Eleven Nine

Four days ago, I had the pleasure to write about my wedding anniversary. Now, though, we've returned in our calendar to an anniversary of tragedy, not necessarily as personal, but clearly on a greater historical scale. The 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center buildings, the Pentagon, and the hijacking and crashing of Flight 33 (not to mention the other three hijacked planes) have permanently stamped this date as one of sadness and anger. Although my wedding anniversary is uncomfortably close to 9/11, I am grateful that it doesn't fall on the same day.

But you know that many anniversaries and birthdays do fall on September 11. It must be difficult for people to feel comfortable going out and celebrating these important, legitimate milestones in their personal lives while the nation as a whole is in a much more somber state of reflection. This also applies to those whose special personal dates coincide with other infamous dates like December 7, November 22, or April 4. As for myself, a few years ago the young daughter of a couple we know died on my birthday in an ATV accident. So from then on, my birthday (at least to me) has always been (and will always be) a reminder of that tragedy and loss.

Speaking of the 9/11 attacks, they were so traumatic to our national consciousness that we don't need their anniversary to realize how much they affect our lives to this day. In particular, our current escalating war within Afghanistan stems directly from the fact that, in 2001, the terrorist Al-Qaeda organization, which planned and carried out the attacks, was operating freely there with the blessings of the Taliban-controlled government. So the U.S., with its NATO allies, justifiably set out in late 2001 to destroy Al-Qaeda, capture or kill its leaders, and punish the Taliban for giving them sanctuary.

But going so far as to overthrow the Taliban? I'm not sure that this goal was very well-thought out. At the time, the national political mood was so angry that some were even calling for nuclear attacks against Afghanistan. The thought of our national policy being to militarily punish the Taliban and then use leverage to separate them from Al-Qaeda would have been seen as too weak of a response to the attacks. But that was exactly how we got Sudan to expel Al-Qaeda out of its territory during the Clinton presidency. We didn't need to send US troops there to overthrow that Sudanese government, and no one is suggesting that we do so now (in spite of the ongoing Darfur tragedy in which that regime is complicit). But now, in Afghanistan, we've come around to where we were in Iraq. Our objectives have changed to "nation building".

We will not succeed in destroying the Taliban, which is an indigenous political/military movement popular among large sections of the population in certain regions, especially in the southern part of Afghanistan. The fact that their values offend many in the West (stoning for relatively minor crimes, persecution of minority religions, treatment of women as unequals, anti-education) may cloud the judgment of those who would like to improve life for Afghanis there. But we shouldn't digress from our original goals there, which were to eliminate Al-Qaeda as a security threat to us and to lay down the law that any regime harboring terrorists will be severely punished. For us to punish a governing regime somewhere is different than occupying their territory with our military while driving them out of power. All that accomplishes is to cast ourselves into the role of occupiers and to legitimize the overturned regime in the eyes of the people there. After all, the Taliban can now easily stigmatize whatever Afghan government is currently in power as "puppets" of the Americans as long as our military is there, very visible and in large numbers.

As for this article's title, I understand that dates are ordered differently in some countries, notably Great Britain. A few years ago, I had a little fun looking at a "Paul McCartney is dead" website that listed all of the reasons that the former Beatle supposedly died in 1966 from an automobile accident. Given as one of the clues was the date "9/11", reputedly appearing in some form on the Sgt. Pepper album cover. The website's author pointed out that this meant (to him) that the accident happened on November 9 [thanks for the correction, Barry], since in England the dates and months are switched in their conventional order of use. I don't know for sure whether or not that's true, but if it is it must be interesting for the British. After all, I'm sure that no one anywhere says "eleven nine" to refer to the 2001 terrorist attacks. Until now, that is.