Tuesday, 11 September 2001
.....
I, like most people, am in shock. We need to figure out how to take care of ourselves and each other. This event bears global and historic significance, most of which we cannot yet begin to comprehend.
A friend already received an email message from Coffee Cup Software about the attacks. The note was very much along the lines of their "attack" web page:
We feel very strongly about this. We think that whoever is found responsible for this should pay the ultimate price.
If any country is found responsible, that country should be destroyed. If it is a terrorist organization, it should be destroyed.
What makes a country "responsible"? If the government, or part of the government, planned and executed the attack? If so, should the whole country be destroyed?
I hope not, and suspect that the Coffee Cup team is speaking loosely, out of the shock of the moment, as they go on to write:
We pray for the innocent civilians that are the victims of this attack. May God bless and be with you all.
Destroying an entire country for the actions of a few would produce innocent civilian victims on the same scale as the U.S. has right now. So I trust they don't want that. Venting is a way of dealing with grief, but I think the "corporation" ought to be a bit more careful.
If you decide to comment against us and side with the terrorists, remember Pearl Harbor. Many more innocent civilians died today.
This is a very dangerous bit. To dissent from their view and what they think should happen is not to side with the terrorists, to approve of what happened, or to fail to feel strongly, and properly, about the loss of life.
This document is interesting as it clearly enunciates two of the major dangers the U.S. must navigate in the weeks and months ahead. First, extreme overkill driven by vengence, sorrow, and fear toward suspected, imagined, or actual culprits, sympathizers, or mere bystanders (as shown by the "destroy the country" call); second, systematic curtailment of civil rights.
Clearly, we, the U.S., are going to try to retaliate. Equally clearly, we, the U.S., are going to tighten internal security for quite a while. Much of this tightening is just necessary for coping with the diaster. The difficult part is not going overboard.
"This is the Pearl Harbor of American terrorism," said Larry Johnson, a former CIA and State Department terrorism official. "Just as occurred with Pearl Harbor, we'll get through this. But as Pearl Harbor awakened the United States to a war that it was unwilling to fight, this will have a similar effect. These groups that have called for killing Americans and gone unscathed are going to pay the price. We will overcome the grief, but after the grief, there's a rage."
-- Washington Post
Grief and rage are natural reactions to disaster, but they often lead to further disaster. Rage begets rage begets rage.
See also Massive Attacks inside the US <http://monkeyfist.com/articles/774>
This is Feeling strongly about this <http://monkeyfist.com/articles/775>