Death, Downtown
Sept 11, 2001
Dear friends,
I was supposed to fly today on the 4:30 PM American Airlines flight from
LAX to JFK. But tonight I find myself stuck in L.A. with an incredible
range of emotions over what has happened on the island where I work and
live in New York City.
My wife and I spent the first hours of the day -- after being awakened by
phone calls from our parents at 6:40am PT -- trying to contact our daughter
at school in New York and our friend JoAnn who works near the World Trade
Center.
I called JoAnn at her office. As someone picked up, the first tower
imploded, and the person answering the phone screamed and ran out, leaving
me no clue as to whether or not she or JoAnn would live.
It was a sick, horrible, frightening day.
On December 27, 1985 I found myself caught in the middle of a terrorist
incident at the Vienna airport -- which left 30 people dead, both there and
at the Rome airport. (The machine-gunning of passengers in each city was
timed to occur at the same moment.)
I do not feel like discussing that event tonight because it still brings up
too much despair and confusion as to how and why I got to live -- a fluke, a
mistake, a few feet on the tarmac, and I am still here, there but for the
grace of ...
Safe. Secure. I'm an American, living in America. I like my illusions. I
walk through a metal detector, I put my carry-ons through an x-ray machine,
and I know all will be well.
Here's a short list of my experiences lately with airport security:
* At the Newark Airport, the plane is late at boarding everyone. The
counter can't find my seat. So I am told to just "go ahead and get on" --
without a ticket!
* At Detroit Metro Airport, I don't want to put the lunch I just bought at
the deli through the x-ray machine so, as I pass through the metal
detector, I hand the sack to the guard through the space between the
detector and the x-ray machine. I tell him "It's just a sandwich." He
believes me and doesn't bother to check. The sack has gone through neither
security device.
* At LaGuardia in New York, I check a piece of luggage, but decide to catch
a later plane. The first plane leaves without me, but with my bag -- no one
knowing what is in it.
* Back in Detroit, I take my time getting off the commuter plane. By the
time I have come down its stairs, the bus that takes the passengers to the
terminal has left -- without me. I am alone on the tarmac, free to wander
wherever I want. So I do. Eventually, I flag down a pick-up truck and an
airplane mechanic gives me a ride the rest of the way to the terminal.
* I have brought knives, razors; and once, my traveling companion brought a
hammer and chisel. No one stopped us.
Of course, I have gotten away with all of this because the airlines
consider my safety SO important, they pay rent-a-cops $5.75 an hour to make
sure the bad guys don't get on my plane. That is what my life is worth --
less than the cost of an oil change.
Too harsh, you say? Well, chew on this: a first-year pilot on American
Eagle (the commuter arm of American Airlines) receives around $15,000 a
year in annual pay.
That's right -- $15,000 for the person who has your life in his hands.
Until recently, Continental Express paid a little over $13,000 a year.
There was one guy, an American Eagle pilot, who had four kids so he went
down to the welfare office and applied for food stamps -- and he was eligible!
Someone on welfare is flying my plane? Is this for real? Yes, it is.
So spare me the talk about all the precautions the airlines and the FAA is
taking. They, like all businesses, are concerned about one thing -- the
bottom line and the profit margin.
Four teams of 3-5 people were all able to penetrate airport security on the
same morning at 3 different airports and pull off this heinous act? My only
response is -- that's all?
Well, the pundits are in full diarrhea mode, gushing on about the
"terrorist threat" and today's scariest dude on planet earth -- Osama bin
Laden. Hey, who knows, maybe he did it. But, something just doesn't add up.
Am I being asked to believe that this guy who sleeps in a tent in a desert
has been training pilots to fly our most modern, sophisticated jumbo jets
with such pinpoint accuracy that they are able to hit these three targets
without anyone wondering why these planes were so far off path?
Or am I being asked to believe that there were four religious/political
fanatics who JUST HAPPENED to be skilled airline pilots who JUST HAPPENED
to want to kill themselves today?
Maybe you can find one jumbo jet pilot willing to die for the cause -- but
FOUR? Ok, maybe you can -- I don't know.
What I do know is that all day long I have heard everything about this bin
Laden guy except this one fact -- WE created the monster known as Osama bin
Laden!
Where did he go to terrorist school? At the CIA!
Don't take my word for it -- I saw a piece on MSNBC last year that laid it
all out. When the Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan, the CIA trained him
and his buddies in how to commits acts of terrorism against the Soviet
forces. It worked! The Soviets turned and ran. Bin Laden was grateful for
what we taught him and thought it might be fun to use those same techniques
against us.
We abhor terrorism -- unless we're the ones doing the terrorizing.
We paid and trained and armed a group of terrorists in Nicaragua in the
1980s who killed over 30,000 civilians. That was OUR work. You and me.
Thirty thousand murdered civilians and who the hell even remembers!
We fund a lot of oppressive regimes that have killed a lot of innocent
people, and we never let the human suffering THAT causes to interrupt our
day one single bit.
We have orphaned so many children, tens of thousands around the world, with
our taxpayer-funded terrorism (in Chile, in Vietnam, in Gaza, in Salvador)
that I suppose we shouldn't be too surprised when those orphans grow up and
are a little whacked in the head from the horror we have helped cause.
Yet, our recent domestic terrorism bombings have not been conducted by a
guy from the desert but rather by our own citizens: a couple of ex-military
guys who hated the federal government.
From the first minutes of today's events, I never heard that possibility
suggested. Why is that?
Maybe it's because the A-rabs are much better foils. A key ingredient in
getting Americans whipped into a frenzy against a new enemy is the
all-important race card. It's much easier to get us to hate when the object
of our hatred doesn't look like us.
Congressmen and Senators spent the day calling for more money for the
military; one Senator on CNN even said he didn't want to hear any more talk
about more money for education or health care -- we should have only one
priority: our self-defense.
Will we ever get to the point that we realize we will be more secure when
the rest of the world isn't living in poverty so we can have nice running
shoes?
In just 8 months, Bush gets the whole world back to hating us again. He
withdraws from the Kyoto agreement, walks us out of the Durban conference
on racism, insists on restarting the arms race -- you name it, and Baby
Bush has blown it all.
The Senators and Congressmen tonight broke out in a spontaneous version of
"God Bless America." They're not a bad group of singers!
Yes, God, please do bless us.
Many families have been devastated tonight. This just is not right. They
did not deserve to die. If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they
did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE for him! Boston, New
York, DC, and the planes' destination of California -- these were places
that voted AGAINST Bush!
Why kill them? Why kill anyone? Such insanity.
Let's mourn, let's grieve, and when it's appropriate let's examine our
contribution to the unsafe world we live in.
It doesn't have to be like this.
Yours,
Michael Moore
mmflint@aol.com
Somewhere in the Land of Enchantment
9/15/01
Dear Friends,
Our second day on the road back to New York City...
I am awakened by the sounds of the "Star Spangled Banner" coming from the
lobby of the hotel where we have spent the night in Flagstaff. The memorial
service has begun at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, and it is on
the TV in the lobby. I go down to check it out.
A group of older black women are standing there watching it, tears in their
eyes. I am reminded by a sign we saw on the way into town on a Hopi Indian
store: "America Land of the Free Home of the Brave." You probably can't
find two groups more denied the American Dream than these two and yet they
grieve like everyone else over the attack in New York.
Passing through the Indian reservations of Arizona and New Mexico you are
struck by the abject poverty of these places, and reminded of the 500 years
of state-sponsored terrorism against these people, a virtual genocide. How
many millions were killed by the American settlers and soldiers? I can't
remember now. But the living results are brutally evident in the shacks and
trailers along old Route 66.
My wife and I make our way into town and find a Catholic church, San
Francisco de Asis, where a service is being held to honor the dead. The
church itself is remarkable for its matriarchal images, with a large mural
of Mary and her mother and her family above the altar, and then a statue of
her in place of the usual crucified Jesus.
We stand, as there is no room to sit. Minutes go by and the service does
not begin. The priest comes and takes a seat in the 7th row pew as if he
were just another mourner. After a long while, someone gets up from her pew
and reads from the bible -- but the reading is not the one about vengeance
and bloodshed. Rather, it's about beating our swords into plowshares. Oops,
off message!
We leave the church and both of us are filled with an overwhelming despair.
We still have not heard from friends in Manhattan or from our friend
Barbara who works at the Pentagon. We pass by a store -- "Guns and
Groceries," the sign proclaims. On the way out of town, the cell phone
rings. It is Barbara and her husband Sam calling from outside the Pentagon.
She tells me she is OK and that there is a large airplane wheel sticking
out of the side of the building where she works as a clerical. The morning
of the crash she was late for work because she was taking Sam to the
airport. I start to cry again. She says thanks and "Don't worry I'm OK,"
and I hear Sam cracking in the background "That's debatable" and they both
laugh.
I pull off the road in Winslow, Arizona, and tell Kathleen I want to get a
picture of her on a corner. She doesn't know why and, knowing her intense
dislike of The Eagles, I tell her it's a song by Jackson Browne (which is
technically true; he co-wrote it). She obliges, but when she reads this
I'll be in big trouble.
I continue to be amazed at the large number of people -- both on the radio
and those we run into -- who are completely opposed to some half-cocked
military response to what has happened. No matter what the media tells you
or shows you, I am convinced there is a majority of Americans who, though
they want justice and want to be protected from further attacks, do not
want George W. Bush to start sounding like Dr. Strangelove.
Speaking of Strangelove, this past week began with one of the most powerful
pieces on "60 Minutes" in a long time. They laid it all out: How the United
States -- and specifically Henry Kissinger -- plotted to overthrow the
democratically-elected president of Chile in the early 1970s. The plot
succeeded, President Allende was assassinated, and thousands of other
Chileans were brutally tortured and murdered. Today, many within the new
government of Chile would like to put Kissinger on trial for these acts of
terrorism. Do you think the United States will give him up?
Well, that story was forgotten, 48 hours later, as quickly as it had been
forgotten 30 years ago.
A few of you have written me to say, Please, Mike, don't talk about this
stuff, at least not right now. We need to bury the dead.
I agree. And I apologize to any who have taken offense. No one wants to
talk about politics right now -- except our installed leaders in
Washington. Trust me, they are talking politics night and day, and those
discussions involve sending our kids off to fight some invisible enemy and
to indiscriminately bomb Afghans or whoever they think will make us
Americans feel good.
I feel I have a responsibility as one of those Americans who doesn't feel
good right now to speak out and say what needs to be said: That we, the
United States of America, are culpable in committing so many acts of terror
and bloodshed that we had better get a clue about the culture of violence
in which we have been active participants. I know it's a hard thing to hear
right now, but if I and others don't say it, I fear we will soon be in a
war that will do NOTHING to protect us from the next terrorist attack.
I have received more emails this week than ever before -- about a thousand
every four hours. Ninety percent of them are from people who also refuse to
be drawn into some form of senseless bloodletting, and who agree that we
need to find the right way to bring those to justice who committed these acts.
I have been touched by many of your comments and am so sorry I cannot
respond to them while I am on the road. But I am sharing your feelings with
those I meet (and, I have to say again, it is a Godsend to have an
invention like the Internet where I can travel across the country like this
and be connected to so many thousands of other Americans - and to so many
foreigners who grieve for us and fear for what our leaders may do).
We pass over the Continental Divide and Rush Limbaugh babbles on about whom
we must bomb. He signs off, and I am sure he is on his way down to the
nearest recruiting station to sign up -- for surely he would not expect
your son or daughter to risk their lives for freedom while he just sits
back and enjoys his new half-billion dollar contract.
Coming into Albuquerque, Kathleen is leafing through the Frommer's travel
guide for a place to spend the night. She finds what seems like a nice spot
near the White Sands national park, but then reads this passage:
"Occasionally the road to the hotel is closed for nearby missile tests."
Yes, welcome to New Mexico, the "Land of Enchantment," just one big testing
ground brought to you by the originators of every single weapon of mass
destruction known to man. We opt for the downtown Hyatt.
The hotel is like a ghost town. "Every convention cancelled," the lady at
the counter tells us. I ask the bellman how many people are actually here
tonight.
"9.9 percent occupancy," he tells me. Hmmm. Why not just say 10%?
I guess that would be asking for too much optimism on a night like this...
I will write again when we get to our next stop, Oklahoma City.
Yours,
Michael Moore
mmflint@aol.com
www.michaelmoore.com