Why United 93 Matters  
by Charbonneau Gourde
www.dissidentvoice.org
May 3, 2006



 

With all the fervor over the recent release of United 93, our thoughts are forced, for good or ill, back to that painful day in 2001, when, as we are constantly reminded, "the world changed."

Regardless of political viewpoint, most of us agree that the events of 9/11 are too important, too historic, too tragic, to ever forget. Many say it is too soon to be reminded of that day on the big screen, and some say it will never be the right time. Still others, however, say it is exactly the time to see these events replayed, because Americans are beginning to forget; our attention spans are those of gnats at best, so we need to be reminded what happened that day in the most painful, realistic, dramatic way. To what end, though?

As we watch the number of powerful documentaries and now the first of the major motion pictures replaying over and over again the events of 9/11, and we remember images of people leaping from the fiery hell of the Twin Towers to their deaths hundreds of feet below, feelings of righteous anger again swell within many of us. We want somebody to pay. We want those responsible found and brought to justice. Many of us are even forced to admit that we want revenge, though we know it to be useless and stupid and barbaric.

I remember one night in 2002, a year or so after most Americans were forced to learn where Afghanistan even was. We had invaded and bombed the excrement out of that country, and even though there was justified criticism about our tactics (after all, if I am robbed I don't carpet-bomb the entire neighborhood where the perpetrator might live on the off chance that he's home that day, do I?), most of us could at least acknowledge that Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden worked from there, so we could almost convince ourselves to stomach some “collateral damage” if it achieved a larger goal, and if we didn’t actually have to see the damage bombs really cause. We could almost put the blinders on like good, patriotic Americans are supposed to do.

That night in 2002 was when I heard the rhetoric from the White House and the talking heads on their cable-news shows change from Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda to Saddam and weapons of mass destruction, all under the umbrella of the War on Terror. I heard about the new face of evil, the new Hitler, the man who threatened to come after us with a “nucular" weapon he didn't have. The focus of the War on Terror had shifted to a man and a country that had nothing to do with the attack on our soil.

Now it is four years later, and the lines between 9/11, the War on Terror, and the strange, chosen war in Iraq are blurred in the minds of many Americans. United 93 will remind us of the unspeakable events of 9/11, and we will want action. We will want someone to pay.

Now that almost five years have passed since arguably the worst day in US history, we should be able to look around our world and see the progress we have made in finding and rooting out the source of the problem. However, any rational person can look around and see that progress has not been made, that the problem not only exists, but seems to have gotten much worse. We keep hearing that things are improving in Iraq, that we have them on the run, that the insurgency in the country that had nothing to do with 9/11 is in its final throes. What about the War on Terror, though?

How did our priorities get so twisted?

Sometimes I look around and wonder if I am alone in the possession of a memory, and if two plus two still equals four. The most frightening thing, though, is that if enough people think two plus two equals five, it does, and then I am the crazy one, the unpatriotic one, the America-hater, for thinking otherwise.

I know the truth, though. Two plus two equals four, and Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. It simply cannot be enough for Americans that we are killing some brown people somewhere, which sadly seems to be the mindset of so many of us. They are not all the same just because they come from the same general area on a globe, and the fact that we have now created a breeding ground for terror in Iraq does not mean we are winning the War on Terror.

United 93 must serve as a reminder for all Americans. We must be reminded that when the entire world wanted to help us do the right thing and bring to justice those that would do us harm, we betrayed their trust. We have allowed our leader to take us down a path of blood and hate and useless violence that has no end in sight, and much of that blame lies with us -- with the people. If we are a country in which the leaders derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, then we have failed to honor the authors of the Declaration of Independence, mission statement for our Great Experiment. We the people have the power to affect change, but only if we wake up, wipe our bleary eyes, try to actually understand what is happening in the world, and demand that the right things be done. Just because our leaders tell us things are going well, and that what we are doing in Iraq is just and righteous, that does not make it so. Our ignorance is not our strength. Two plus two equals four. Iraq has nothing to do with 9/11. We are not safer in 2006 than we were in 2001.

Charbonneau Gourde is an English teacher in Vancouver, Washington.  E-mail contact: cdgourde@yahoo.com.

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