from the Archive

September eleventh feels weird. It won’t ever feel normal again, not for those of us old enough to flip channels or turn on the radio.

Safeway has turkeys on special, right there in glorious colour, 4X6 on the front page of their flyer, with a patriotic red-white-and-blue backdrop, which would be understandable if it were Thanksgiving or America, but it is neither. It is September eleventh, in Canada.

Of course, they could move the US Thanksgiving up to 9/11. The original settlers had lost many of their members by Thanksgiving, so it was a bittersweet time for them, too. In part, it was a chance to rejoice that they were still alive, that they had worked together and survived adversity and reached across borders with extended hands, making friends and acknowledging that we are all in this together. That seems appropriate for 9/11; rather than mourn a day of attack, celebrate the “Let’s roll” American spirit of bold action and the subsequent coalition-building that indicates the US has reached maturity and leads more from the power of earned respect than from the power of adolescent riches or force.

I wonder about the way I spent the first hours of 9/11 today. Shortly after midnight I went to one of my favorite sites, The Smoking Gun (www.thesmokinggun.com) to read their Document of the Day. This is usually an arrest report on some two-bit celebrity, but they’ve also featured “How we bought John Gotti’s Pants,” the dress code for P. Diddy‘s birthday party, and shots of a Survivor contestant participating in hardcore porn. Today it was different. Very different.

When I saw it I knew I had to be listening to Dead City Radio, the William S. Burroughs album which features both his Thanksgiving Day Prayer and readings from the Book of Revelations.

“Thanks for a nation where nobody’s allowed to mind his own business…

thanks for the American Dream, to  vugarize and falsify until the bare lies shine through…

thanks for a continent to dispoil and pillage…

thanks for a nation of finks…

thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams.”

What was it that I saw there? Al-Qaeda’s terrorism manual in full, and in English. It took me an hour to download. Every now and then I stopped and asked myself if I was doing the right thing; I still don’t know for sure. “Know thine enemy” is a pretty big component of my mental life, but there’s also a fascination with the dark side; I just like to look at it, it’s interesting. So I wondered if this was voyeurism or historical interest. Certainly I believed that the site would be forced to take it down in 24 hours at most, so if I didn’t grab it now it would be gone.

Was this just another thing to put on the shelf beside Aleister Crowley and the Anarchist’s Cookbook, or was this in a separate category? Those other books caused pain and even death to innocents in their day, the difference is that this one caused so much, and so recently, and to allies. Sure, getting this info is in execrable taste, I acknowledge that, but besides an aesthetic distaste, is it wrong?

Certainly it could have had better timing; it could not have had worse.

Now I wonder about that. I have been thinking about the events of a year ago more because of this book than because of any single other reason. I have been thinking about the victims, about innocence and war and how in the name of God anyone could do this, believing it right. I have read part of the book; its tone is kind, respectful and encouraging. It also takes events of war and puts them into a theological context; not just what to expect and what to do, but what that means to God, and what God means to you. I don’t believe that any padre in the American military could do as good a job of making clear the importance of human action in a metaphysical context. They give meaning to actions; if the Americans, or indeed any secular force, could call on this power they could defeat these outcasts easily, but they cannot. They have to fight this war keeping Church and State separate, though war is the crucible that brings them together; are there athiests in foxholes?

Obviously I have more thinking to do, and no typing until I have done it.