Thang Nguyen 555

A team of 19 – strong arms and strong will – students of Architecture and Aerospace – came to attack.

A decade later, a team of equal or even more dedication – strong arms and strong will – came to take out the master-mind: OBL.

One side memorised the Koran, the other side overheard Jesus said to the thief “today you shall be with me in Paradise”. One side: the Jihadists…the other side: America, God and Politics =…Civil Religion, the American version of Christianity (prosperity and orderliness – not to mention a largest arsenal on Earth ).

Restraining and sleeping Giant America is not.

Submission the Middle East is not (although in theory, the teaching was about total submission to Allah).

The interpretations of the will of God – God of vengeance or God of mercy.

I think he meant … (a priori i.e. reading into the text with pre-conception from past experience and cultural makeup), like a Rashomon experience – or the blinds with the Elephant in the room.

Meanwhile, kids, wives, husbands, firefighters, responders, volunteers, intelligent community, stock brokers and many more apparatus were activated in the past twenty years e.g…contractors, sub-contractors, logisticians, investors, media and medics…

All have been occupied. Kept busy. Distracted even destroyed. All by one man and his distorted view of the world.

His desire and determination to control…to re-shape the affairs of this world according to his interpretation of the will of God. To re-assert Islamic fundamentalism (the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, for instance).

Never has the role of an interpreter been so elevated.

You would think an interpreter as someone who puts on a headset at the UN Assembly and simulcasts hopefully without prejudice or bias.

Interpreters are not supposed to be interventionists.

Instead, they are meant to be mere transmitters and conveyors of information.

In 9/11 case, interpreters = executioners…(we think God-Allah- want to take you out, your decadence and demoralising way of life – which by the way, even some on the far right American fundamentalists agreed e.g. night life in Hamburg).

So condemnation piles on top of condemnation…the operation went ahead in full swing and full secret.

A mere 1% of American even thought about terrorism back in September 2001. Their minds were still preoccupied by the 2000 Election, the Supreme Court decision and Al Gore (and wife) traveling the globe in the aftermath (which allowed them to reflect and care more about our environment – an inconvenient truth).

Many were killed, either by getting crushed, hit, or decided to jump (to escape the 2300 degrees jet-fuel burn).

A lot of steel crumbled and a lot of lives destroyed e.g. heroes, villains, profiteers, volunteers and politicians.

More than a million pages were compiled, collated, analysed and presented at the 9/11 Commission.

Just for one reason: NEVER AGAIN.

The big three: UK, USSR and US learned the same lesson: don’t go into Afghanistan.

Something about the land, the terrain and the resistance.

Cavemen and contour. Rough patches and destroyers of men.

If just once, the clock can be turned back.

We would have Bush still sitting and reading at a Sarasota Elementary class room (and the terrorists of 9/11 are not awarded wings in the same city).

No WH Chief of Staff (Andy Card) leaning over to whisper in his right ear about a second plane which has just hit the South Tower…and that America is not under attack. Then we wouldn’t see the Government of America doing “the Lord’s work”…that Dennis Hastert, the speaker of the House . not singing “God Bless America”…(perhaps they would have found out his past transgression on the wrestling team and put him in prison anyway).

And the then mayor of NYC would have kept his political capital…to be squandered anyway, the way he drank in the Map Room on Election 2020 night (premature celebration and pre-packaged script about “the Steal”).

We would still have Peter Jennings of ABC anchoring the news and Todd Beamer, Wheaton grad and Oracle employee, playing balls with his two sons (instead of “let’s roll” to rush the weapon-wielding terrorists on UA 93).

Perhaps and perhaps. But the clock keeps ticking, from Alpha to Omega…respecting no man.

And so, the 19 on their Jihadist mission. Took down the Twin Towers and newly renovated portion of the Pentagon, with UA93 flight buried in a Pennsylvania abandoned mine. Then we got a 20-year war with scores of Afghan allies at our coat tail.

74 Billions. Thousand of lives. Decades of war and waste. We’re all sub-contractors of someone else’s will and wit. Of their versions of God, his will and his wrath. And we still are willingly given in to them, one payment at a time.