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Part I
Encoding 9/11 in the Media and the Literary Text
© The Author(s) 2018
Oana-Celia GheorghiuBritish and American Representations of 9/11https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75250-1_2
2. Making History: Politics, the Media and Literature in the Twenty-First Century
Oana-Celia Gheorghiu1
(1)“Dunărea de Jos” University, Galati, Romania
A sense of history prompts me to set out from the contextualisation of the first years of the twenty-first century, and from the perspective of what is generally perceived as ‘historical truth’ , although the main premises of the present undertaking are that such a thing is at least questionable, if not non-existent, and that ‘the truth ’ is artificially constructed with the considerable support of the media . To this end, a historical assessment of the period is provided, emphasising the events that took place on 11 September 2001 and their aftermath. The first subsection foregrounds the so-called ‘objective sources’: documents, politicians’ statements and so on, in keeping with the New Historicist tenets, which, to a large extent, govern the entire work.
The objectivity of these sources is challenged by making reference to the treatment of the same period in the media . The next subsection looks into the ‘official’ news broadcast on television and printed in the most important newspapers of the world (or posted on their websites). A direct link between media and literature may be found in the non-fictional accounts of the same events published by famous creators of fiction in the mainstream press. For example, the discussion of Ian McEwan’s and Martin Amis ’s articles on 9/11 , published in The Guardian shortly after the attacks, traces the way in which their views on the events that had just taken place constituted a starting point for their fictional works on the matter. The discussion is then rounded off with an overview of 9/11 fiction and of its critical assessment, with a view to creating the premises for making a case for a neorealist reading of these texts.
The Attacks on the WTC and International Relations After 9/11
The events of 9/11 have had a significant effect on present-day geopolitics, not only for the United States , but for all the geopolitical actors involved in the making of history. The world has inevitably reacted against the unspeakable deeds that brought about the death of 3000 civilians at the Twin Towers , part of the World Trade Center complex, in New York , at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania. Following the trend set by the media , the events will be hereafter referred to as 9/11 , and the place of the most devastating attacks as the WTC.
Mention should be made that the historical data have been compiled primarily from ‘The 9/11 Commission Report ’ (henceforth abbreviated 9/11 CR), drafted and made available to the public on 22 July 2004 by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States , created and empowered by Public Law 107-396/November 27, 2002, issued by the President and the Congress of the United States of America (9/11 CR 2004, xiv), which may cast subjectivity on the timeline presented. Nevertheless, since a similar document issued by the alleged perpetrators does not exist, and since this report is an exhaustive one, comprising more than 500 pages of documentation, it has been ascertained as sufficient for the purpose of this chapter, which aims to present a chronology of the facts which were to be later incorporated into fiction . Occasionally, the occurrence of some of these facts in fictional works is indicated in order to create a bridge between fact and fiction from this stage onwards.
On 11 September 2001 , four American airliners were hijacked by 19 suicidal terrorists who were afterwards identified as Muslims. According to U. S. Code, Title 18—Crimes and Criminal Procedure §2331, terrorism means activities that ‘(A) involve violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State , or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or of any State; (B) appear to be intended—(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping’. Throughout this work, the term is used with this meaning whenever reference is made to (1) Al-Qaeda ; (2) ISIS ; (as organisations) and (3) Osama bin Laden ; (4) Mohamed Atta and the other hijackers on the four planes (as real people and literary characters ), which justifies its being modified by the adjective Muslim in these cases. Mohamed Atta (full name: Mohamed Mohamed el-Amir Awad el-Sayed Atta, who later became the main character in Martin Amis ’s short story , The Last Day of Muhammad Atta and also featured as Amir in DeLillo’s novel Falling Man ) was the licensed pilot who flew the American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 08:46:40 on 9/11. The plane ‘cut through floors 93–99. Evidence suggests that all three of the building’s stairwells became impassable from the 92nd floor up. Hundreds of civilians were killed instantly by the impact. Hundreds more remained alive but trapped’ (9/11 CR 2004, 285). The first responders reacted immediately but failed to evacuate the other tower, a fatal error which was soon to double the proportions of the calamity.
It is beyond the understanding of the commission members why the South Tower was not evacuated and secured. Apparently, no one expected that another plane would hit the second tower: ‘the prospect of another plane hitting the second building was beyond the contemplation of anyone giving advice. According to one of the first fire chiefs to arrive, such a scenario was unimaginable, “beyond our consciousness”’ (288–9). However, the unimaginable was to happen only 17 minutes later, at 9:03:11, when ‘the hijacked United Airlines Flight 175 hit 2 WTC (the South Tower) from the south, crashing through the 77–85th floors’ (293). In the meantime, all the important American television networks had already sent reporters to the site and many international networks had also started broadcasting the breaking news , which was later interpreted as part of the terrorists ’ rationale for delaying the second crash, in order that the second attack would be broadcast live. It is, nonetheless, less important whether this was indeed part of the initial plans of the hijackers; what really matters is that at 09:03 the world was able to see the second plane crashing into the tower, and that just under an hour later, everyone witnessed its fall, followed shortly afterwards by the collapse of the North Tower. The death toll amounted to 2973 people (people on the planes, people in the buildings and first responders—343 New York City Fire Department officers, 34 Port Authority Police Department officers, and 23 New York Police Department officers). However, this unprecedented loss of life on American soil (at least since the Civil War) could have been even more dramatic if the attacks had taken place at a later hour in the day, as the total number of people who worked in the two towers was around 50,000.
Whi
le the world was watching the apocalyptic images at the WTC , broadcast on television as if it were a disaster film , two other planes—American Airlines Flight 77 and United Airlines Flight 93—were still to strike. The former hit the west wing of the Pentagon building at 09:37 causing a fire and a subsequent explosion and killing the 64 people aboard and another 125 people in the building. The latter, whose passengers and crew had been informed about the attacks at the WTC and had decided to fight the terrorists , crashed on an empty field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. It has been assumed that this fourth plane was intended by the hijackers to hit either the White House or the Capitol building, but this has remained unconfirmed. However, the struggle of the passengers on board Flight 93 was to become a central element of patriotic propaganda for American heroism. Its timeline, reconstructed with the help of telephone communications with the passengers on the plane and the information provided by the black box, became the storyline of four films : the critically acclaimed United 93, produced and directed by Paul Greengrass; a 2006 TV-film, Flight 93, directed by Peter Markle; I Missed Flight 93, a documentary broadcasted by the History Channel in 2006, and The Flight that Fought Back, another docudrama aired by the Discovery Channel. The death of the passengers on Flight 93 also finds its echoes in literature , thus proving, once again, the appeal of a heroic story. Incidentally, however, none of the titles featuring Flight 93 is part of the present analysis, which is less concerned with the narrative of the events of 9/11 , and more with the political implications of these events at the level of fiction.
According to the security protocols in use, President George W. Bush and Vice -President Dick Cheney were flown during the day to various air force bases in Louisiana and Nebraska. In a videoconference that started at around 3:00 p.m., George Tenet , the director of CIA, asserted that the attacks bore the signature of the terrorist organisation Al-Qaeda (9/11CR 2004, 326), an opinion that would be further embraced by the US administration, by the media and, largely, by public opinion—although based on information that has not been made entirely public. However, an example is provided on the website of the Federation of American Scientists: the translation of the 1998 fatwa which is considered part of the evidence that links Al-Qaeda to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The text contains direct references to Muslims’ holy obligation to ‘kill the Americans and their allies—civilians and military’, arguing that ‘for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbours’ (1998). Despite this incriminating statement, the Al-Qaeda leaders refused to take responsibility for the attacks. On 16 September 2001, CNN cited the prime suspect Osama bin Laden as denying his responsibility: ‘The U.S. government has consistently blamed me for being behind every occasion its enemies attack it. I would like to assure the world that I did not plan the recent attacks, which seem to have been planned by people for personal reasons’ (cnn.com). In 2004, before the US presidential elections, in a televised intervention on the Qatar-based network Al Jazeera , Osama bin Laden finally admitted the involvement of Al-Qaeda in the 9/11 attacks, warning the American people against the possibility of ‘another Manhattan ’ (foxnews.com).
Interestingly, Al-Qaeda immediately claimed responsibility for two subsequent terrorist attacks (Madrid on 11 March 2004 and London on 7 July 2005), but it took them much longer to actually admit that they were the perpetrators of the attacks on the WTC. It did not matter, anyway. In the eyes of the West , Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden (the face of otherness ) had already become synonymous with Islam and, conversely, Islam had become synonymous with terrorism , despite the feeble attempts of the politicians to convince their people that they did not represent one and the same thing. The ‘war on terror ’ (a phrase coined by President George W. Bush ) was to sweep over Afghanistan and Iraq the following years, in a joint military effort of the United States and of their allies, culminating in the killing of Osama bin Laden on 2 May 2011.
The preparations for the war started the day after the terrorist attacks, with meetings of the president with the National Security Council and the State Department, followed by a war council at Camp David, on 15–16 September, with the participation of President Bush , Vice-President Cheney , National Security Advisors Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley, Secretary of State Colin Powell , Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Director of the CIA George Tenet and other officials. Paul Wolfowitz insisted that Iraq should also be attacked ‘on this round’ (9/11 CR 2004, 335) of the war on terrorism . However, his proposal was dismissed at the time, and Bush approved only the plans for attacking Afghanistan , should it refuse to turn over Osama bin Laden and to destroy all Al-Qaeda sanctuaries.
Although the conflict was pursued with the support of the entire North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO ), the most important ally of the United States in the Afghanistan war (Operation Enduring Freedom) was the United Kingdom . Prime Minister Tony Blair met with Bush on 20 September, and their consultation was followed by an address in Congress, when the American president made one of his most trenchant statements, one (ab)used afterwards by many in humorous texts, newspaper articles and fiction , sensing its scandalous potential: ‘Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists ’ (whitehouse.archives.gov 2001a). Among the writers who quoted Bush ’s incisive declaration, one may mention David Hare , who included it verbatim in his ‘historical play’, Stuff Happens (2004, 26), and Iain Banks , who asserts in Dead Air that the Americans supported their leader: ‘It’s time to choose sides. When the President said that you’re either for us or against us, he spoke for all decent Americans ’ (2002, 69). This fallacious statement, known in rhetoric as a false dichotomy or disjunction, was also parodied by the American comedian Stephen Colbert, who paraphrased it as: ‘Either you’re for the war [in Iraq ], or you hate America ’ (cited in Sinnott-Armstrong and Fogelin 2010, 391).
The invasion of Afghanistan , initiated on 7 October 2001 by American and British troops, later joined by the NATO forces, overthrew the Taliban regime in a matter of weeks. By December 2001, a new rule had already been installed in the capital city, Kabul, replacing the Islamist fundamentalist regime in power . However, the war has not come to an end yet, although, after capturing and killing Osama bin Laden in 2011, the US administration lost interest in the area and started the withdrawal of their troops.
The second phase of the war on terror was directed at Iraq , with the declared aim of overthrowing the regime of Saddam Hussein and destroying the weapons of mass destruction presumably possessed by the Iraqi dictator. At present, it is generally admitted that Iraq was never involved in the attacks on the WTC and that they did not harbour Al-Qaeda leaders during those years. Moreover, no evidence of its possessing weapons of mass destruction has ever been found, and numerous political analysts have interpreted the armed action targeted at Iraq as an opportunity envisaged by the US administration to topple a regime that they had supported in the past, but which no longer abided by their rules. The announcement was made on several successive addresses to the nation from the Oval Office. Since all video, audio and written evidence of the state propaganda with regard to the upcoming conflict in Iraq largely conveys the same idea, it has been considered sufficient for the purpose of this study to quote a single piece of this never-verified truth : Saddam Hussein has a long history of reckless aggression and terrible crimes. He possesses weapons of terror . He provides funding and training and safe haven to terrorists who would willingly deliver weapons of mass destruction against America and other peace-loving countries. (George W. Bush , National Press Conference at the White House , 6 March 2003; repeated in a radio address to nation, 8 March 2003)
One may notice that the string of awe-inspiring nouns—‘aggression’, ‘crimes’, ‘terror’, ‘mass destruction’ and ‘terrorists’, associated with equally resounding adjectiv
es such as ‘reckless’ and ‘terrible’—is purportedly opposed to the adjectival phrase ‘peace-loving’, in order to emphasise an aspect that has been constantly brought up for debate, namely America ’s claim to carry out peace-making campaigns against their enemies. It is also obvious that the American president did not intend to allow his citizens to cast the slightest shadow of doubt upon the military action against Iraq : the proof is in the use of the verbs in the indicative mood (simple present tense for universal truth ), without any modal verbs to soften the accusations: Saddam unquestionably possesses weapons of mass destruction and provides aids to terrorists . The propaganda was not at all subtle, but it seemed effective: as of today, despite being repeatedly told that Iraq was not involved in the attacks on the WTC ,1 there are still plenty of Americans ready to believe this historical and diplomatic inexactitude. The carte blanche handed by the American people to the Bush administration was explained by Noam Chomsky with reference to the effectiveness of this propaganda . In a speech of November 2003 at Columbia University in memory of Edward Said , the prominent linguist and political activist made reference to the national naïveté:The United States was the only country where a large part of the population was genuinely afraid of Saddam Hussein , because of his weapons of mass destruction, and his links to terror . It turns out that the people who had those attitudes, those attitudes are strongly correlated with support for the war. Which is not in the least surprising. If I believed those things, I would support the war, too. I mean, if you believe that here is a murderous tyrant accumulating weapons of mass destruction, responsible for 9/11, linked to Al-Qaeda , planning new terror, we have to stop him in time, there’s a rational decision to invade Iraq. (2003, 00:25:10–53)
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