Category: thoughts

The humans behind the 9/11 attack

I’m reading, as you know, the 9/11 Commission Report.  It’s emimently readable, but nothing like reading fiction.  In fiction, each detail contributes to the story.  In the report, there are many details that don’t contribute to the story.  They are just facts.  And way too many characters.
Perhaps most striking to me today is the account of the pilot-highjackers and their preparations for the attack.  They came to the U.S. a year or two in advance to learn English and attand flight school.  Two of the terrorists stayed in San Deigo for a period of time.  They proved terrible students, and never did learn English.  It must have been lonely, having cut off all communication with their families.  One of them had an especially tough time transitioning to the United States.  When he received work that his first child had been born, it was the last straw.  He went AWOL and returned to his home country (Yemen, I believe).  Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the famous mastermind behind the plot, was furious.  He wanted to kick this man off of the team.  Bin Laden disagreed, and the would-be father was eventually ‘returned’ to the team.  I wonder what his wife thought.  I wonder if she knew what her husband was going to do.  Twisted ideals or no, there’s something elemental in the love of a wife that must have cried out at her husband’s willingess to martyr himself for his faith in a brutal act of savagery.

Before today, I’d never thought about the humans behind the attack; I’d only thought of the acts.  Truly, looking at their thumbnail-sized low-quality photos printed in duotone on the pages of a book was a moving experience for me.  I just stared at those pictures and wondered what kind of zeal must have possessed these men that they would plan for several years to die.  Two years is a long time to know the date of your death, and it’s a long time to lose your nerve or change your mind.  I wonder whether any of them changed their minds, or had to talk each other back into following the plan.

Fascinating to put faces to the savagery.

Walking yet another line

As I’m reading the 9/11 Commission report, I’m constantly frustrated by the frequent opportunities the U.S. had to stop Usama bin Laden before the September 11 attacks. We were stopped by small things like a lack of logistical support for covert operations or our standing national policy against assasination. These things seem so petty in hindsight. Those in charge seem guilty of lacking the political will to act. I keep feeling like I’m reading a story with the end written first, and the lead-up written as one long flashback. I keep wanting to yell to the key players, “They’re all going to die in the end unless you do something!”

Fast-forwarding to the present, our country is engaged in a lot of practices in our efforts against terrorism that draw legitimate questions from within our borders and throughout the global community. I’ts been recently revealed that the CIA has a network of prisons worldwide at which the United States ‘detains’ people without trial and uses questionable interrogation methods. I stand in a long line of people claiming to abhor that practice. But I can also imagine reading about the next attack in another commission’s report and wondering why we didn’t do more. I can imagine wondering why we were so squeamish when innocent lives were on the line and why we lacked the political will to act when so many lives were in danger. For now, I’ll suspend judgement and not choose a position for or against our government’s practices. Questioning such practices is healthy. Specifically, I ask you this question: How far is too far in trying to stop evil? It’s a classic ethical question with very observable outworkings. Are we going too far now? Should we have gone further before September 11, 2001?

I’ll keep reading the commission’s report. But I know how the story ends, and it saddens me. They all die.

Andrew’s Literary Look-Ahead

This will be a summer of unfinished works. Here’s the meal slated to slake my literary palate during the coming summer months:

  • The 9/11 Commission Report: I’m halfway through and actively engaged with this book. It is a detailed account of the terrorist attacks on America, including quite a bit if Al-Qaeda’s history. I feel like I’m studying terrorist-ology. It’s not difficult reading, but it has more characters to keep track of than a Tom Clancy novel.
  • My First Summer in the Sierra by John Muir: I picked this book up 8 years ago and read only the first chapter. I’m hoping that 8 years of additional maturity and my vicinity to the Sierra Nevada Mountains will render this work more interesting now than when I last attempted it.
  • We Were Soldiers Once…. And Young by Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore (Ret.): This account of one of the U.S.’s first major engagements of the Vietnam War is simultaneously raw and eloquent. It covers with striking candor the ills of war and the hardships of battle. Written by a warrior, the slant is toward moment-to-moment accuracy, resisting the urge to glorify ugly events. I’m 300 pages into this 475-page work. What do I hope to gain from reading this? It’s history. I hope to have my repulsion for war and killing renewed and my respect and appreciation for those involved polished.
  • A Son of Thunder by Henry Mayer: This work of history covers a different war, and men who made different sacrifices. Specifically, it’s about Patrick Henry. He’s one of those supporting actors on America’s historical stage whose colorful life and notable role in the founding of America hold interest from many angles. This is another one that I’ve started and not finished.
  • War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: This book is almost the archtype of old, thick, boring books. Tolstoy knew both aristocracy and war during his lifetime, and wrote this book as an epic struggle of men and nations. It comes highly recommended as one of the greatest works in world literature, and only cost me $5.98 in hardcover form at Barnes and Noble. I’m really looking forward to it.
  • Washington, the Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner: My study of our founding father continues, and my amazement at the wisdom and far-sightedness with which they structured our country continues to grow. Though they had no idea what changes time would have wrought, they passed to us a government of rigid structure and flexible function. It’s a fascinating combination that has served us well for more than 200 years. I hope that others like me study the words and actions of our forefathers and gain wisdom for how to conduct our nation along the critical passages and rocky shoals of the future.

What’s on your summer reading list and why?

Testify

Lately as I’ve been praying, I’ve found myself, more than once, unable to ask God for some things. Even in silent prayer, I can’t will myself to complete some requests. In those moments, I realize that I’m a human, a speck, and I see my size and authority in relation to God. Who am I to ask things of the Almighty, the Cosmic Christ to whose will the very universe owes it existence? Moreover, what have I in my overinflated self-importance to add to or give to the One who is the originator of all?

Yet the mind-blowingly wonderful truth is that this God, this creator became nothing, scum, on account of me. He suffered on a Roman cross with me in mind. Such truths are almost too wonderful to ponder, like the radience glowing from Moses’ face that symbolized the Glory of God. I imagine the people of Israel having to turn away from that glow, yet being drawn back as if magnetically, forcing one more glance.

You see, Jesus didn’t visit our planet and die the most miserable of all deaths to make bad people good. He came to make dead people live. He came to make me live. Me, who would never even be able to dream of deserving his attention. And my only response, the only thing I can offer, is to point mutely at him. Not by my goodness. Not by my merit. Not even by my decision. It’s Jesus who saved me, and there’s not a thing I can do in this world that adds to or takes away from that. The power of the forces of Hell isn’t enough to snatch me from his tightly-gripping, ever-loving hand.

So I hold out my arm, silently pointing to the One who made the stars to shine, and who sacrificed so much to purchase me. It’s all I can do.

A Call for the Return of the Status Symbol

Reading the title of this post, you may be tempted to wonder, “Has Andrew had a status symbol stolen from him, and is he asking for it back?” Well, fair reader, resist that temptation! Such a blog post would be entitled, ‘Help, someone’s stolen my [status symbol here] and I want it back!’ Rather, the purpose of this post is to bemoan the death of the status symbol in American society.

I was thinking about this the other day in the gym. I thought, “I wonder…..27….. which of the people around me…..28…….belongs to each of the…….29…..cars in the……..30……parking lot………whew!” As I caught my breath, I realized that there’s no way of telling. Realization further told me that it doesn’t matter much, that any of these people could have any of the cars I was surveying without much regard for their true financial position. That really blew my mind. Hypothetical person X has gone to the effort of putting herself deeply in debt to try to appear as if she has lots of money, when in fact the symbol she’s buying for that express purpose doesn’t say “ostentatious” to anyone. It just says, “eh…. my owner could be rich, or she could be poor. Sure, I’m an Escalade with spinners, but don’t let that fool you.”

What a sad state of affairs. When status drains from a status symbol, it’s not much of a symbol, either. And it’s not as if this has been taken from us: we sold it to the hucksters and the money-changers who said, “Nice things are your birthright in this society,” and, “It’s not fair that the Joneses can have it and you can’t.”

While I abhor the thought that society would become stratified into ‘have’ and ‘have not’ categories, the greater danger is that the loss of those categories leaves no room for aspiration, much less perspiration. When all good material things come to you by dint of your (supposed) deservedness, the concept of seeking in any dimension of life is lost.

What, then, shall we do? First, we must realize that the ability to have something doesn’t imply the obligation to acquire it. True power is ability with restraint. Next, we must be less impressed with posessions, both our own and those of other people. Being less impressed means that people from all strata between ‘have’ and ‘have not’ can sit equally at the table. Compassionate eyes see the man, no matter how the clothes may distract.

These concepts challenge me. I hope you allow them to challenge you, as well.

– Andrew

On Developments in International Politics, Unexpected

Lots has been happening for all of us lately. Lisa and I got a dog (Maggie!), we held Shinn Photo’s launch celebration, Max (our cat) decided the world is his litter box and was thereby quarantined to his own private infirmary at our house, I decided to start a business in South Dakota, Lisa went to a spelling bee with several of her students, Max recovered and regained (mostly) free reign of our house, we subscribed to Time and Sunset magazines, I discovered Sudoku and decided not to start a business in South Dakota, Maggie learned to sit, and some other stuff happened.

But it’s been a big couple of weeks for the rest of the world, too. Ariel Sharon had a stroke, throwing into question future prospects for Mideast peace. Hamas, a group founded as a terrorist organization, was taken by surprise when they won the Palestinian elections. No one’s sure quite how to react to that. And Google made a controversial decision to officially open operations in China, complying with the Chinese government’s desire to censor search results.

Both Hamas’s entry into legitimate politics and Google’s entry into China ring some similar-sounding tones for me. Both were unexpected paradigm-breaking head-scratchers. Terrorists don’t win elections, especially in nations teetering on the brink of peace. And it’s long been assumed that the freer flow of information into communist countries would tear apart the red fabric of socialism instead of serving socialist demands. But beneath each of these news articles lies an additional layer of complexity.

Hamas’s roots are in the Islamic Brotherhood, an Egyptian organization that also claims Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the 9/11 attacks, as an earlier associate. Part of Hamas’s 1987 charter is the destruction of the Israeli state. This hardly makes them a likely partner in the peace process. But they also come into power with anything but a single-issue platform. Hamas has spent the past several decades sponsoring suicide bombers and founding soup kitchens, charitiable hospitals, and schools. Their intention in fronting so many candidates in the recent election was to clean up corruption in the PLO-founded PA, or Palestinian Authority. The PA, dominated by Fatah, an allegedly corrupt political party, has been neglecting basic social infrastructure services like trash collection and traffic lights. But Hamas hardly expected to hold a sudden majority in government, and is now scrambling to figure out what to do with it. As a policy, I don’t advocate handing broad governmental power to terrorist organizations. But I do see the merits of bringing the disenfranchised into mainstream dialogue and addressing their real concerns. And as Moises Naim, editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy Magazine, said, “There is nothing more educational and transformational than running a government in a poor country.” Perhaps the shock of Hamas’s newfound political legitimacy is the biggest step that no one would have expected toward peace?

Speaking of new steps, Google, everyone’s favorite (advertising company, search engine, media company, and maybe future operating system vendor?) has once again stepped boldly where no (advertising company, search engine, media company, and maybe future operating system vendor?) has gone before: China. Google’s U.S. site, www.google.com, has been sporadically available to Chinese residents in the past. But the Chinese government worries that the free flow of information to 20% of the world’s population might result in, um, bad things. So Google has been blocked to Chinese internet browsers until now. But in exchange for reaching that same 20% of the world’s population, Google has agreed to filter out results containing such consipatorial keywords as fear, sex, democracy, and joke. Google submitted a well-reasoned explanation for their move to the U.S. Congressional Human Right Caucus, saying that they want all people to have unfettered access to information, and calling on the U.S. Government to address censorship as a barrier to trade in future intergovernmental communication with China. So maybe information will make the world free, even if it means short-term compromises.

Well, folks, I’m searched-out. It’s 11 p.m., and I need to get to sleep. Any comments or thoughts?
– Andrew

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