As the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 arrives, the space for consideration of the events seems to have narrowed. The standard media position is that if you are not thinking about a firefighter or police officer who died in the attack or its aftermath you are morally lax. Alternatively, giving thanks “for our troops who are defending our freedom” is the next best official mental state. The unfortunate fact confronting people who sponsor such approaches – either the big people who orchestrate the various official ceremonies or the little ones clinging on the last fading vestige of 9/11 inspired patriotism – is that history is quite a bit messier. So many things have happened in the aftermath of the attacks that we must mourn in pairs.
One of the great moral causalities of the September 11th attacks is that those who died that day have been denied their place as victims. Instead of being recognized as innocent civilians who became the target of violence unleashed by a terrorist group, they were almost instantly converted into martyrs for a cause they may not have supported. Then President George W. Bush’s revenge speech delivered among the ruins of the World Trade Center ensured that being killed by terrorists would be forever linked to the violence unleashed by the US government on a different set of innocent civilians. This is precisely why we now should mourn in pairs, recognizing victims who are united across space and time.
Two who might be thought of the in same breath are Sa’adi Suleiman Ibrahim al-Ubayd and Leobardo Lopez. Lopez was born in southern Mexican state of Puebla. In 2001 he was one of the more than 600,000 “Poblanos” who had made the journey across the US border to New York City. As is painfully typical of such migration, Lopez left his wife and family on the Mexican side of the border while he searched for work in the US. Wages sent back became an international lifeline for those living in a Mexican economy wrecked by the US sponsored North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement. Return envelopes from Puebla featured pictures of the growing family Lopez left behind.
Lopez settled into a small one-bedroom apartment in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx. He also took on the morning shift at the Windows on the World restaurant on the 106th and 107th floors of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. It had been four years since the 41 year old had seen his family when he was killed as a commercial jet ripped through the side of the building.
The force of events after this tragic moment creates the need to relate the death of Lopez with another, equally devastating destruction of human life. This time the perpetrators of the act were not a small cell of terrorists, but the invading force of the US military. Sa’adi lived in the central Iraqi city of Ramadi. The US military occupiers helped to convert the city into a center of resistance by employing brutal military repression while, simultaneously, dismantling Iraqi police and military forces thereby sending jobless trained fighters back into the city. Fierce resistance in the area was part of a Sunni Triangle that frustrated Occupation Forces who deluded themselves into expecting a hero’s reception.
On May 14, 2003 US Occupation Forces carried out a raid of Sa’adi’s home more fitting for one of the ludicrously propagandistic made-for-TV renditions of the occupation. The troops drove two Humvees through the front wall of his house and up to his door. He awoke and rushed out in his pajamas unarmed, only to be beaten with rifle butts by several soldiers. He fled from the aggressors and was promptly shot in the back by the soldiers.
This was an act of sheer terror, meant not so much to kill Sa’adi as to terrorize the entire population of the area into servile submission. This strategy, of course, failed miserably as the violence of the Occupation inflamed local resistance and turned the town into a cauldron of US military repression and Sunni resistance. Today, local insurgent groups continue to put up resistance this time to the new US-trained Iraqi army whom they accuse of employing tactics similar to the city’s former occupiers.
The ripple from September 11th flows backwards and forwards in time. It links Lopez and Sa’adi as victims of terrorism. It connects them both as being victimized even in death by making the dead speak for cause of war and occupation. Sometimes, however, new more peaceful ground is laid in response to such tragedies. War-mongering politicians get fended off by the voices of victims of relatives who refuse to allow their stories to be used for violent ends. Cindy Sheehan and Rana Singh Sodhi are two such people.
Sheehan is the mother of deceased US Army soldier Casey Sheehan, who was killed during the US Occupation of Iraq. Casey was a part of a volunteer team headed to rescue US soldiers being ambushed by supporters of Islamic cleric Muqtada al'Sadr. The operation was a part of a larger campaign to repress the burgeoning insurgency in Sadr City. Casey’s team failed to make the rescue when they were ambushed by militia fighters and he was killed.
While many military families allowed, either wittingly or unwittingly, the memories of their dead children to be used in support of the war effort, Cindy Sheehan banded together with other parents to create the Gold Star Families for Peace. Sheehan certainly could have gone the route of patriotic silence. Her patriotic credentials were certainly secured as Casey was awarded a Purple Heart and Bronze Star. Yet, Cindy’s participation in the movement to stop the war, led her to some radical political conclusions.
When then President George Bush ignored protesters she set up “Camp Casey” outside of his vacation ranch in Texas. And, now, as President Barack Obama continues the military strategy of his predecessor, Cindy continues to put her body on the line in civil disobedience actions and has spoken out powerfully about the links between capitalism and war. She has responded to Casey’s death by attempting to stop further deaths – of the occupiers and the occupied.
Rana Singh Sodhi has made some equally important contributions to the effort to create peace. Rana is the brother of Balbir Singh Sodhi a Sikh gas station owner from Mesa, Arizona who was killed in the weeks following the September 11th attacks. The brothers moved to the US in 1989 after attacks on Sikhs in India escalated. They hoped, as many immigrants before them, that the religious protections of American society might afford greater freedom to practice their faith. September 11th changed this.
When Rana and his family went to a local Mall, days after the attacks, they faced unspoken shunning and even open insults from local white residents. A press conference organized by Sikh leaders did little to quell this rising intolerance which peaked when Frank Roque, a 42 year old white man from Mesa appeared at Balbir’s gas station. Roque told a waitress at a local Applebee’s that he was “going out to shoot some towel-heads.” He used a .380 handgun to shoot Balbir five times as he was crouching over to plant flowers on the side of the station. Within 25 minutes of the murder, four other reports of attacks of people “wearing Middle Eastern clothing” were registered in the area.
Rana was faced with a choice. He could have pushed for Roque to receive the death penalty thereby converting the murder into an opportunity to prove that the Sikh community supported the patriotic law and order position that is so popular among whites in Arizona. He might have lashed out at the community as whole for their disgraceful actions in the aftermath of September 11th. Instead, Rana, as Cindy Sheehan had done previously, chose the path of peace. He spoke against the death penalty for his brother’s killer, “I didn't want him killed. This way, he meets a lot of people and tells them what happened, and they will know about the Sikhs.” And Rana maintains his hope that the US might be an inclusive society where all people are free to practice their religion of choice without facing repression or suspicion.
This tenth anniversary is a perfect opportunity to mourn in pairs. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 can no longer be viewed in isolation. They have been connected with a much larger web that includes people like Sa’adi Suleiman Ibrahim al-Ubayd, Leobardo Lopez, Casey Sheehan and Balbir Singh Sodhi. All of their stories need to be told together in order to finally provide the lesson that peace and the free association of people’s throughout the world offers the best chance to create a society fit for human life. What better way to challenge the shameful manipulation of memory still underway by the patriots and war makers.
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Billy Wharton is a writer, activist and the editor of the Socialist WebZine. His articles have appeared in the Washington Post, the NYC Indypendent, Spectrezine and the Monthly Review Zine. He can be reached at whartonbilly@gmail.com. Become a FAN on Facebook.
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