During the first hours following the attacks on September 11, 2001, and, in particular, the collapse of the World Trade Center in New York, Americans — but especially New Yorkers — were steeling themselves for the worst imaginable news: the first reports from lower Manhattan mentioned the possibility of as many as 50,000 deaths. Fortunately, those initial estimates were quickly scotched (by the city’s administration mostly, calmly steered, to his credit, by then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani) so that within a few days, it was reasonable to assume that the number of victims and missing were “only” under 10,000.
Quickly, more “good” news: It seemed that the total would not exceed 6,000. And then, as the months passed, it became 5,000 and then 4,000 and then, finally, a little over 3,000 and then, a year ago, 2,801, and, finally, 2,629 (and 2,998 including the Pentagon and all four hijacked flights). Considering the scope of the attacks, this was almost a miracle. Almost. For the families of the men and women, and several children, who lost their lives — and, of course, for the victims themselves — that “almost” is obscene, and hellish. Still, it could truly have been the biblical slaughter intended by its perpetrators. The fact that it was only a mind-numbing massacre was an infinitesimal relief, and a solace, even if only of a vague and painful sort.
And then came the crusade to avenge the jihad. And, within the month, the numbers started rising again. Not in lower Manhattan or in Arlington, Virginia, or in a field in Pennsylvania, but in Afghanistan. An eye for an eye. The desire and act of retribution is not evil, of course: quite the opposite, it is the basis of justice, in every culture. The question is, whose eye for whose eye? And how many eyes? And when does the blinding stop?
From Kandahar and Herat and Kabul, we found ourselves in Basra and Mosul and Baghdad. All in the name of justice. (Even if so ill-conceived and ill-defined that it’s become indistinguishable from rage, moral extortion, and, worst of all, an almost compulsive need to turn victims into executioners.) And all of it so that the killing would stop. Here we are, of course, two years later, and, on this second anniversary of what should never have been, the numbers are not only climbing — they have consistently done do for the last 23 months — but there is no end in sight to the carnage. It was a German philosopher (naturally, some people would say too hastily) who defined human aspiration as, in one sense at least, “the slaughterbench of history.”
As for the endless victims, they are, like the victims on September 11, 2001, sacrificial lambs in an age of deadly Rapture. They all deserved better; indeed, some should have had our eternal gratitude instead of our complicitous indifference as their lives were snuffed out. There are certain deaths over the last couple of years since September 11 that have seemed particularly monstrous and stomach-turning. That of Daniel Pearl immediately comes to mind. The Wall Street Journal correspondent was precisely that rare kind of open-minded and unbigoted American journalist that anti-Americans should have sought out, should have appealed to, in fact, and assisted and protected in every possible way. The fact that he was murdered — butchered, defiled — because he was, let us be honest about this, a Jew is, simply put, 58 years after the Holocaust, unspeakable. There is something about the way Daniel Pearl was abused and executed that reveals — let us be honest about this also — the sheer grotesqueness of Islamist fundamentalism even more than the attacks on September 11.
And then there is — was — Sérgio Vieira de Mello. Vieira de Mello was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1948 into a privileged family, and Brazil being what it was in 1948, privilege there was another order of privilege altogether. A couple of weeks after his sixteenth birthday, however, there was a military coup in Brazil (supported, of course, by the United States). His father, a diplomat, was sacked because of supposed sympathies for the left (more accurately, for the democratic government of Joao Goulart that had been overthrown). A year later, at the age of 17, Vieira de Mello left for Paris, to study philosophy at the Sorbonne.
Which means, of course, that Vieira de Mello was a soixante-huitard. This is not the place to get into these issues, but these minor details about Vieira de Mello are neither minor nor details. They describe the initial points of his life’s arc. Vieira de Mello never went back to Brazil, at least not permanently; he certainly had no interest in becoming a Brazilian diplomat. It would take two decades to get the military out of public life. (Not at all coincidentally, a turning point in the Brazilian resistance to military rule was the extraordinary 1978 Sao Paulo metalworkers’ strike led by a then-young trade unionist by the name of Luís Inácio Lula da Silva.) By the time that happened, Vieira de Mello had been working for years for the UN, the organization for which he literally gave his life.
He was not a man to stay in the comfort and security of the home office. We quote The Economist’s obituary (August 23-29): “He was in Bangladesh when it broke bloodily away from Pakistan, in Cyprus after Turkey invaded, in Mozambique during its civil war, in Peru under military rule and in Lebanon when Israeli tanks rumbled across the border. He occasionally quipped that he had built his career by treading on minefields — sometimes literally, as when he helped organize de-mining in Cambodia.” He was also in Kosovo, and was the man who guided East Timor to its first free elections and the last stages to independence. And then, although — or maybe precisely for that reason — he had been appointed the UN’s high commissioner for human rights, Kofi Annan asked him to go to Iraq. When he was sent to East Timor, Annan dispatched him with the request “to be my little Nelson Mandela.” He was, and the little Mandela survived in East Timor as the monumental Mandela had survived in South Africa. Iraq, however, was apparently not a place where even a Nelson Mandela — great or small — could survive.
No one knows who assassinated Vieira de Mello and his UN colleagues. Whoever it was, however, the crime bespeaks the same kind of monstrous mentality that motivated the murder of Daniel Pearl — only more so. What is truly hideous to contemplate is that Vieira de Mello survived Bangladesh, Cyprus, Mozambique, Peru, Lebanon, Cambodia, Kosovo, and East Timor to die, not in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, but in the Iraq “liberated” by the United States.
In his last interview before his murder — to a Brazilian newspaper, naturally — Vieira de Mello said: “This must be one of the most humiliating periods in history [for Iraq]. Who would like to see their country occupied? I would not like to see foreign tanks in Copacabana.” He spoke from a related experience, having seen foreign-supported tanks in Rio when he was a teenager. In the time he was in Iraq, he kept on insisting that the occupying authorities do more to restore electricity and water, and quickly turn the security of the country back to the Iraqis. “No foreigner can impose security,” he said. He was, tragically, as right in this as he was in so much else in his life.
Sérgio Vieira de Mello was born in Rio, lived in Paris, and was buried in Geneva: a genuine representative of an authentic international community (as opposed to a “globalized” one) and, more than anything, sadly, an almost iconic latest victim of the attack on the World Trade Center. And the toll continues to mount in this, the end of Year II and the beginning of Year III since that day in September when the world changed forever.
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We have only three articles in this edition of greekworks.com, all related to September 11, 2001. Our main feature, however, is a review essay — and extended reflection — by Melanie Wallace on the “literary industry,” as she pointedly and aptly calls it, which has grown around this date that will assuredly live in infamy, albeit perhaps of a continually contested definition this time. As Wallace’s contribution is well over five times the length of our normal articles, and because we did not want to detract from the issues it raises, we are “framing” it with only two other pieces: Jonathan Goodman’s perceptive look on how the rest of the world looks at us and Stelios Vasilakis’s commentary on the misinformation and deception concerning the toxicity of Ground Zero. Each year, as September 11 approaches, we realize that discretion is the better part of respect and commemoration, and that, increasingly, silence is a singular eloquence. RIP.