish" the imaginary "bosses" or "chiefs" and kill by bombs several thousand Afghans or Iraqis.
*****
This piece is a variation on one of the themes of my book in progress: "Out of Moscow and Into New York: A Life in the Geostrategically Lobotomized West in the Age of Terrorism and Post-Nuclear Superweapons." Publishers: The 27-page Proposal and the first 130-page part of the book can be mailed to you if you apply to me (navlev@cloud9.net, tel. 001 718 796 6038).
The author made several points, all of which with the exception of a nonessential one are deep and correct. I'll restate them below with some elaboration.
Firstly, the attackers were not cowards. Bill Maher said so and got burned on that remark, but he was correct: it takes courage to face a premature death by violent means.
Secondly, we have trivialized the situation beyond limit, and this may be detrimental to our cause. Why? Because of two elements that a central to our culture: we like simple truths; and, in our organizations --- from the military to corporations, there is someone responsible at the top. So we project, incorrectly, the same onto the homicidal bombers: as the author points out, we concentrate superficially and falsely on Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. With regard to the latter, ABS will run a special on his use of Viagra. This is trivialization beyond stupidity, but our public not only does not get angry --- it likes such banality.
Homicidal bombers constitute an essentially horizontal organization. Invoking Dostoyevsky, the author argues, successfully, that no one, not even a despot such as Saddam Hussein, can order around a person who sentenced himself to death. Moreover, with the exception of money, the bombers do not even need any powerful overseer. The author points out that they acted in unison and with great precision on their own; no central dispatcher, no communications with a "nerve center" elsewhere was necessary.
Our trivialization of the situation is costly: even if we have killed bin Laden and will kill Hussein, the problem is not going to be solved, and not even diminished. We have to understand --- and this, I believe, is the main thrust of the essay --- that ideology is a powerful weapon. As long as anti-American propaganda continues, so will the war that Islamists have declared on the West.
Observe, however, that we do not even fight the root of the problem. Never once in the past year did we insists that the official governmental newspapers in the Arab world stop spreading falsehoods and defamation of the United States. I am talking about the friendly governments, such as the Egyptian, the Jordanian, and the Saudi. Had we conceptualized our problem differently --- that our enemy does not have a "top guy" to go after, that it is the ideology, not a person that orders the bombers to strike --- we would have undoubtedly worked towards secession of propaganda in the Arab world. We have to insist that the friendly governments eradicate the madrassas and newspapers that seem to exist for the sole purpose of spreading anti-American and anti-Semitic propaganda. The first step towards that goal is, of course, to recognize who the real enemy is --- the masses in the Arab world that feel impotent after 500 years of complete cultural decay. And in the Arab, largely shame-based culture, the avoidance of shame will make some choose death by homicide.
Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, and Machiavelli are indeed all that is necessary. But we do not like the truths the expression of which takes longer than one sentence. Yet, as Einstein has famously pointed out, "For every problem there always exists a simple solution, which is usually wrong."
Turning to my handy library of books on Stalin, I read in Robert Conquest's Stalin and the Kirov Murder:
"She (Nikolayev's wife) had a secretarial job at Party headquarters, and after the assasination a story was put about that she was having an affair with Kirov and that Nikolayev had killed him out of jealousy. There seems no doubt that this rumor, which gained wide credence in Party and diplomatic circles, is untrue; and though described as "beautiful" for the purposes of the story, the only first-hand description we have of her, for what it is worth, describes her as rather ugly. A Soviet writer [Roy Medvedev] suggests that one of the motives of the police-sponsored rumor was to denigrate Kirove."
So, we have NewsMax and Free Republic engaged in repeating one of Joseph Stalin's vile fabrications. Wonders never cease.
Let's see, these "non-cowards" attacked civilians on a civilian aircraft (cutting the throats of unarmed female cabin attendands, as is suggested by the report that an attendant's hands were found bound together) with the near-certainty that they would not encounter any armed adversaries on board.
Then they flew their planes into buildings at 400-500 miles per hour ensuring themselves of a quick, painless death followed by -- so they were all convinced -- instant transference to paradise where they were greeted by nubile virgins.
Maher and you are wrong. The typical WWII, Korea or Vietnam US Army infantryman (not a medal winner) showed far more courage every time he advanced on an armed enemy or whenever he stayed in his foxhole as the armed enemy approached his position.
Using Maher and your criteria, classic American mass murderers who put a bullet in their own heads after they kill their unarmed victims are also "not cowards."
Maher's firing was totally justified. His comments were as stupid as they were offensive.
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You make some excellent points.
Perhaps you can convince me, but I doubt your contention that bombers are organized horizontally. It’s my impression that they depend on a substantial cultural support system, both within the family (who will benefit from their act as a powerball winner does here), and within the community who supports the bomber from early age indoctrination through religious indoctrination and culminating in the final act of desperation which requires substantial community support. If you meant to say there is no where we could interdict this cycle, I’d disagree.
Our inability to recognize the enemy, I agree with you completely. I don’t understand the reason, perhaps it embodied in our nations resiliency in bouncing back from last years attacks, seemingly without a strong call for vengeance. I fear our enemies view this as weakness, and that more lives will be lost needlessly.
I have my money on a different theory. I believe that only those flying the airplanes knew what the actual plan was.
You have an interesting idea of "successfully". The author "argued" no such thing, he merely asserted it, at which point the reader is expected to nod sagely and swallow it wholesale. They simply cannot have been unconstrained in their actions, as is readily evidenced by the fact that the 19 of them coordinated their activities perfectly. If no one was able to command them or require their compliance, how on earth could they have all been on the same page with respect to a plan of action? Or are we expected to believe that 19 men came together and sort of osmotically grokked this elaborate plan, with no oversight, not so much as an internal leader within the group?
Highly doubtful, IMO - I suspect that, like all organizations run by committee, terrorists are not particularly effective when organized in such a manner. Try getting a group of 19 random people to agree on something as simple as toppings for a pizza sometime, let alone striking a blow at the Great Satan.
Moreover, you gloss over the importance of money too readily, I think. That is, in and of itself, a major constraint on activities and goal-realization in modern societies. If I may, the major difference between 19 Muslim men sitting around an apartment bitching about the corruption of the West, versus 19 Muslim men flying planes into buildings in order to bring down the West, is almost purely one of money. He who controls the purse-strings of such an organization has de facto control, and the ability to constrain the coordinated activities of the others. Certainly, they can act alone, but then again, they didn't. You didn't see one fellow shooting up the local shopping mall, while another strapped explosives on and headed for the subway - you didn't see that. Someone somewhere created a coordinated plan that these men executed, and that means they weren't simple freelancers indulging personal whims about when and where they wanted to die.
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