New at Reason

Tim Cavanaugh | September 8, 2006

In Reason's continuing coverage of the 9/11 anniversary, David Weigel gets jiggy with the whippersnappers who joined up for the War on Terror, and then deserted.

Comments

brian423|9.8.06 @ 1:35PM|#

Tonight, this 34-year-old Gen-Xer is meeting a 23-year-old Gen-Y platonic female friend at Starbucks. The last time we debated this issue a year or two ago, she was an Iraq hawk. Maybe now I can needle her a bit about not listening to her elders.

|9.8.06 @ 1:42PM|#

platonic female friend? Aren't you a libertarian?

Oh wait, I guess libertines are the ones who can't really have platonic female friends. :)

|9.8.06 @ 2:00PM|#

Uhm,

Maybe I was confused by this,

i always thought the reverse corollary (love that word today) of "anyone over 30 can't really be hip", is that "political insights of people in their 20's are meaningless"

well, except for you, of course, Dave... :)

When I turned 30, i went back and reread a lot of my writing from college and realized how little I really knew about anything. It was sort of depressing.

I'm sure when I'm 50, I'll groan even worse at things I said on Hit&Run... :)

JG

|9.8.06 @ 4:19PM|#

Tell the truth, Dave, your homicidal thoughts that morning weren't limited to Osama, were they?

Personally, I wanted dead Muslims. Lots of them. Eye for a numerical eye.

And since ours were innocent civilians...

Be honest with yourselves; I'm not the only one, am I?

The next time you see a conservative complain that graphic imagery of death on 9/11 isn't being shown enough on television...

The next time you see one of them condescendingly accuse the American people of having forgotten what happened that day...

The next time you hear one of them, like our president for example, declare that 9/11 clarified his thinking...

think back to your feelings and your thoughts circa 11:00 that horrible morning.

That's the mindset they want to keep you in. Fearful, obedient, full of rage, and if you read sources like National Review or Andrew Sullivan, just certain there's a Fifth Column around here somewhere. Probably among those coastal-college-media types.

|9.8.06 @ 4:51PM|#

The War on Terror seemed like a good idea at the time, but, hey, so did the War on Drugs and the War on Poverty...

Turns out war is not a real good idea... no matter how riled you whippersnappers get.

kwais, this means you.

|9.8.06 @ 4:55PM|#

"Be honest with yourselves; I'm not the only one, am I?"

Uh, I'm positive there are plenty of other people who experienced that feeling, but I wasn't one of them.

|9.8.06 @ 5:23PM|#

""Personally, I wanted dead Muslims. Lots of them. Eye for a numerical eye.""

Well then you got the bonus plan. We have killed more than 2700 innocent Muslims in Iraq. (not like Iraq had anything to do with 9/11) I can say that's war and write it off as collateral damage. It's still one of the low civilian collateral damage numbers in the history of our wars. Of course killing innocent people is bad, and thats in part why war is bad.

But, to say Eye for numerical eye is the rule, you would have to accept that they would be able to kill of a few more of our innocents to make it numerically even.

I think you just want dead muslims. Try a different excuse.

|9.8.06 @ 7:44PM|#

joe,

While I think you're projecting your own inadequacies onto everyone else, I would give you credit for admitting that you made the very human mistake of letting your feelings trump your morals...but then you tried to turn it around into an attack on your political opponents.

|9.8.06 @ 7:52PM|#

I think you misunderstand me, Vic. The point is that I have never experienced anything remotely similar to that emotion before or since. It was the excretia of the rat brain underneath my true self, not what I actually believe to be justice. I'm not saying that is what should be the rule, but that I was thinking with such a lack of clarity that such an erroneous, immoral thought appeared to be reasonable and just at that moment.

crimethink, "While I think you're projecting your own inadequacies onto everyone else..."

Uh huh. I'm sure a transcript of your thoughts that morning would read like a Martin Luther King treatise.

|9.8.06 @ 7:56PM|#

crimethink,

My political opponents haven't spent the past five years working to keep the country in the "Post-9/11" mindset? They HAVEN'T been idealizing the intellectual and emotional situation of the country in the days that followed as long-spurned lucidity?

Tell me another one.

|9.8.06 @ 8:46PM|#

Well, if joe is taking a survey, I'll concede that I wanted to slap somebody around...and I was closer to 50 then.

I believe also, that the nation has been led down the path since that moment...but ALL the politicians are MY opponents, and broadly they have all supported the same mistaken responses to the event.

I DID have some presentiments of disaster...less about Iraq, than about the previous course in Afghanistan.

I am not well informed about Patriot, but I didn't feel ANY sense of urgency about "terror cells" in N America. I thought most of the airport/airline security stuff was foolish and counter-productive grandstanding. Even the National Review thought the Department of Homeland Security was a bad idea. But it was all pretty much bi-partisan schlock at the time. A few Democrat skeptics...maybe, and a few Republicans too - nothing systematic.

I didn't even then see how it made any sense to say we were going to Afghan to get bin-Ladin. I would not have felt one bit more or less safe in the past five years if bin-Ladin had been killed or captured at any time. Any more than Zaquari.

It bothered me a LOT to learn that the US was suspending an embargo on Pakistan to gain access to Afghan. It was cheering to see how affectionate (and effective) our Northern Front allies were...then saddening to learn that the relationship has no future, because of Iran.

I thought the big Jamborre to pick Karzai was a joke, and we should have pushed for King Zog. I think there has been a definite "mission creep" since then, and now we are trying to stabalize Karzai by crushing warlords.

I think our problems in the region have everything to do with three lousy strategic decisions. To support Israel at the expense of Jordan. To support Pakistan against India. And not to resolve our problems with Iran.

Don't see any clarity from most Democrats on this. It would require some political courage - so I'm not expecting much.

|9.8.06 @ 8:54PM|#

"...then saddening to learn that the relationship has no future, because of Iran."

Please explain, Andrew.

|9.8.06 @ 11:28PM|#

Iran supports the ethnic groups which comprise the Northern Front. Pakistan supports the ethnic groups which did (still do) comprise the Taliban. To some extent the turmoil in Afghan BEFORE 9/11 was a proxy war between these states...and - typically - we were on the wrong side.

We still are, and it has gotten worse - with Iran on the Axis list, and Pakistan as our "major partner" in the GWOT.

If you want to try on a 9/11 conspiracy theory, try Pakistan...THEY have benefited in a big way. (How is Israel any better off?)

thoreau|9.9.06 @ 9:36AM|#

joe-

I'll tell you what went through my mind that morning:

1) Fear.
2) Sympathy for the victims.
3) Fear.
4) Better buy canned food.
5) Fuck it. We're going to do one more round of ass-kicking and then we should never get involved in anything overseas ever again. Just kick some asses, and say that foreign countries have to fend for their own goddamn selves from now on.
6) Fear.
7) Shit, they're going to do some really crazy paranoid stuff on the home front for "security", aren't they? Oh, fuck.
8) Maybe some bottled water too. Yeah, bottled water. And cash.
9) Fear.

|9.9.06 @ 11:49AM|#

joe,

Yes, I was angry about it; yes, I wanted those responsible for the attack to pay with their lives; but that's far, far short of wanting "lots of dead Muslims" who had nothing to do with the attack. It is instructive, though, to note that a person who professes to ignore anything I say about race because I'm such an intolerant bigot, wanted people dead because they had the wrong religion.

|9.9.06 @ 11:53AM|#

Of course, the Freudian in me finds it easy to believe that the people who loudly advertise their tolerance, are really the most bigoted in their hearts. I can understand how the events of 9/11 could temporarily suspend the reaction formation, joe.

|9.9.06 @ 2:18PM|#

Andrew,

You are referring to Iranian support for an ethnically Persian faction, right?

crimethink,

Uh huh. I's sure your picture of the people you wanted to "pay with their lives" looked like the opening credits to Leave it to Beaver.

Quick, why don't you declare your purity a little louder? You totally haven't protested too much yet.

|9.9.06 @ 2:21PM|#

Because, as I'm sure Freud would agree, people who emphatically deny that the shadow of prejudice exists within their minds tend to be renowned for both their honesty, and their self-awareness.

|9.9.06 @ 2:41PM|#

"...wanted people dead because they had the wrong religion."

I think this is a more fully formed concept that I had at the time, crimethink. Maybe "Middle Easterners" would have been a better description of my mindset. Or even, Muslim fundamentalists in the Middle East. Or, probably most accurately of all, an ill-defiend Thoem People.

For the self-serving reasons you were nice enough to outline, you're jumping on my statement to depict me as having an anti-Muslim, religioius worldview - which is fairly easy, given the brutality of the thought at the imprecision of my phrasing - but really, this gives my passing sense too much credit, as an actual prejudice against a definable grouop of people.

Which was not the case - I was much more certain that I wanted bombs dropped on people's neighborhoods, than I was of who those poeople were.

Which raises another question: if you were going to kick me once I'd laid myself down with my admission, why would you decide that it was more important to jump on the religious prejudice than the collective punishment of civilians?

The answer, of course, is politics. You, of all people, are certainly not going to miss the chance to freshen up the odor your stated, considered theories about race have left about you.

|9.9.06 @ 3:08PM|#

joe

Yeah. Baluchis, I believe. I know an Iranian ex-pat who spent his military sefvice on that border. He said he could understand the language with some difficulty, it is related to Farsi. Lots live in Iran proper.

|9.9.06 @ 3:28PM|#

Uh huh. I's sure your picture of the people you wanted to "pay with their lives" looked like the opening credits to Leave it to Beaver.

What does this have to do with anything? If the people responsible for 9/11 were white, I would still have wanted their heads. That's hardly a statement of purity; it's a basic attitude of civilized people that only the guilty should be punished for their crimes.

You hardly laid yourself down with your admission; you used it as a starting point to launch an attack on your opponents.

why would you decide that it was more important to jump on the religious prejudice than the collective punishment of civilians?

Probably because you said you wanted lots of dead Muslims, and Muslims are a religious group.

You, of all people, are certainly not going to miss the chance to freshen up the odor your stated, considered theories about race have left about you.

Wow -- now I'm getting the "of all people" treatment! Maybe my olfactory nerve isn't working; could you refresh my memory about my putrefying theories on race?

|9.9.06 @ 3:50PM|#

"What does this have to do with anything?"

Oh, yeah, you can cut the self-awareness with a knife.

For a few moments, crimethink, I was a strong supporter of your worldview; the clash of civilizations, the need to widen the response beyond those actually responsible, and the desire to transform a "backwards" Muslim world into something less dangerous through military force were all very much with me at that time.

The difference is, I got over it, and you've been staunchly defending it ever since.

|9.9.06 @ 4:03PM|#

joe,

Wow. I must have been sleep-posting or something, cause I sure don't remember having that worldview, let alone staunchly defending it for five years.

Get that crimethink out of your head; he sounds like a pretty rotten guy.

|9.9.06 @ 9:35PM|#

We got a phone call from a friend out East: "Turn on the TV" it was 6am, we did.......saw the second plane hit.
I had one thought at first:
Thats some big assed chickens come home to roost"
(ask the Smarter Half)
Then: Shit- The Russians will be able to kill as many Chechens as they want...
Then: Shit. More bullshit conspiracy laws, and a Great Leap Forward in consolidating State power.
Right on all three.
Sometimes I hate bein so damn right.....

|9.11.06 @ 10:18AM|#

""I was thinking with such a lack of clarity that such an erroneous, immoral thought appeared to be reasonable and just at that moment.
""

Joe, I have to give you some real credit here. I think many Americans (certainly many of our leaders) have this attitude and don't realize it.