It's About Coalitions Not Purity, Part Thirty-Five

"Tax Cuts and 9/11" (Part Two)

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was driving to work. I was only a few blocks away from my job when a report came over the radio about a plane striking the World Trade Center in New York City. There were no other details at that point and my first thought was that a small plane must have hit the complex. When I got to work a few minutes later, I put the radio on and then came a report of a second plane hitting the World Trade Center. Now I knew this all was something more than an accident. Of course as time passed, reports came in of a plane hitting the Pentagon, and another plane crashing in Pennsylvania. We all remember where were were when we heard these things, and this will not be a retelling of those terrible events.

At that time, I managed an apartment building occupied mainly by college students, many of whom were international students. As events unfolded, the college, located just down the street, closed, and city officials asked employers to send workers home, as no one knew if further attacks were coming. I stayed at work, as many of our students were absolutely terrified, and that counted those whose actual homes were generally in the area, not just overseas. Phone service out of the country was down for awhile, as I recall, and there was an air of fear in many of the students. A police officer came to the building, as the city wanted workers out of the downtown area, because they were preparing to close some streets, so I finally left later in the afternoon.

After the initial shock, the country rallied and President George W. Bush addressed the nation. For quite some time Americans actually got along as they had not gotten along for years. Even the politicians stopped calling each other names and crime declined, and it's a shame it took such a series of events to shake us out of our nastiness. We found out that a radical Islamic group called "al Qaeda," led by one Osama bin Laden, a Saudi born extremist, was responsible for the attacks, as their agents hijacked four airliners. Three of the four planes were turned into "suicide missiles," as the hijackers struck their targets. Passengers on the fourth plane, "Flight 93," seem to have heroically battled the fanatical nutcases, causing the plane to crash into a field in Pennsylvania, rather than into its presumed target of the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.

I pay a lot of attention to news in various forms, but I must admit, I, like many other Americans, had just not paid enough attention to events which had gone on involving Islamic terrorists in other parts of the world, and the idea that these extremists would strike right here inside the United States was certainly not on the radar screen of many Americans. Unfortunately, it took these attacks and the loss of nearly 3000 lives to get our attention, but, once focused, we remained so for quite some time. To be honest too, when some of these extremists had gone to Afghanistan to fight against the Soviet forces there in the 1980s, the American government supported them, as did a number of Americans, although I question how much many Americans really knew, if anything, about the situation, except that these extremists were opposed to the Soviets, and that was all they (and the Soviet-obsessed government of Ronald Reagan) needed to know. Sometimes people make a pact with the devil, as the saying goes. During World War Two, Winston Churchill allied himself with Josef Stalin against Hitler, although Stalin, just a couple of years prior to that, had signed a pact with Hitler; a pact that gave Stalin a large part of Poland, and included the eventual annexation of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and parts of Rumania. Not only that, Stalin then turned around and attacked little Finland in late 1939, and though Stalin's forces eventually prevailed, the hardy Finns left Stalin's forces so bloodied, Soviet leaders were relieved when the Finns asked for an armistice.

The thing was, when Hitler attacked Stalin's Soviet Union in June 1941, Churchill leaped at the idea of having a powerful ally, especially one on the other side of Hitler, thus relieving Britain from the possibility of facing a Nazi invasion, or at least from continued heavy aerial bombardment. He knew this would divide Hitler's forces. You must remember, the United States was NOT at war with anyone at that point in time, although the U.S. was aiding Britain, and France had been defeated by Hitler. Churchill even said something to the effect that he'd have been willing to say a good word about the devil, if the devil was against Hitler. Churchill's hand was forced, as Hitler was one very dangerous nutcase. Defeating the more threatening devil of the moment was the important matter. Judging who the most threatening devil of the moment is, can be another matter, but Churchill made the right call, in my opinion. The point is, the U.S. supported Islamic extremists when they opposed the Soviet forces in Afghanistan, a country at that point, that was about as threatening to the United States as.... Finland! After Hitler was defeated, the association with Stalin came to an abrupt end, as the other side of the "pact with the devil" then came into play. Stalinist governments took over eastern Europe with the military backing of the Soviet Union. The price of allying with the devil out of necessity continued for more than four decades, although Stalin himself died in 1953.

In the case of bin Laden and Islamic extremists, the price continues to this day, although bin Laden too is now dead. The whole matter in Afghanistan during the 1980s helped to train and equip, but mainly finance, militant Islamists, with further loads of equipment captured from, or left behind by, Soviet forces there. These extremists then spawned the Taliban, an extremist group that took over Afghanistan and combined with al Qaeda to provide training facilities and operational bases to launch attacks against various targets around the world, including the 9/11 attacks. Making a pact with the devil is tricky and dangerous business.      

WORD HISTORY:
Kill-This word apparently traces back to Indo European "kwel," which had the notion of "to inflict pain, to torture, torment." This gave its Old Germanic offspring "kwaljanan," with the same basic meanings. This then gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "cwellan," which meant "to kill, to murder." Later the "cw" came to be spelled "qu," and this form became modern "quell" (covered in a previous "Word History"), which once meant "to kill," but then the meaning softened into "suppress." "Apparently" it had a spinoff, "kyllen," which showed up by the late 1100s meaning, "to beat, to hit," then proceeded to the meaning "to kill," a meaning then being vacated by its close relative "quell." Not uncommonly, words for "hit, beat, strike" eventually came to mean "kill," as the synonym of kill, "slay," once did. The noun "kill," as in "the lions devoured their kill," developed from the verb. Several of the other Germanic languages have had forms of "kill," but not usually with the modern English meaning, but rather they retained the "hit, strike" meaning. These terms appear to have died out in the standard languages, but may still be dialectal in usage. For Germanic language relatives of "kill" (and its relative "quell") see the "Word History" in the previous part of this series:  http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2013/01/its-about-coalitions-not-purity-part_9.html