Sleeping with the Enemy?
The other day I was reading an article in Time about the making of United 93, the new 9-11 movie about the passengers who tried to take over their hijacked plane, eventually causing it to crash in the fields of Pennsylvania and probably saving the lives of thousands at the plane’s real target on Pennsylvania Ave. (Looks fascinating and inspiring, by the way).
I was hit hard by a couple of photos they ran of the presumed hijackers on the plane. (The article was showing how the movie’s producers tried to cast people with similar looks and backgrounds to the real-life hijackers and heroes).
They were so young.
I don’t know why, but up until now, I’ve sort of always assumed that all the hijackers looked like Zacarias Moussaoui or Ramzi Yousef…big, bearded, a deranged look in their eye, obvious outsiders. Scary, imposing. In other words, clearly monsters.
They weren’t. Okay, sure, some of them do seem to have a bit of a deranged look in their eyes (at least in the FBI posters), but most of them look incredibly normal. The type of people I might pass every day and never take much notice of. They wore khakis and talked on cell phones. Some of them were frankly quite attractive. I might have flirted with them at a bar. I might have joked with them in class.
I realize my initial assumption about appearances was a little naïve, a little misguided, and probably more than a little racist. (Let’s be honest here about our own hidden prejudices). I realize that there is no logical reason for me to think that a man that looks like Moussaoui or Yousef is any more likely to commit atrocities than a man who looks like I might find him at my local watering hole. I know you don’t have to look like a monster to be one. But I thought it anyway. Did you?
Take a look at these pictures for second.
Doesn’t he look like he could be a lot of fun to hang out with? A big joker with lots of friends?
Or this one? Doesn’t he look like the type of guy you’d find in some trendy Central Square bar? Getting his MBA at Harvard, about to become some corporate big shot?
This is the one that really got me. Those eyes have been burning into me for days. Can he possibly be older than 18? Don’t you want to hug him, for a just a second, and promise him that life really does get better? That 18 is really a pretty shitty age, and that nothing is as bad as it seems? I know I do.
I’m not trying to humanize these guys or suggest for a second that they were anything but the murderers and terrorists they clearly were.
But I can’t help for wonder, just for a moment – were these men anything more than scared little boys, caught up in a bit of religious fervor and a course of events way, way bigger than them, lured in by the promise of a seat in heaven and a thousand virgins? Social outcasts who never learned to make friends, sucked in by an ideology that would make them for once in their lives feel important?
And if we can’t count on the next batch of terrorists (or, for that matter, the next batch of Columbine imitators) to be scary or ugly, to have huge dark beards and wear turbans, to have a look in their eye that gives away their murderous intentions, then how do we recognize them? How do we reach them before it’s too late?
I was hit hard by a couple of photos they ran of the presumed hijackers on the plane. (The article was showing how the movie’s producers tried to cast people with similar looks and backgrounds to the real-life hijackers and heroes).
They were so young.
I don’t know why, but up until now, I’ve sort of always assumed that all the hijackers looked like Zacarias Moussaoui or Ramzi Yousef…big, bearded, a deranged look in their eye, obvious outsiders. Scary, imposing. In other words, clearly monsters.
They weren’t. Okay, sure, some of them do seem to have a bit of a deranged look in their eyes (at least in the FBI posters), but most of them look incredibly normal. The type of people I might pass every day and never take much notice of. They wore khakis and talked on cell phones. Some of them were frankly quite attractive. I might have flirted with them at a bar. I might have joked with them in class.
I realize my initial assumption about appearances was a little naïve, a little misguided, and probably more than a little racist. (Let’s be honest here about our own hidden prejudices). I realize that there is no logical reason for me to think that a man that looks like Moussaoui or Yousef is any more likely to commit atrocities than a man who looks like I might find him at my local watering hole. I know you don’t have to look like a monster to be one. But I thought it anyway. Did you?
Take a look at these pictures for second.
Doesn’t he look like he could be a lot of fun to hang out with? A big joker with lots of friends?
Or this one? Doesn’t he look like the type of guy you’d find in some trendy Central Square bar? Getting his MBA at Harvard, about to become some corporate big shot?
This is the one that really got me. Those eyes have been burning into me for days. Can he possibly be older than 18? Don’t you want to hug him, for a just a second, and promise him that life really does get better? That 18 is really a pretty shitty age, and that nothing is as bad as it seems? I know I do.
I’m not trying to humanize these guys or suggest for a second that they were anything but the murderers and terrorists they clearly were.
But I can’t help for wonder, just for a moment – were these men anything more than scared little boys, caught up in a bit of religious fervor and a course of events way, way bigger than them, lured in by the promise of a seat in heaven and a thousand virgins? Social outcasts who never learned to make friends, sucked in by an ideology that would make them for once in their lives feel important?
And if we can’t count on the next batch of terrorists (or, for that matter, the next batch of Columbine imitators) to be scary or ugly, to have huge dark beards and wear turbans, to have a look in their eye that gives away their murderous intentions, then how do we recognize them? How do we reach them before it’s too late?
posted by Melissa at 9:52 PM
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