22 YEARS AGO TODAY

The damn phone was ringing pretty fucking early. It rang four times and the message machine picked up; no message was left. Then it rang again to the same result. The third time it started ringing, I finally dragged myself out of bed, went over to the phone and picked it up. The clock said it was 0545 in the City of Lost Angles.

Me: Yeah?

Steve in New York: We’re at war!!

Me: What the fuck, Steve - are you drinking?

Steve in New York: We’re at war! Go turn on your TV!!

At which point he slammed the phone down so hard my ear rang. A few weeks later, talking about the event, he told me he was really disgusted that morning with how fog-headed I was.

Hmmm... “We’re at war! “Turn on your TV!” What the hell...

So I padded down the hallway to the living room and turned on the TV.

Just in time to see the second airplane hit the tower.

The shot widened and I saw the other tower was on fire.

And, as an historian of American history who was very aware of the fact that since 1945 we had been even more Not The Good Guys All The Time than we had been before that war, I thought to myself...

Those are some big fucking chickens, coming home to roost.

I didn’t have to listen to the commentators. I knew it was about Afghanistan. I’d written a screenplay about an American mercenary who goes there and learns a Big Lesson way back in 1986, when he went there to fight Russians. It was the script that sold and gave me enough money to move to Mount Washington. Tony Scott wanted to make it. The rest of Hollywood didn’t give a shit, like the rest of the country didn’t give a shit about Afghanistan.

I’d paid attention to events there after the Russians admitted defeat and left in 1989. Paid attention to all the warlords fighting each other. Paid attention to the Taliban and their goal of taking the country back to the Seventh Century. Paid attention to Al Qaeda when they tried to bomb the towers in 1993. And when they bombed the American Embassy in Kenya in 1998. And when they damn near sank the U.S.S. Cole in Aden harbor in 2000.

I had paid attention to the news of the assassination of Ahmad Shah Massoud, leader of the Northern Alliance, the day before. That news had carried with it the whiff of Things To Come, things that arrived earlier than I’d expected.

It was old news to me when they finally said Al Qaeda did it. No shit, Sherlock, what was your first clue?

The fat dumb and happy country that never did anything bad to anybody ever, that always acted from the best of intentions - that country that never fucking existed outside of popular mythology.

That country had a collective panic attack over the chickens that came home to roost that day. And then it proceeded to act like the petulant elementary schooler the United States always acts like when it gets called on its shit.

I spent the afternoon calling Virginia repeatedly, the home of a friend who worked at the Pentagon. He finally answered the fourth time I called and I said “Thank god you’re safe!” He told me he was finally happy that his office was in the basement to the rear of the building. A long way away from the jet that hit the entrance. Both being Vietnam veterans, we didn’t have any trouble with talking about chickens and roosting.

My only question was why the event had taken so long to happen.

Unfortunately I didn't think we'd face up to the event as well as all the people I write about faced up to Pearl Harbor.

And I wasn’t wrong.

The really bad part about understanding history is you’re forced to ride the rollercoaster again (and again) with the ones who never will.

For the next 20 years, one percent of Americans paid 100 percent of the price for the petulance, and the rest of America mostly didn’t give a rat’s ass, unless they were one of the Americans whose kid came home in a box. The rest of the Fat, Dumb and Happy followed Widdle Georgie’s advice and went shopping.

Over the next year, I watched obvious lies even more filled with mendacity, menace, malevolence and ignorance than all the lies that led to the Tonkin Gulf Incident carry us along to Widdle Georgie’s Invasion of Poland, er, I mean Iraq. We were going to make the Middle East safe for The American Way. We certainly did - the American Way of tripping over your own damn shoelaces you’re too fucking stupid to know are there on your shoes. Celebrating Moron Ignorance as Intelligent Patriotism.

And all the asswipes of the Right who were - once again, like the YAF morons who heckled me when I spoke against my war, while never thinking of joining up to walk the walk as well as talk the bullshit - not signing up to go Kill A Raghead For Christ puffed themselves up as the Great Patriots they just knew they were and went after anybody who talked against the Accomplished Mission that Widdle Georgie announced after he arrived on the carrier in his Airplane Pilot Costume - like I did - and the harassment was more than I had seen in 1965-66, when 90% of the American Dumkopfs masquerading as citizens supported somebody else going to Vietnam to Kill A Gook For Christ.

My email in-box got a real workout, and I learned all about how to block morons and send them to Spam. I really enjoyed telling FormerBlueAngel@aol.com that the fact he’d gotten that assignment and then couldn’t make the jump from Lieutenant to Lieutenant Commander meant he was a Seriously Fucked Up Dumbass, since assignment to the Blues is an Admiral’s Track event. I had some snappy replies to other members of the Witless Brigade.

In 2008, a GI at Fort Hood tracked me down after he read a history of The Oleo Strut Coffeehouse I’d written for The Rag Blog, and asked if I knew any way they could create another one. Fortunately I hadn’t lost track of my friends in Austin, so there was no problem finding staff. And staying in touch with Tom Hayden meant he put me back in touch with his ex-wife (always one of my favorite people), who made a call to her friend Abigail Disney, and $50,000 showed up to start what became Under The Hood Coffeehouse. Those guys - the one who called me was on the list for his fourth deployment - were in more need of that place than the guys back in 1968. So at least I did one good thing to poke the idiots in their eye with a stick. Even if it wasn’t all that sharp.

And surprise surprise, once again I was right and the morons were wrong.

If we really want to “Never Forget,” we must remember not only the events of the day but also how we caused that day with the things we have let slide, what we lost in the wars that followed, and what we’re still at risk of losing.

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