Today is September 11, 2008. Seven Years Later and still America has not come to terms with what happened to us and what we did to others as a consequence. I have entered here some of what I wrote immediately after and one year later. I’ll post soon the photos I took in my Park slope neighborhood a few days after 9/11 and which was misinterpreted by many as simple patriotism as opposed to thoughtful commemoration of the victims and sympathy for friends and family. I’m going out soon to see how things have or have not changed on the streets. A few of images can be found in the Brooklynsoc.org Galleries. More photos and thoughtful contributions at the time by students of Professor Chris Toulouse as part of Brooklynsoc.org’s at
“In Memoriam: 9/11 and its Aftermath”
The New York City FREE PRESS online
September, 2002

A View from Brooklyn
By Jerry Krase

One Year Later

I am a fidgeter. Whenever I am sitting in church and the sermon is going a little too long I thumb through the copy the of the New Testament which conveniently is located in the little nook/niche/pigeonhole thing on the back of the seat in front of me. Last week, when I was especially squirmy, I decided to search through Revelations for a bit of diversion and accidentally discovered the real source of W’s foreign policy vis a vis Evil Doers and their WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction). For those who read the Bible even less than I do, Revelations is at the end of the New Testament having been placed there with the hope that no one would notice.

According to James Tabor, “If you open the Book of Revelation and simply begin reading it as an unfolding scenario, it goes something like this. There will be wars and famines and disease epidemics and heavenly signs that will alert the world to some sort of crisis. Then will come an Antichrist as he’s called, or a political ruler, that will establish control over the whole earth. He’ll be backed up with a religious ruler, who’s called the false prophet. They together establish a unified social, economic and religious system that dominates the world. The only things opposing them are the people of God and these two prophets, they’re called the two witnesses, who appear in Jerusalem, and begin to speak against this power. The rest of the book, really the last half of the book is about the overthrow of this system. The beast, the false prophet, who has the number 666, the Antichrist, is overthrown with judgments and plagues. Most of them are very cosmic. Asteroids hitting the earth. The water turning to blood and that sort of thing, until finally, Jesus Christ returns as a warrior on a white horse and sets up the kingdom of God.”

(For more than anyone would ever want to know about it, you can visit James Tabor’s Apocalyptism Explained: The Book of Revelations at PBS online and wgbh/frontline.)

If we recognize that W is challenged in several different, and interesting, ways it is obvious that Collin Powell and/or Donald Rumsfeld are the least of our worries. Himself has seen the signs that the world is in some sort of crisis. Who hasn’t? Then there is this political ruler (Saddam Hussein) who is trying to establish control and who’s backed by a religious ruler, or false prophet (Osama bin Laden and al Qaida). Together they (Fundamentalist Moslems) are trying to dominate the world. The only thing opposing them are the people of God (Republicans) and these two prophets (W and Ariel) who have appeared in both the New Jerusalem (Washington, DC) and in the Old Jerusalem (Jerusalem). The U.S. Congress is about to give W the unlimited power he needs to make the kooky prophecies of John come true. Scary isn’t it?

One Year Ago: I received the following message from my niece:
Subj: Is Everyone Safe????
Date: 9/11/01 5:37:29 PM Eastern Daylight Time
From: (Liz)
To: (Uncle Johnny), (Uncle Jerry), (Kristen Krase), (Katherine Krase), (Aunt Maryann), (Aunt Suzanne)

I don’t know where everyone works. Can someone please check in with me and let me know our family is all safe and accounted for. Thank you. Love Liz

I immediately sent Liz a note and the next day I sent out my own message to everyone in my address book and to all the professional association list services to which I subscribed. Here it is:

Subj: Re: The View from Brooklyn, NYC

We live in Brooklyn but the smoke from the fires and dust from the debris coated the neighborhood and we had to close all the windows and people were wearing dust masks on the street. My family is fine but there is so much horror. I spent the day with my three daughters and two grandsons. My wife worked at one of the hospitals receiving some of the bodies and triaged patients. I and my daughters went to the local hospital to give blood but there were so many people who came to contribute their blood that we were told to come back the next day. I have asked everyone to give blood and say prayers. I will go into the college today and see if I can do something meaningful. I am worried about inter-group problems in the city and especially at the university where students had been at each other’s throats over Middle Eastern issues. Jerry

I decided to play squash today as I usually do on Wednesday mornings and forgot that when I take the subway there is a point en route which has(d) such a wonderful view of the NYC skyline and the twin towers. As we approached the Smith and Ninth Street Station which reputedly is the world’s highest subway station I moved to the window and almost simultaneously, and in total silence, people got out of their seats and moved to one side of the car. It was the most quiet time I have ever heard on a NYC subway car. I will not take any pictures of any of this as I’ve already seen too much.

In response to my message I received hundreds of responses expressing various degrees of sympathy and support. I was shocked however at the number of people who added a “but” to their notes. As the time from 9/11 and distance from the World Trade Center increased I noticed that how much the view of America, especially by Europeans, had radically changed since we were an Ugly but well-intentioned superpower. I naturally assumed that there would be immediate and unequivocal sympathy if not support for the U.S. from among my colleagues. There was for my family, and me but there was too often a qualifier to expressions of compassion. Academics have an annoying tendency to give some kind of informed, objective, emotionless opinion of an historical event and this one was no exception.

The messages reminded me that Europeans are keenly aware of and sensitive to American foreign (and military) exploits. When I went to Ireland to deliver the Keynote Address at the Annual Meeting of the Sociology Association of Ireland, in Tralee, last November I thought my wife was about to flatten someone who implied that we should have seen it coming; as in we “had it coming.” Increasingly in discussions among colleagues, even here in the US, there is a growing recognition, and expression, that American foreign policy at least indirectly caused those planes to crash into the Twin Towers as almost a divine intervention.

Six Months Later

I was on a "9/11" Panel at a meeting of the Multicultural Education Society of Europe and the Americas in Padua, Italy. As an introduction to a photo essay “Park Slope in the Aftermath of the World Trade Center Tragedy” (brooklynsoc.org) I read aloud, for the first time, the words of my 9/12 e-mail message. Tears came to my eyes as I relived that day. I remembered, now from a distance, going upstairs to help my elderly in-laws to close all the windows and thinking that perhaps I would not return as I walked over to my daughter’s house where her two sisters had instinctively gathered. We stayed there with her and my three-year-old and one-month-old grandsons and waited, without admitting that the End might be coming. Of course, in Padua, my personal pain moved many, but too many others took what I described as a terrible tragedy as an opportunity to “explain” why it happened. Why 3,000 people died in a few minutes of my life. Perhaps this is a stretch but 9/11 was discussed in much the same way that some Americans talk about the Collateral Damage in Belgrade, Baghdad, Hebron, or in Dresden. Terrible, but after all didn’t they did have it coming?

Today

Speaking of which, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder won a narrow victory by opposing the demand that our European allies unequivocally support the US war with Iraq. Much of this reluctance to join the pack has to do with the Fall of the Last Evil Empire in 1989 which has left the Good Guys in total control of the whole world and the friends of the Good Guys worrying that perhaps they are next. Having had direct experience with the Next to Last Evil Empire (1939-1945), Germans, and other Europeans, think they know what whacko Millennialists look like.

Yesterday it was reported that, at a NATO meeting, US Secretary of Warfare, Donald Rumsfeld, refused to meet with German Defense Minister Peter Struck to express his annoyance at Berlin’s opposition to global U.S. hegemony. It has also been reported that Justice Minister Herta Dauebler-Gmelin, who indirectly compared W to H, would not be joining the new government. I remember the good old days when I was a soldier in un-unified “West Germany” when we worried about the resurgence of German militarism. Krauts, as we all knew, were bloodthirsty warmongers. American, British, French, and even forces of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics were stationed in Germany, West and East, for decades to keep the German Bear subdued. Now the once ferocious German bears are criticized for being pacifist pussycats.

In the Good Old Days, Americans were simply Ugly. Writing about The Ugly American: Everybody Wants One, Richard C. Crepeau asks, “Whatever happened to the Ugly American? Thirty years ago that title from a popular novel was routinely used to describe the American abroad. The American tourist by then had become a fixture in Europe and the subject of a number of jokes, and had elicited extensive comment by irritated Europeans. The Ugly American was a caricature built on the reality of a boisterous, loud, uncultured, unsophisticated, arrogant, insensitive clod — one who was prone to throwing around too much money, dressing absurdly, and acting oblivious to the subtleties of high culture.”
(http://www.poppolitics.com)

Since the Vietnam Era, when Americans were simply regarded as obnoxious, we are increasingly seen abroad as dangerous. It as though we have been transmogrified into Rush Limbaugh Ditto Heads. The most recent embarrassing example of this was New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg allowing himself to be photographed in a flak jacket in Afghanistan. This media nonsense reminds me of how ridiculous Massachusetts Governor, and Democratic Party Presidential candidate, looked while riding in a tank in a failed attempt to look less liberal and tough. FYI: Dukakis won the Democratic nomination for the Presidency in 1988 but was defeated by George Bush.
Tomorrow?