Epilogue. 9-11

Friday night, after I published my comments about 9-11-01, and the eight comments preceding, I took time to read those eight additions to the conversation.  It occurred to me that those eight reflections, plus my own, were probably a good cross-section of the hundreds of millions in the U.S. and elsewhere, who in similar ways were trying to make sense of the insanity we were all witnessing in real time.

We are – we cannot deny it – a global community.  Even 25 years ago, we were not alone.  Even the casualty list for 9-11-01 speaks to that reality.  Many from other nations died in the carnage.

What follows is my attempt to fill in some personal blanks in my experience of that awful day and the days following.

AFTER SEPTEMBER 11, my first vivid memory was the silence.  We live relatively near the Twin Cities  and St, Paul airports, and their flightpaths.  Those days I walked outdoors, and before 9-11 there was often a plane heard or seen overhead;  September 12, and for a few days following, nothing.

It was a new and very unusual day in America.

By September 24, it was becoming obvious that peace was not to be forthcoming.  There were other plans being discussed.

Some time earlier in the summer we had booked a flight and accommodations for a week or two in London, England.  We decided to go ahead with the trip, and were glad we did.  We were treated very well.  We flew home from Gatwick on Armistice Day, Nov. 11, 2001.  At 11 a.m. that day, on the dot,  the PA announcer in the terminal asked for two minutes of silence, and the busy airport fell completely silent. I don’t recall even a babies cry.

At home, by November, 2001, the mood had been changing.  By late September a strategy was developing to avenge the injury inflicted on the United States, and by early October came a poll  where 94% of Americans supported bombing Afghanistan where Al-Qaeda hung out.  I don’t recall similar retribution plans against Saudi Arabia or Egypt, where Osama bin Laden and most of the airplane high-jackers were from.

I made my first visit to an antiwar protest in early October, 2001.  I didn’t know any of the speakers, nor the sponsors.  My dominant memory, even today, is of a very vocal antagonistic group of American flag-brandishing anti-protestor protesters….  WAR on evil was their message.

I became a peace activist, for three years, 2005-07,  I was President of a group of organizations, the Minnesota Alliance of Peacemakers; and part of organizing committee for a major Peace Island Conference in St. Paul at the time of the 2008 Republican National Convention.   I became very aware of the seductive beat of the drums of war in competition with the gentle sounds of peace.  Maybe it’s part of human nature to revel in conflict, especially if you win by domination.  We desperately need peacemakers.

Feb. 5, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell solemnly told the UN that Saddam Hussein was going nuclear, and Powell  was trusted.  The focus had switched from al Qaeda to regime change in Iraq.  Game on.  May 1, 2003 came the now-infamous Mission Accomplished speech by President Bush announcing the victory over Saddam.  Aside from the press releases, there was never a victory, as we all know.

For awhile after 9-11, I climbed aboard the 9-11 conspiracy train, which became very active and had reputable representatives and supporters.  That movement lasted quite awhile, and had credible concerns.  Finally the movement largely evaporated, perhaps as much from media leaders accepting the administration line that there was no there, there; joining in ridiculing those who suspected someones had less than clean hands in the success which came from the chaos.

Of course, then, it really made no difference.  The damage was done.  There are those still carrying the torch, but they have no audience.  and in this media dominated society, it is easy to bury problems, just by not mentioning or making it possible to effectively debate the issues. It is justly said that history is written by the victors through the official story – a major concern in todays assault on what history will say about today.  But about the best that we might be able to do is to keep the memory alive at least to the distinct possibility that there is more to the story than we will ever learn.

In the past 25 years, a low point for me came in the summer of 2009 when I visited the International Peace Garden on the North Dakota/Canada border.  The story is in this blog from the time.  It was as if War had vanquished peace; a long-standing Peace symbol had been converted to a War monument by the Board of the Peace Garden.  I don’t know the current status there….

And on its gone for 25 years.  Each of us have our own stories, worth remembering and sharing in our own circles.  We can learn by listening to ourselves and to others.

*

There is one further story, important to me, personally, from another time in our history.

This day, I recall another horrific day in the life of America: Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941.  Every December 7, this years 85th anniversary no exception, we will all see the USS Arizona blow up spectacularly on TV clips or newspaper photos, etc., one of the consequences of an attack by 353 Japanese aircraft.  Each time I see this, I’m watching my Dad’s brother, Uncle Frank, who I actually met as a one year old in early July, 1941, die in the explosion.  He was a ship fitter, his entire six year career on the USS Arizona.  Here’s one of over 20 photos I have of him.  He died at 26 years of age.

Frank Bernard, sometime between 1936 and 1941, USS Arizona

This year two of my daughters are going to be at Pearl Harbor, representing Granduncle Frank’s family..

A couple of years ago I got a letter from a Department of Defense subgroup that had received funding to attempt to match flesh recovered from the Arizona, but till DNA impossible to match with any casualty that awful day.  Male descendants were invited to give DNA samples for analysis, and I did.  Uncle Frank was one of the unknowns.

This summer came a followup letter: Arizona Battleship disinternment

To my knowledge, no match has been found to my uncle…at least not yet.  But several other unknowns have been identified through the process, and this year will be the first such commemoration, and I’m glad that Frank’s grandnieces can be in attendance.

Let’s have a conversation, all of us, everywhere.

Dec. 8, 1941, Japan and the U.S. became deadly enemies to each other.  At the end, four yers later, two horrendous bombs officially ended WWII.

Those of us old enough can remember the details of the ensuing years rebuilding relationships between Japan and the U.S., and the lesser known details of what may have been the reasons the Japanese chose to attack America’s outpost at Pearl Harbor.  War is simple, yet very, very complicated.  Might does not make right.

“Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.”

Each and every one of us is the solution, one action at a time.

POSTNOTE Sep 13: At Basilica of St. Mary this morning, the new Pastor, Ralph Talbot, commented on 9-11-01.  His was an on point homily, and mirrored his comments in the Sunday newsletter, copied here: Basilica Ralph Talbot Sep 13 26

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS;

from Larry Sep 11: Wow…Dick! What a fantastic piece of work you did on this whole project in two parts. Excellent commemoration of this day we will never forget. I too thought it was a small plane hitting a building in NYC. I was on the treadmill at the time. Then the whole thing started hitting me. Got to work and my dept. set up TV sets in the cafeteria so employees could follow this on their breaks.  Horrible, unprecedented day that changed the world.  I see the link to the interview with John. Works great!  Nicely done – your entire work on this…thanks!  LG

from Joyce Sep 11: This is an excellent compilation of experiences of 9/11. I was thinking, just now, of how we have abandoned, even demonized, expertise in this country. In the weeks before the 2000 presidential election I watched a man being interviewed on TV, and he said he was voting for GW Bush because, he said, Bush was just an ordinary farmer. Of course Bush was nothing of the sort, he had bought his ranch when he decided to run for president, and he sold it soon after leaving office, but aside from that, since when is an “ordinary farmer” a better choice for president than someone with years of experience and accumulated knowledge and expertise? Consider the incompetents running our government right now because people just couldn’t vote for a woman with years of experience in all three branches of government.  Consider all the newspaper articles interviewing Trump voters in rural diners, and the absence of interviews with educated people who voted the other way. I will never understand this lionization of ordinary, inexperienced, poorly educated men, and I use the word men deliberately.

from Larry J Sep 11: Attached for those who want to get it and those to whom I wish to send it.  When we heard the announcement that JFK was assassinated, I was in Mr. Ruud’s physics class at Bloomington High, using slinkies to learn about the wave theory of light.  When 9/11 happened, I was teaching storytelling and video in a Minneapolis school.  The maintenance person barged in and said, “I told your group shooting video they had to get back in here.  A plane just crashed into the World Trade Tower.”  Today I just want all of us to come together in love.

Larry added his recent column in the northwest Minneapolis newspaper Sun Post: Larry Johnson Sun Post 9 10 26

from Fred Sep 11:  Find the Jimmy Kimmel interview with James Talarico on You Tube. The Federal Communications Commission torpedoed Kimmel’s efforts to use it on his live TV show