- Whoever said that irony was dead in America
clearly hadn't heard about the assault ship USS New York
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- The cliche goes that Americans do not
understand irony. Not true. Seinfeld ran for 181 episodes and TV Guide
rated it the best comedy show ever. Maybe they just didn't get it in the
New York Governor's office, or at the Pentagon. A warship is to be built
in part from the wreckage of the fallen World Trade Centre. No? Oh, come
on, this is good stuff here. Anyone in from out of town? Hello? Hello?
Is this thing on?
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- Shortly after the September 11 tragedy
George Pataki, the Governor of New York State, contacted Gordon England,
the Secretary of the United States Navy, with the request that the name
of his state be given to a surface warship, engaged in the War on Terror.
Usually state names are reserved for submarines.
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- On August 28, 2002, Mr Pataki's wish
was granted with the result that 24 tons of steel from the stricken buildings
was taken to New Orleans and put to use by Northrop Grumman Systems in
the construction of an amphibious assault ship that should be ready next
year. In this way, the 2,800 souls that perished as an indirect result
of an interventionist foreign policy that achieved the exact opposite of
its stated aims can be honoured by a vessel built to ensure that this flawed
cycle of violence continues. The USS New York will carry 360 soldiers and
700 combat-ready Marines. It puts to sea with the motto: "Never forget."
Except they do. They always do.
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- No sooner had work begun on the New York
when the Secretary of the Navy announced that sister ships were to be built
called the USS Arlington, after the Pentagon site that was hit by terrorists,
and the USS Somerset, the Pennsylvania county in which Flight 93 came down.
The ships would commemorate the attacks, if that is the right word, which
it is plainly not. Exactly what is being commemorated anyway? Not the memory
of the victims, as nothing is known of how they want to be remembered,
and certainly not whether they would wish a warship to be dedicated in
their name. Who knows in which direction their anger would be channelled?
It could be that some of the dead might have thought over-reliance on warships
was their downfall in the first place.
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- In essence what is being commemorated
here is failure; the failure of American foreign policy to protect fully
the interests of its citizens or make their world a safer place. America
came under attack because the actions of successive governments have made
it the enemy to large swaths of humanity. Anti-Americanism is growing alarmingly
because, since September 11, the world's most powerful nation has continued
to alienate and divide even its allies. While not excusing wicked acts
committed by terrorists, it would be foolish to view the behaviour of terrorists
as motiveless. If we regard terrorism as the work of madmen and unrelated
to our relationship with their world, we learn nothing from history.
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- Woody Oge, Northrop Grumman's director
of operations in New Orleans, is anxious to play down the USS New York
as a weapon of mass destruction, saying that previous vessels had sometimes
been used for humanitarian purposes. Announcing the naming of the ship,
Mr England had no such reticence. Its mission would be to project American
power to the far corners of the Earth, he said, without acknowledging that,
on September 11, the far corners of the Earth not being entirely happy
with the projection of American power, a fanatical minority choose to express
its displeasure through random murder.
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- Since the September 11 attacks, the familiar
argument is that the West did not start this war, but is determined to
finish it. Yet the USS New York with its 700 combat-ready Marines was already
on the drawing board before the World Trade Centre was hit, in all but
name. Had the towers not fallen, there would still be a deadly billion-dollar
vessel under construction in Louisiana. It would just be called the Saucy
Sue and might not be built from the habitats of dead people and imbued
with such heavy symbolism that workers in the shipyard are said to have
treated its components with religious reverence.
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- The respected columnist Roger Cohen,
writing in The New York Times, identified just 14 years since 1945 when
America had not been at war, in some form or other, either metaphorical
(the Cold War, the War on Terror) or literal (Korea, Vietnam, Iraq). Some
might think the two states do not compare. Then again, some of us have
never tried to form a left-wing government in Chile, appeared before the
Senate Permanent Investigations Sub-Committee led by Senator Joe McCarthy
or been instructed to form a naked pyramid by a gap-toothed cracker with
a semi-automatic weapon and a weird girlfriend.
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- Some aspects of metaphorical wars turn
out very real for certain people. They have a habit of becoming tangible
for the rest of us, too. The Cold War became a very hot one in Asia. The
War on Terror unleashed the invasion of Iraq. And while USS New York may
currently be serving metaphorically as a symbol of American indefatigability
and courage, it will one day be engaged in a genuine sense in the propagation
of a foreign policy that continues to contribute to recycled violence,
from continent to continent, with New York office workers the occasional
collateral damage. To turn the rubble they left behind into the machinery
for the next big mistake shows an ignorance of cause and effect that explains
why some still believe George Bush and Tony Blair were right about the
war, but wrong about the peace; as if the two can be separated. Our mistake
was that we didn't have an exit strategy, they say. Makes the entrance
a pretty dumb-ass move, then, doesn't it, Sparky?
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- "I think somebody should do a marker,"
said Gerry Howard, editorial director of Broadway Books, "to say that
irony died on September 11, 2001." Wrong, Gerry. Turns out it was
just hitting its stride. How ironic is that?
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