The Other 9/11

Ten years ago, this September 11th, we underwent a horrendous attack that I can only describe as evil.  The most concise but telling definition of evil that I have come across is this: to willfully do harm to others, or to take action, knowing that what one is about to do will result in harm to others.  In the latter case, of course, not all knowingly harmful actions are totally evil; some have mitigating circumstances and thus make the act less evil, or, more correctly stated, a mix of good and evil.

I recalled the other day something I’d forgotten for many years — there was another fateful 9/11 – but in Chile.  That other tragic 9/11 was the day in 1973 when the Chilean military, commanded by General Augusto Pinochet, with the encouragement, knowledge, and assistance of the U.S. government, overthrew the legitimately elected government of Salvador Allende.  During that US-supported coup and its immediate aftermath, General Pinochet’s security forces killed 1,260 Chileans through the end of 1973.  Tens of thousands more were sent or fled into exile throughout the world, many of them after being tortured in General Pinochet’s prisons.  Almost 1,160 others were “disappeared” after being detained by agents of the Pinochet regime; they are presumed dead, because their remains have never been found.

The total number of those killed and “disappeared” as a result of the coup in Chile on 9/11/1973 approximates the number of people killed during the attacks in the U.S. on 9/11/2001.  Yet very few of us Americans even remember that other 9/11.  It falls into what journalist Robert Parry would call lost history — although – no, perhaps because – the U.S. CIA and military, even officers of U.S. corporations and high-level American officials were involved in one way or another – including Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, the latter considered, especially by the U.S. media, to be a great font of wisdom on foreign affairs.

A few days after the coup took place in Chile, the ailing poet Pablo Neruda – who, in my estimation, is the greatest poet of the 20th century – passed away, from a literally and figuratively broken heart – broken over the fact that his beloved Chile, the only actual democracy at the time in South America, had joined the infamous ranks of nations oppressed by their militaries.

Later, General Pinochet sent terrorist agents around the world to assassinate opponents of his regime, including former members of the Allende government, one of them right on a street in our nation’s capital.  His name was Orlando Letelier.  His assistant, an American citizen, Ronnie Moffett, also died in the bomb blast that demolished their vehicle on that Washington, D.C. street in 1976. In all, General Pinochet’s terrorist agents murdered another 600 people from December 1973 through 1976 in Chile and other countries.

So for me there are two 9/11’s that I’d rather never have undergone…the first, in 1973, that I experienced indirectly through news accounts and through my knowledge of and admiration for a great poet and his work; and the second, in 2001, which I encountered viscerally through my eyes, as I looked out the window of my office only blocks from the World Trade Center; encountered through my ears, as I heard the chaotic, frightening and frightful noises of that morning while I walked quickly but pensively toward South Ferry to catch one of the last boats leaving for Staten Island before service was temporarily suspended; and encountered even through my nose as I smelled the fires raging on that terrible day and smoldering for weeks afterward on my way to and from work.

May the victims of both 9/11’s never be forgotten, and may all the perpetrators of such evil, and their enablers, finally be brought to justice, whoever and wherever they are.

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(c) Gregory V Driscoll  2011

And another thing that irks me…

The corporate media are no longer the public’s watchdogs — they are now the lapdogs of the powerful, and gladly accept the muzzle and the leash too — unless the muzzling and leashing happen to cut into profits, or tarnish their now vacuous reputations, then they may snap a bit, but they’ll never bite, and especially never go for the jugular.

Just look at the history of the “big papers” – The Washington Post (WPost), The New York Times (NYT), The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) – in regard to war, the most serious and consequential activity a nation can get involved in.   In the cases of Cuba, the wars in Indochina, the invasion of Grenada, the invasion of Panama, the wars in Central America, the coup against Allende in Chile and the aftermath, the two invasions of Iraq, expanding the war in Afghanistan, intervention in Libya, etc, etc. — the WPost, the NYT and the WSJ and the rest of the corporate media supported all those actions, and others, well beyond the point of its being obvious that a majority of Americans no longer did.

Later, continued support would have cut into readership, so the editorial boards began to change their tune, usually with little or no acknowledgement that they had helped get the nation into the conflicts in the first place by blindly, and without question, accepting whatever the government told them.

And need I mention the almost totally uncritical corporate media treatment of Israeli actions, no matter how many the IDF kill or wound, nor how they treat the Palestinian population in the occupied West Bank and those other Palestinians in the world’s largest concentration camp, Gaza?  Some media in Israel are more critical of their government’s policies than any of the corporate media in the Unites States.

I’ll say nothing about the corporate media’s coverage of the whole situation with Iran; it’s too depressing.

In my estimation, the last time that the corporate media fulfilled their role as public watchdogs was when Richard Nixon was President. In regard to Watergate, it was the WPost and the NYT that kept the pressure up through excellent investigative reporting and analysis. After that highpoint, things began to change for the worse.  When Ronald Reagan became “The Teflon President” through the media’s not pressing him too diligently about reality, they finally abdicated their historic role and became little more than shills for the powerful and celebrities.

There are occasionally good pieces of reporting in the corporate media but the reporting is inconsistent. The main thrust is always toward supporting the Powers That Be, whether Dementos or Reprobates, the Royalty of Finance, or the Captains of Industry, with little excursions into romanticizing and lauding the British Royal Family and lamenting the latest Hollywood or sports scandal or the passing of “stars”.

I think a lot of the corporate media’s approach to things comes from wishing to be with the “in group” – you know, like adolescents in high school – and from sharing the same socio-economic worldview as the so-called leaders in government, finance and industry  – “pirates” would be a more precise term than “leaders”, but I digress…

Thank heaven for the World Wide Web and the few independent newspapers and magazines that still do true investigative reporting, or even just seriously analyze the mostly inaccurate, incomplete, and rarely contextualized picture that the corporate media present to the public as “fact” regarding both domestic and international affairs, but especially the latter.  The work done by FAIR – Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting – in regard to the lack of accuracy, fairness, standards and just plain logic, clarity and honesty in the corporate media’s reporting is, to my mind, exemplary.

I haven’t even mentioned Fox News yet — but that would be like descending into hell, and I have no Virgil at my side, so I won’t take that one on…although, now that the Cerberus of Fox, Glenn Beck, will soon be leaving, maybe I’ll think about it…

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(c) Gregory V Driscoll   2011