THE GREAT COLLAPSE

I can't say what it meant; I can only say what it meant to me.

The bus picks my son up for high school at 6:47AM, so I'm
generally up at 5:30 with a cup of coffee, turning on the TV at six
to wake him up. Together, we watched the whole thing. Now, my memory
of seeing Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated live with my parents is
joined by the memory of seeing thousands of deaths live with my son.
I didn't have to look at the calendar to know what day it was because
yesterday was my younger son's birthday, 9/10. It was 9/11. It was
911. It was the ultimate emergency call.

I feel an odd combination of emotions, unbelievable anger
that something like this could happen, but unlike those people who
heard about Pearl Harbor on December 7, nobody to specifically blame.
At least they knew to hate the Japanese, but this event doesn't allow
us to hate an entire country or class of people. There's only one
person to hate, the mastermind, and though we can make a good guess,
at this point there's no way to actually know.

Going out in the world, everyone was in a daze. The clerk at
Vons was getting an update on her cell phone, saying "What? There was
a fourth plane?" while ringing up my juice. We walk down the aisles
and shake our heads at each other, we had all witnessed thousands of
simultaneous deaths on live television. Fuck politics, life would
never be the same. And the thought that keeps surfacing, despite my
longing for some sort of justice, is What if they're right? What if
their tactics are despicable but their cause is just? What would you
do if you believed that the United States was systematically
committing genocide against your people? Wouldn't you strike back?

At this point, all I had was TV for news since my computer
had broken down. I went to The Desert Post Weekly who were kind
enough to loan me a laptop. I thought Tuesday would be an interesting
day to spend at a newspaper but it wasn't an interesting day to spend
anywhere. I went home.

I had gone without e-mail for three whole days, so there were
about 200 waiting for me the Tuesday of the great collapse -- the
collapse of the buildings, the collapse any deep-rooted trust in the
sanctity of life on earth, the collapse of my sense of safety in my
homeland. I started surfing.

Wherever you go, you're confronted with stats. The buildings
of the World Trade Center contained more than 200,000 tons of steel
(that's 400,000,000 pounds), more than was used to construct the
Verrazano Narrows Bridge.

There were 425,000 cubic yards of concrete -- enough to build
a five foot-wide sidewalk from New York to Washington DC. At a rough
estimate, that much concrete would weigh close to 479,000 tons --
almost but not quite a billion pounds. There were 43,600 windows with
an area of over 600,000 square feet of glass. If it were extruded
into a ribbon one-inch wide, it would stretch 1,363 miles. Over 1.2
million cubic yards of earth was excavated for the structures, and
this landfill was used to create 23.5 acres of new land now known as
Battery Park City.

A lot of commentators misinterpreting rational statements
from the Arab world as support for the terrorists. Sheikh Yassin,
leader of the Islamic militant group Hamas, said "no doubt this is a
result of injustice the U.S practices against the weak in the world."
From Gaza, Islamic Jihad official Nafez Azzam said, "what happened in
the United States today is a consequence of American policies in this
region."

Further surfing revealed a major month old article from The
Atlantic called "The Counterterrorist Myth" at
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2001/07/gerecht.htm in which a
former CIA operative explains why the terrorist Usama bin Ladin has
little to fear from American intelligence, detailing the physical
impossibility of infiltrating his stronghold. It says
this: "Westerners cannot visit the cinder-block, mud-brick side of
the Muslim world—whence bin Ladin's foot soldiers mostly come—without
announcing who they are. No case officer stationed in Pakistan can
penetrate either the Afghan communities in Peshawar or the Northwest
Frontier's numerous religious schools, which feed manpower and ideas
to bin Ladin and the Taliban, and seriously expect to gather useful
information about radical Islamic terrorism—let alone recruit foreign
agents."

Over at Slate.com, James Fallows rose the occasion with three
fascinating articles, "How Good Were the World Trade Center
Pilots?," "Why did the World Trade Center Towers Collapse?,"
and "What Liabilities Do Insurance Companies Face From Terrorist
Acts?"

Buzzflash.com and drudgereport.com did excellent jobs of
providing up to date links covering the entire story and background.
Even Bartcop.com, a generally vicious anti-Bush site, saw fit to lay
off for a day and give the pres a day off, agreeing we should huddle
together in mutual sorrow, give blood, and leave off the Bush bashing
for another day.

The net was full of anonymous postings. Some typical ones
went like this: "I think it's safe to say religion is the problem
here. Religion is always the problem" or "I'm no longer really
interested in peace in the Middle East. I no longer have any sympathy
for the Palestinians. I no longer want to see restraint by Israel or
the US Government. Bush can really choose what tone to set when he
finally speaks. If he calls for blood then he'll get support for
anything. Do you see the danger here? Quite frankly, I don't have the
stomach to oppose ANY response against bin Laden or the Taliban. As
for Israel, they can do what they like and I won't complain. I wonder
if this is how people felt about the Japanese after Pearl Harbor."

And this one: "This should be the end of SDI. The money Smirk
wants to waste on ballistic missile defense should instead be spent
building a much better airport security system and developing better
intelligence. This is exactly what people like you and me have been
saying could/would eventually happen. A space based laser defense
wouldn't have been able to have stopped any of this from happening."
A lot of people expressed sentiment like "I believe the WTC should,
in a few years, be rebuilt. Show the bastards they can't keep us
down."

There were people claiming NBC was totally irresponsible for
showing Palestinians dancing in the streets with joy, but most
typical of all was this: "If bin Laden claims responsibility for this
(as it now seems he will) then he should be dead before I get home
from work. If we do not take an immediate and decisive action today
then Bush should be kicked out on his butt."

I subscribe to dozens of mailing lists, including one that
sends me a quote from Buddha every day. I'm not a Buddhist, I'm just
discovering that Buddha said a lot of far out things I didn't know he
said. Everyone knows what Jesus said, so these quotes are all new to
me. Today's Daily Words of the Buddha, "The worse of the two is he
who, when abused, retaliates. One who does not retaliate wins a
battle hard to win." Samyutta Nikaya I, 162

At first you rebel against this because a great wrong has
been committed and you want to retaliate because you've got to do
something other than sit there in a daze. Then you realize that it's
the other way around. It's THEY who were retaliating against US. The
score is even -- thousands of dead Americans vs. thousands of dead
Palestinians. Now it's up to us to take the high road. We must rise
to the occasion, not sink to it. We must seek justice, not
retaliation.

I go back to the TV. I can't see it now because the smoke is
still too thick, so I try to picture the New York Skyline without the
World Trade Center. It's like trying to picture the Coachella Valley
without Mt. San Jacinto. Imagine waking up one morning and Mt San
Jacinto isn't there. How could it happen? Why would anyone want to
deliberately destroy something of such beauty. It's like they blew up
the Grand Canyon.

One of the spookiest moments for me was seeing all the TV
stations asking us to give blood, except for CBS which showed mile
long lines at the blood donation centers intercut with hundreds of
doctors lined up to perform hundreds of operations, standing around
the hospital entranceways with nothing to do because there weren't
enough survivors to justify their presence. Everyone was dead, as
everyone knew who watched the collapse of the buildings.

I feel strangely conflicted. If a gang of outraged Swedes
blew up a building because "The English Patient" won the Academy
Award for Best Picture, I'd have to condemn their actions while
agreeing with them that "The English Patient" was crap. I'm
simultaneously on their side and against them. If I saw gangs of
outraged Americans pulling Swedish cabdrivers out of their taxis and
beating them up, I'd have to step in to defend the Swedes. Just
because some Swedes are crazy doesn't mean that all Swedes are crazy.
I'd guess that roughly 10% of all Swedes are crazy because roughly
10% of mankind is crazy. You can't go blaming the sane ones for
something done by the insane ones.

The word I keep hearing bandied about is cowardly. What a
cowardly act this was, they all say. Have I lost my mind or were the
actions of those pilots among the bravest I've ever seen? I guess
when our soldiers give their lives for a cause we agree with, it's
bravery, but when their soldiers give their lives for a cause we
disagree with, it's cowardice. When we killed thousands of innocent
civilians at Hiroshima in the cause of American freedom, it's
bravery, but when they kill thousands of innocent civilians in New
York in the cause of Palestinian freedom, it's cowardice. What
hypocrisy.

Like the Japanese Kamikazes of WWII, these were acts that
took amazing courage. They didn't just risk their lives; they gave
them, just like the firemen gave their lives at street level. Only
the motives differ, the bravery is the same. They both did things I
wouldn't have the guts to do in a million years. When buildings
collapse, I'm the one running FROM the building, not to it. The men
on the ground gave their lives to save schmucks like me. I know what
they died for. But the terrorists, the ones who flew the planes, what
did they die for? The brilliance of their move is that they haven't
told us. They're making us think about it. Why would we, the American
people, the citizens of the land of the free and home of the brave,
deserve such treatment? What have we done that angered them so? Do I
have to tell you? Is the record of the United States so unblemished
that you actually can't picture why someone would hate us? Far from
cowardly, this was people fighting for their lives, willing to give
up their own life in EXACTLY the same way that our soldiers are
willing to give up theirs.

Whatever the terrorists are accusing us of we probably did.
The most horrifying thing to face is that it's our fault. We chose
sides. We turned the Palestinians into our enemy.

What if it was American Indians? They've got a score to
settle, and the destruction of the World Trade Center doesn't even
come close to settling it since The United States has wiped out
hundreds of times more of them. Would the answer be to kill more
Indians? Let's face it. The reason we feel so bad is because there's
no one to take it out on. Nobody forced these people to do it. If I
told you to kill yourself, would you do it? The only people totally
to blame for this are the ones who did it, the ones who took over and
piloted the planes, and there's nothing we can do to them but take
revenge against their colleagues.

It's like the Colombine High School shootings. The real
people to blame already killed themselves. No amount of security will
ever prevent something like this from happening again because there's
no way to plan against brilliant irrationality. Who knows what
they'll do? Better metal detectors don't solve the problem. What
solves the problem is not having them as an enemy. How do we get
these two to stop fighting. The answer is NOT taking sides. The
answer is being an impartial referee. If we'd been backing the
Palestinians in this war, it would have been Israeli terrorists doing
the same thing.

Four planes, four separate simultaneous acts. This was an
effort incredibly difficult to coordinate, clearly requiring years of
planning. Since they don't have might, they have to be clever, and
today was fiendishly clever, more diabolical than a Bond film,
revealing a masterful grand scheme.

You can stop singing God Bless America right now. This wasn't
a strike against America or Democracy. It was only nine months ago
that America proved to the world that it isn't a democracy. Courts
don't appoint rulers in a democracy. This was a strike against our
real system, Capitalism, and once again, to my horror, I find I'm on
their side. Rule by the rich sucks. Our country is run by people who
were born on third base but think they hit a triple, people whose
compassion clearly only extends to those with the most wealth.

One month after we showed the world our missile defense
system, whoever did this has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that
it's totally useless because they're smarter than we are. Bin-Laden,
or whoever the mastermind proves to be, has got ten times the
brainpower of our leader in chief. If this were a game of Chess, they
just took our Queen. While we spend billions of dollars on high-tech
doodads, they destroy our national monuments and kill thousands of
our people with some plastic knives and an airline schedule. They're
brilliant. We're buffoons. No defense system on earth could have
prevented what happened today. The problem can only be attacked at
the roots. They give us no choice. We've got to stop giving people
reason to hate us. America has to change as a society to one that
lives and lets live, both inside and outside its borders.

The overriding message is that we've got a big problem.
There's a group of people on this earth who are known as
Palestinians, which is odd because there is no land known as
Palestine. Israel has gobbled it up. We've got a people without a
homeland. Doesn't everybody deserve a homeland? I say give them one.
The magnanimous, the brilliant, the free-thinking and completely
moral thing to do is simply to offer the Palestinians a new safe
place to stay, where they'll be protected from the Israelis, where
they'll feel at home. It's so obvious. What do you do with the
homeless:? You offer them a home. I say give them Desert Hot Springs.
Call it New Palestine. Let 'em do what they want with it. They can't
fuck it up any more than it's already fucked up.

I'm serious. Think about it. Can you tell the difference
between the Holy Land and the Sonoran desert? I can't. We'd be
offering them a homeland with the exact same climate they're used to,
with it's own water supply, hundreds of pre-existing HUD homes, and a
built-in tourist trade.

Bush has made it quite clear that he will NOT meet with
Yassar Arafat when he visits next week. I say he's got to make the
PLO an offer. Would they refuse the offer? Of course, and the simple
act of showing the world that we offered the homeless of the world a
home and they refused to accept it would be a moral victory. It makes
US appear reasonable. How can they complain about not having a home
when they've turned one down, one that's actually much nicer than the
one they're fighting for, a home in a land where they would be free
to practice the religion of their choice without fear from the
government (unless they're polygamous or smoke pot).

I say goodnight to my kids and try to actually pay attention
instead of pretending when they go on and on about something
important to them that I know is trivial in the grand scheme of
things. Days like today make you think about the grand scheme of
things.

America tends to think that might makes right, that just
because you win a battle physically means you've won it morally, but
there are too many cases of misguided tyrants who are far from right
wringing despair from the people simply through the strength of their
might. Does the ability of the Chinese army to squelch student
activism and innocent exercise movements prove they're right? Of
course not. Like the Chinese, we're equally capable of misusing our
might, as we have in the mid-east.

And I keep thinking what if they were right? What if they've
been mistreated, neglected, wiped out? What if we created a situation
so hopeless for them that death seems the only solution? Do we solve
the problem by wiping out more of them? No, that exacerbates the
problem. We solve the problem by SOLVING THE PROBLEM. One of the
lessons we were teaching the world with WWII was that you can't solve
the problems of the world by wiping out an entire race of people.
Hitler tried to wipe out the Jews because of that 10% of all Jews who
really were crazy, just like the 10% of everybody who's crazy,
forgetting that 90% of Jews are normal people, just like you and me,
just like 90% of the Palestinians who are normal people, just like
you and me, people you could invite into your home, people interested
in nothing more that getting on with their lives, trying to live with
the simple agreement we all share with the human race, that we all
deserve to live, that we will leave you alone as long as you leave us
alone.

We should be helping the Palestinians, not because of today's
tragedy but despite it, because it's the right thing to do. Just
because we despise the heartless tactics of a few renegade radicals
doesn't automatically mean that we have to denigrate their motives
because I'll say it once again, maybe they're right. I'm Jewish and I
say to you right now that I don't have any greater right to live a
peaceful life than any Arab, that the religion of my ancestors is
just as outdated as theirs, that we should shake hands and go our
separate but equal ways.

I've stood at the top of the World Trade Center and it felt
so solid under my feet that I totally overcame my fear of heights. I
was simultaneously petrified and overwhelmed with the view of the
city beneath. To be able to stand on solid ground that high up was a
profound experience, one I intended on sharing with my children. I
looked forward to the day we would take our first trip to New York.
We'd take the subway downtown from our hotel near the park and I'd
lead them to the midpoint between the two buildings where Homer
Simpson's car got booted and he had to go to the bathroom after
drinking too much crab juice. I'd hold their hands on the elevator to
the top. It would have been so cool. Why can't I have that dream any
more?