I bring a nearly-unique perspective to this, one that, to my knowledge, is radically different from about 306,999,877 other Americans’ experiences.
In 2001, I was stationed on a fast attack submarine in SUBLANT (East coast). I was about 3 months from the end of my enlistment, and counting the days. On the morning of September 11th, we were headed out to sea for some exercises off of Puerto Rico. Everyone was looking forward to the fantastic liberty that PR afforded.
Several hours before our dive point, I left my watch post in the engine room, and cut through the mess deck to go make a head call. As I was heading back aft to resume my watch, I saw the image of the burning towers from the CNN International satellite feed we had, at that time, just achieved the ability to copy. I remember seeing a guy in my division staring into space with red-rimmed eyes (he was from the Bronx, and his mother worked across the street from Tower 5 — thankfully, she was late to work that day), but didn’t have time to ask him what was wrong. As I made my way aft, I was wondering what in hell they were doing watching a movie in the middle of the day.
If it was several hours before the rest of the country knew the full story, it was several days before we even knew the barest facts. Sea duty on a submarine is like living in a time capsule. It’s kind of like that Brendan Fraser movie, Blast from the Past. When you’re underway, there is virtually no information from the outside world, except the heavily censored “sports page,” almost literally only football/basketball/baseball results – and apparently many games were canceled that season. There were two indications I had that something had changed on a visceral level: when we got to the “great liberty port” of Roosevelt Roads, PR, we were restricted to pier liberty (meaning we could leave the ship and go as far as the M-60-barricaded ends of the pier), and my father sent me several emails that sort of chronicled his take on what was going on.
Our planned three-week underway became two months.
When we returned to the States, I remember wondering if the Fourth of July had come late, because of all the flags on display: flags on cars, flags on t-shirts, flags for sale at the grocery stores. It took a while for this new reality to sink in, for the reason behind this opulent display of nationalism to gel in my mind.
Oh, I thought, this is because of September 11th.
It was when people started criticizing me, then an active-duty sailor, for not displaying the flag, that I started to get an inkling of how dangerous this new national pride could become. Don’t get me wrong: you can’t find a more fervent supporter and lover of this country and all it could and should be than I am; but I saw — and still see — no reason to make some shallow, vapid nod to patriotism when I was actively serving my country, putting my life on the line for her. I mean, anybody can wave a flag.
I bring with me the sort of involvement in the whole 9/11 ordeal that most Americans had in Pearl Harbor. For me, and for most of my shipmates — and, I suspect, the several hundred (at least) other submarine sailors who had to have been out on ops or on patrol when it happened — the whole thing was like watching those old Newsreel films from WWII. While I have an intellectual understanding of the events, and I experience the same kind of moral outrage anyone else does that such a tragedy was allowed to happen, I lack the overwhelming emotional attachment to that dark Tuesday morning. I still geek out over claims that there was total news coverage with no commercial interruptions. (That sometimes seems more fantastical than the attacks themselves!) I think that gives me — us — the benefit of being able to think rationally and dispassionately about these events and our response to them.
I considered re-enlisting at the time, but ultimately decided against it because I just could not tolerate — especially in the post-9/11 world, where information has become so crucial — the info-vacuum of a seagoing submarine. That said, I fully supported attacking Afghanistan, and I later fully supported Iraq. I had voted for Bush in 2000, and against Kerry in 2004. I supported each and every move Bush made, but by 2004, the shine had started to wear off.
I know now that Bush was wrong. I know that he continues to be wrong. While there might have been thin justification for Afghanistan, it has been entirely mismanaged since the invasion of Iraq, to the point that now we have lost all sense of why we went in in the first place. And Iraq… Iraq can simply not be justified on any level. With the information we now have, that Bush had been planning, simply looking for an excuse, for Iraq since he took office, the only moral answer is to leave. We may even owe reparations. Certainly, Bush needs to be charged with war crimes.
I have the blood of countless Afghanis and Iraqis on my hands. Because of my support for both conflicts — I can’t call them “wars,” because only Congress has the powers to declare war — I also have the blood of several thousand American servicemen and countless American civilians on my hands. And now, I have no options in the major parties — both Obama and McCain seek to further war abroad so they can consolidate the empire here at home.
Andrew Bracevich, in “9/11 Plus Seven” wrote:
Rumsfeld and Feith were co-religionists: Along with other senior Bush administration officials, they worshipped in the Church of the Indispensable Nation, a small but intensely devout Washington-based sect formed in the immediate wake of the Cold War. Members of this church shared an exalted appreciation for the efficacy of American power, especially hard power. The strategy of transformation emerged as a direct expression of their faith.
In either case – whether the strategy of transformation aimed at dominion or democratization – today, seven years after it was conceived, we can assess exactly what it has produced. The answer is clear: next to nothing, apart from squandering vast resources and exacerbating the slide toward debt and dependency that poses a greater strategic threat to the United States than Osama bin Laden ever did.
