9/11/2001 archives
In an episode of the Family Guy earlier this year, Lois Griffin challenges Mayor Adam West for election. When she finds that actually answering questions is not the fastest way to elective office, she begins to answer every question in the debate with two words: nine-eleven.
September Eleventh is no joke - it is one of the most tragic days in our nation’s history. Yet to some Americans it feels like Republicans in particular have taken to answering every question from traffic to the environment is “9/11”.
To some degree this accusation is true which itself is no laughing matter. Because some Republicans have abused the legacy of 9/11, Americans have, by and large, pushed the tragic events of that day out of the public consciousness. The impacts of 9/11 were real, and they continue to exist yet because it has become trite to blame things on 9/11, we look for other culprits or simply blame George Bush.
The hangover of 9/11 is most evident when you walk into the airport. Airline security is important, and it always has been, but the loss of privacy and the inconvenience of the added security is wearing thin. How many times are we going to ask a five year old to remove his shoes or an eighty-year old grandmother to take off her overcoat before we realize that fighting terrorism should involve somehow looking for people who fit the profile of, you know, terrorists?
What’s more, the American airline industry is continuing to pay the price of 9/11, and will for decades to come. In the aftermath of the attacks, several U.S. airlines went into bankruptcy; others barely avoided it by doing things like cutting back on in-flight meals and charing customers for services that used to be included in the ticket price.
Meanwhile, foreign carriers improved their soft products - upgrading premium cabins and installing personal video on demand, for example - and investing in new aircraft such as the Airbus A380 and environmentally-friendly Boeing 787 Dreamliner. American airlines, struggling though difficult times, are now behind the eight ball when it comes to replacing planes; they'll be waiting to replace what they've got for a while. In the meantime, most domestic airlines will be flying louder, less fuel-efficient planes for decades longer than their foreign counterparts. Their inability to provide much more than a Southwest-level of service has opened markets for new entrants like Jet Blue and Virgin America.
There's a broader impact. In the days following the attacks, billions of dollars were lost in global equity markets, leading to reduced tax revenues for federal and state governments. Worker productivity suffered as people stayed home and stayed away from public venues. It’s no surprise, looking at these facts, that President Bush’s 2001 budget surplus became a deficit in 2002 and each year since.
The Post 9/11 economic slowdown led the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates to historically low levels. The 1% Fed Funds rate which we all took for granted, fueled hyper-inflation in the nation’s housing markets and a credit free-for-all which ended - you guessed it - with the current sub-prime mess.
While it is tempting to blame 9/11 for all of America’s problems and equally tempting to write off any Republican who want to use the attack as an excuse, not a reason for some of our nation's current problems, we should remember 9/11 and its contributing effects to our collective story not just on the anniversary, but on 9/12, 9/13 and every other day of the year. The effect of this sad day are still with us. We need to realize - and accept - that fact.
Twenty years ago, President Ronald Reagan stood on the corner of Erbertstrasse and June 17th Street before the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and called upon Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev to "open this gate," and "tear down this wall!" Two years later as satellites zoomed images of ordinary citizens taking sledgehammers to that very wall, the world knew, once and for all that the 50-year Cold War was over.
Realists assessing the Global War on Terrorism often compare it to the Cold War. Whereas the latter was a military and ideological struggle between East and West, between capitalism and communism, the former is paramilitary and theological conflict between North and South, between Muslim and Christian. The international dialectic remains - true believes on both sides - even though the paradigm has changed.
The struggles of the cold war are a good lens through with to see today's struggle. But when President George W. Bush or Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani talk about the War on terrorism in a broader, longer context, like the Cold War, I find myself asking, "how will we know the war has ended?"
That question became more pressing for me over the long holiday weekend as I traveled to Berlin just as the City was celebrating its Film Festival and Mardi Gras--one event which tried to portray the City as a global leader, and the other which showed how the City is a follower of others. Berlin in the height of the Cold War, like Baghdad today, was a metropolis divided into sectors, where lives of U.S. forces and those of ordinary citizens were lost on a regular basis as America waged a war for freedom.
Today, the markers memorializing the site of the former Berlin Wall - once a literal and literary Rubicon - are easily confused with bike paths in other parts of the city.
In his remarks to the California Republican Party, presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani credited international capitalism for its contribution to bringing down the Iron Curtain. When McDonalds, Pizza Hut and other American corporations opened their doors behind in socialist and communist nations and were embraced by the public, it was a harbinger of things to come. Economic and social freedom, Giuliani said, were advanced through our private institutions, in support of a higher public objective.
But there is no Berlin Wall in the war on terror. Capturing Saddam Hussein did not end the War in Iraq and doing the same to Osama Bin Laden won't end the threat of Al Qaeda and other Islamo-fascist militants. So how will we know that we have won?
Continue reading "War on Terror: How Will We Know if We Win?" »
On September 11, I had a debate with myself I have just about every morning - should I go to the gym or lay in bed and watch the news? Usually, this debate begins when the morning paper makes a thud on my doorstep and continues until it would be too late to actually go to the gym and make it into the office on time.
But this Tuesday morning was different. In my half-comatose state, the snooze alarm - set to a Top 40 station - became all-news all of a sudden and started blaring something about an airplane and New York City. I rolled over and grabbed the TV remote just in time to see Katie Couric and Matt Lauer - appearing more than an hour earlier than usual for Los Angeles - reacting to news that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center.
Quickly, my thoughts turned from New York to my own situation. I was supposed to be in the office earlier than everyone else. A courier was coming by to pick up the invitation proofs for for a major event we were putting on, and I was the one he would be getting them from. What, I asked myself, is the likelihood that a three-story low-rise in Sherman Oaks, California was a target of the folks who had just launched the New York attacks?
Sensing that likelihood was low, I jumped in the shower to go about my day despite my news junkie's desire to stay at home and gawk at the television. When I got out of the shower and saw the reports from the Pentagon, I called my brother and sister-in-law…they had no TV and I figured they would have the same instincts as me. For that much, I was right.
Over the two days, the reaction across Los Angeles was striking: How narcissistic we were. If the terrorists would attack New York and Washington, well, L.A. was obviously all on their list. Rumors spread quickly. The “hit list” at various points ranged from the tallest downtown buildings to the largest studios to the localest of neighborhood bars. Businesses - the local Starbucks, my gym - shut their doors as their employees were too afraid to come in.
Even though the tragedy struck a continent away, we all felt a part of it.
Within two days, spirits changed. But then, Los Angeles was ready to stage one of the first large public events after September 11. Madonna was in town playing at the Staples Center and after two nights of cancelled concerts, she, and the city, were ready to let loose. After the apprehension of the added security at Staples Center, the crowd seemed to collectively realized that if we were voluntarily making ourselves a target for terrorists we’d better have a good time. Fourteen-dollar vodka tonics flowed like it was dollar drink night until the crowd was lubricated enough to forget the world around us and focus on the Material Girl.
This semi-fatalist mentality poured into the streets of Los Angeles in the coming days. We knew not when we would meet our maker, so collectively, we decided to make the most of the time we had on this earth.
Some people might call it hedonism, but this attitude served a higher purpose. Traditional barriers we Los Angelenos put up between each other - be it over race, class, neighborhoods or body-fat percentage - were torn down by the collective experience we all felt on 9/11. The new normal almost felt good.
But it was too good to last. By the time then-Mayor Jim Hahn tried to exploit the tragedy for political purposes, placing a 9-1-1 bond on the next ballot, our cynicism had returned, and maybe for good.
