Following the events of 9/11, a great many people made comparisons to the 1996 movie, Independence Day. The most obvious comparisons, the ones viscerally felt by anyone who had seen the film and witnessed the atrocities of September 11, were to the scenes of the aliens destroying major American cities. Nearly three years later, new comparisons are emerging that also deserve our attention.
When people saw the footage of planes crashing into the Twin Towers and the skyscrapers subsequently collapsing, they experienced an eerie feeling of deja vu. These images on television were interacting with other images previously burned into our consciousness when we watched the movie a few years before.
The most frightening scenes of Independence Day involved alien motherships firing their deathrays down from the sky onto recognizable US landmarks. In an instant, the White House in Washington and skyscrapers in New York, Los Angeles and a host of other cities ignited in fire and then disintegrated into dust.
Possibly the scariest part was that at some unconscious level, we knew that the archetypal experience we formed when watching the movie was a fictional one, but the replay which we were watching was for real. Our wildest nightmares became reality. Instead of watching these images on the movie channel, we were tuning in to them on the news channel.
Another important way in which Independence Day shaped our feelings on 9/11 was by the way it structured our expectations about what would come next. In the movie, no one could believe the alien ships were intent on destroying our cities. When the first city was destroyed, a tremendous shock set in, but there wasn't time to digest this shock because immediately one city after another was incinerated. We didn't know where the next blow was going to impact, but we knew it was going to come.
Similarly, when we heard about the first plane crashing into the World Trade Center, we were in shock. How could this happen? Was it an accident? But then the next plane smashed into the tower's twin. And then the Pentagon exploded. And then there were news reports about attacks on the State Department and the White House, and we were told that there were a dozen other hijacked planes in the air, waiting to be directed to destroy a beloved American landmark.
Our experience in watching the film formed a template for our expectations. Fairly quickly, we entered a state of panic because although we didn't know where the next plane would explode, we were sure it was going to explode somewhere, maybe on us.
But nearly three years after the events of 9/11, a comparison with another scene in the movie is emerging that is possibly even more frightening than those we previously experienced. Certainly, this comparison portends a depressing long-term struggle we cannot ignore. We have been slow to draw this comparison, but it may be high time that we did.
The scene in question takes place in the apocryphal Area 51, a US Air Force base in the heart of the Nevada desert where reportedly, the government has been keeping the dead bodies of three aliens who perished in a spy mission to Roswell, New Mexico in the 1950s. As the scene opens in the movie, an alien pilot has been shot down by a US Navy interceptor and is being held captive in the Area 51 facility. While imprisoned behind an unbreakable glass partition, the alien manages to kill Dr. Okun, America's top alien scientist, who was about to perform medical experiments on him. The alien manipulates the dead Dr. Okun's vocal chords so that he can have a chilling conversation with the President of the United States, who is located on the safe side of the glass partition. In this dialog, the alien explains the rationale for destroying America's cities.
PRESIDENT: Why did you people come here?
OKUN/ALIEN: Air... water... your "sun."
PRESIDENT: Where do your people come from? Where is your home?
OKUN/ALIEN: Here... now.
PRESIDENT: And before here?
OKUN/ALIEN: Many worlds...
PRESIDENT: Can we negotiate a truce? Is there room for co-existence? Can there be peace between us?
OKUN/ALIEN: Peace? No peace.
PRESIDENT: What do you want us to do?
OKUN/ALIEN: Die.
In this interchange, the alien explains the terms of the confrontation. The battle between the aliens and humanity is not one that can be ended by identifying each others' zone of possible agreement and finding a pareto-optimal solution that will provide each side with their core interests. The aliens will only stop fighting when they have destroyed civilization.
When considering the aims of the Islamic terrorists intent on destroying Western Civilization, the above described scene also has a chilling familiarity. While I am aware of the limitations of the analogy and am sensitive to the dangers of comparing human beings (albeit Islamic Fundamentalist terrorists) to aliens, there is a lesson to be learned here. This is especially true when the language of the aliens and the terrorists are so similar.
A similar conversation could have been had between the US President and Hussein Massawi, the former head of the Lebanese terror group Hezbullah. In an interview with a Western journalist, Massawi summarized the rationale of Islamic terrorism: "We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you."
For the past three years, as human bombs have continued to explode in crowded Israeli buses and restaurants, and the streets of previously unlikely locales such as Bali, Casablanca and Madrid have been drenched with the blood of innocents, it would appear that closer attention should be paid to this scene and the strategy presented.
While the Islamic terrorists do not desire to destroy the West because they covet our natural resources, their intent on eliminating us should be clear. The doctrine of "Dar Al-Islam", which prescribes that peace can only flourish in areas under Muslim rule, has never been concealed. They will continue to attempt to eliminate us until they succeed or they are stopped. Attempts to find "root causes", or to understand "the desperation that drive the terrorists to do the horrible things they do", only abets their murderous aims and distracts us from what needs to be done.
In the movie Independence Day, humanity united to confront the alien force with all the cunning of its best minds and all the force of its most powerful arsenals. Three years after 9/11, I hope that freedom-loving people around the world have learned that when faced with Islamic terrorists intent on eliminating them, they are faced with no other option.
When people saw the footage of planes crashing into the Twin Towers and the skyscrapers subsequently collapsing, they experienced an eerie feeling of deja vu. These images on television were interacting with other images previously burned into our consciousness when we watched the movie a few years before.
The most frightening scenes of Independence Day involved alien motherships firing their deathrays down from the sky onto recognizable US landmarks. In an instant, the White House in Washington and skyscrapers in New York, Los Angeles and a host of other cities ignited in fire and then disintegrated into dust.
Possibly the scariest part was that at some unconscious level, we knew that the archetypal experience we formed when watching the movie was a fictional one, but the replay which we were watching was for real. Our wildest nightmares became reality. Instead of watching these images on the movie channel, we were tuning in to them on the news channel.
Another important way in which Independence Day shaped our feelings on 9/11 was by the way it structured our expectations about what would come next. In the movie, no one could believe the alien ships were intent on destroying our cities. When the first city was destroyed, a tremendous shock set in, but there wasn't time to digest this shock because immediately one city after another was incinerated. We didn't know where the next blow was going to impact, but we knew it was going to come.
Similarly, when we heard about the first plane crashing into the World Trade Center, we were in shock. How could this happen? Was it an accident? But then the next plane smashed into the tower's twin. And then the Pentagon exploded. And then there were news reports about attacks on the State Department and the White House, and we were told that there were a dozen other hijacked planes in the air, waiting to be directed to destroy a beloved American landmark.
Our experience in watching the film formed a template for our expectations. Fairly quickly, we entered a state of panic because although we didn't know where the next plane would explode, we were sure it was going to explode somewhere, maybe on us.
But nearly three years after the events of 9/11, a comparison with another scene in the movie is emerging that is possibly even more frightening than those we previously experienced. Certainly, this comparison portends a depressing long-term struggle we cannot ignore. We have been slow to draw this comparison, but it may be high time that we did.
The scene in question takes place in the apocryphal Area 51, a US Air Force base in the heart of the Nevada desert where reportedly, the government has been keeping the dead bodies of three aliens who perished in a spy mission to Roswell, New Mexico in the 1950s. As the scene opens in the movie, an alien pilot has been shot down by a US Navy interceptor and is being held captive in the Area 51 facility. While imprisoned behind an unbreakable glass partition, the alien manages to kill Dr. Okun, America's top alien scientist, who was about to perform medical experiments on him. The alien manipulates the dead Dr. Okun's vocal chords so that he can have a chilling conversation with the President of the United States, who is located on the safe side of the glass partition. In this dialog, the alien explains the rationale for destroying America's cities.
PRESIDENT: Why did you people come here?
OKUN/ALIEN: Air... water... your "sun."
PRESIDENT: Where do your people come from? Where is your home?
OKUN/ALIEN: Here... now.
PRESIDENT: And before here?
OKUN/ALIEN: Many worlds...
PRESIDENT: Can we negotiate a truce? Is there room for co-existence? Can there be peace between us?
OKUN/ALIEN: Peace? No peace.
PRESIDENT: What do you want us to do?
OKUN/ALIEN: Die.
In this interchange, the alien explains the terms of the confrontation. The battle between the aliens and humanity is not one that can be ended by identifying each others' zone of possible agreement and finding a pareto-optimal solution that will provide each side with their core interests. The aliens will only stop fighting when they have destroyed civilization.
When considering the aims of the Islamic terrorists intent on destroying Western Civilization, the above described scene also has a chilling familiarity. While I am aware of the limitations of the analogy and am sensitive to the dangers of comparing human beings (albeit Islamic Fundamentalist terrorists) to aliens, there is a lesson to be learned here. This is especially true when the language of the aliens and the terrorists are so similar.
A similar conversation could have been had between the US President and Hussein Massawi, the former head of the Lebanese terror group Hezbullah. In an interview with a Western journalist, Massawi summarized the rationale of Islamic terrorism: "We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you."
For the past three years, as human bombs have continued to explode in crowded Israeli buses and restaurants, and the streets of previously unlikely locales such as Bali, Casablanca and Madrid have been drenched with the blood of innocents, it would appear that closer attention should be paid to this scene and the strategy presented.
While the Islamic terrorists do not desire to destroy the West because they covet our natural resources, their intent on eliminating us should be clear. The doctrine of "Dar Al-Islam", which prescribes that peace can only flourish in areas under Muslim rule, has never been concealed. They will continue to attempt to eliminate us until they succeed or they are stopped. Attempts to find "root causes", or to understand "the desperation that drive the terrorists to do the horrible things they do", only abets their murderous aims and distracts us from what needs to be done.
In the movie Independence Day, humanity united to confront the alien force with all the cunning of its best minds and all the force of its most powerful arsenals. Three years after 9/11, I hope that freedom-loving people around the world have learned that when faced with Islamic terrorists intent on eliminating them, they are faced with no other option.