Another 9/11—we were attacked in New York and there was coup in Chile

By SJ Otto

This day is officially National Day of Patriotic Devotion.  I can tell because yesterday I noticed they put flags up all along the road in front of my house. For many people this day is simply known as 9/11. Either way this so called holiday comes on this day every year. From The Atlantic: 

“You could be forgiven for forgetting the National Day of Patriotic Devotion—technically, it happened before it was ever declared. Donald Trump established it with a stroke of a pen sometime after his inauguration; the official proclamation appeared Monday in the Federal Register.  


That bit isn’t all that unusual. Presidents christen National Days Of Things all the time. President Barack Obama, for example, proclaimed the day of his own inauguration in 2009 a “National Day of Renewal and Reconciliation,” calling “upon all of our citizens to serve one another and the common purpose of remaking this Nation for our new century.” He annually declared September 11 to be “Patriot Day.” But “Patriotic Devotion” strikes a different note—flowery, vaguely compulsory.”

I can still remember the shock of being hit by those two plains. The TV showed nothing but news about it for almost a week. But as shocking as it was, most of this country’s people misread the attacks. They took it as a personal attach on them and their country. I just saw an ad for the Wounded Warrior Project. He said he remembered 9/11 and a day later he joined the military. He said he didn’t think about it at all, he just did it. The problem is that all of those kinds of people went to get back at our enemies. But they really ended up defending the great and mighty capitalist empire of the United States. That isn’t defense. Since that time our commander and chief, the former President George W. Bush, attacked Afghanistan and then conquered it. There was nothing defensive about it. We conquered some one else’s country and we are still occupying it today.

What did Americans learn about 9/11? It is OK to conquer someone else’s country and take THEIR freedom away if it makes us all feel safer. We are the world’s top terrorists.

By now, we have lots of young people who were born after 9/11. Year after year we will eventually have a holiday (it s not a real holiday) that is poorly remembered. Even today we can expect the reaction to this so called holiday to be poorly understood. All it has done is help the imperialist system to use the attacks as an excuse to rob and plunder others.

 

Another important event that happened on this day, 9/11 was that in Chile there was a coup against the presidency of Salvador Allende. He was the first Marxist ever elected in the Western hemisphere.

Allende was the first Marxist I learned from in the 1970s. I followed his career and when he was overthrown by the brute Augusto Pinochet, I was deeply disappointed. Allende convinced me that socialism can be democratic. Allende was my introduction to socialism.

Here is his final speech to his countrymen right before he was killed in the coup:

 

Salvador Allende's Last Speech (English translation)

 

Santiago de Chile, 11 September 1973, 9:10 A.M.
This will surely be my last opportunity to address you. The Air Force has bombed the antennas of Radio Magallanes. My words have neither bitterness nor deception. They should stand as a moral castigation of those who have been traitors to their oaths: Chilean soldiers, titular commanders-in-chief, Admiral Merino, who has designated himself commander of the Navy, even more señor Mendoza, the cringing general who only yesterday manifested his fidelity and loyalty to the Government, and who also has named himself Director General of the Carabineros. In the face of these deeds it only falls to me to say to the workers: I shall not resign!
Standing at a historic point, I will repay with my life the loyalty of the people. And I say to you that I am certain that the seed we have surrendered into the worthy conscience of thousands and thousands of Chileans, will not be able to be reaped at one stroke. They have the power, they can make us their vassals, but not stop the social processes, neither by crime nor by force. History is ours and is made by the people.
Workers of my Nation: I want to thank you for the loyalty you have always had, the confidence you placed in a man who only was the interperter of great yearnings for justice, who pledged his word to respect the Constitution and the law, and who did so. In this final moment, the last in which I will be able to address myself to you, I want you to take advantage of the lesson: foreign capital, imperialism, united with reaction, created the climate for the Armed Forces to break their tradition, that which they were taught by general Schneider which was reaffirmed by commander Araya, victims of the same social sector that today will be be expecting with an alien hand to reconquer the power to continue defending their profits and their privileges.
I address myself to you, above all to the modest woman of our land, to the campesina who believed in us, the mother who knew of our concern for the children. I address myself to the professionals of the Nation, to the patriotic professionals who continued working against the sedition overseen by their professional academies, classist academies that also defended the advantages of a capitalist society.
I address myself to the youth, to those who sang and who brought their happiness and their spirit to the fight. I address myself to the man of Chile, to the worker, to the campesino, to the intellectual, to those who will be percecuted, because in our country fascism has now been present for several hours; in the terrorist assassinations, blowing up the bridges, cutting the railways, destroying the oil and gas pipelines, in the face of the silence of those who had the obligation to behave.

They are in jeopardy. History will judge them.
Radio Magallanes will surely be silenced and the tranquil metal of my voice will no longer reach you. It is not important. You will continue to hear it. I will always be together with you. At least my memory will be that of an upright man who was loyal to the Nation.
The people ought to defend themselves, but not sacrifice themselves. The people ought not let themselves be subdued or persecuted, but neither should they humble themselves.
Workers of my Nation, I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Other men will go beyond this gray and bitter moment when treason tries to impose itself upon us. Continue to know that, much sooner than later, we will reopen the great promenades down which free men pass, to construct a better society.
Long live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers!
These are my last words and I have certainty that my sacrifice will not be in vain, I have certainty that, at the least, I will be a moral lesson to castigate felony, cowardice, and treason.