Hopes & fears: 9-11, five years later.

The Cinema, Inc., one of Raleigh’s little jewels, opened its 41st season last night with “The Buena Vista Social Club,” the 1999 film about Ry Cooder and the amazing bunch of aging — and in some cases forgotten — musicians he found in Cuba. They included a 72-year old singer, Ibrahim Ferrer (”In walks this Cuban Nat King Cole,” Cooder relates), an 80-year old piano virtuoso, Ruben Gonzales, and a 92-year old guitarist, Compay Seguendo. Cooder put these three together with a female singer, Omara Portuondo, and perhaps a dozen others who completed the BVSC, and out of it came a great album, concerts in Amsterdam and New York City, and of course this wonderful movie.

I mention it today because seeing it again, seven years later, I remembered how hopeful it made me feel in ‘99 about the prospect of America’s finally getting over our pathological attitude about Cuba. And not only that, but I was also hopeful — if memory serves — about the prospects for American goodwill around the world.

It wasn’t that long ago that the U.S. was seen, and could see itself, as the one great superpower on the planet without choking on the word “great.” The Berlin Wall had fallen; we’d pushed Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait while exercising superb restraint in not taking the chance to obliterate Baghdad; we’d helped topple Milosevic in the former Yugoslavia; we were trying to mediate between the Israelis and the Palestinians …. Remember? I do. I was feeling pretty good about America, and thinking our problems were mainly domestic: income inequality, the medically uninsured, discrimination against minorities, rampant SUVs. In the film, when the Cubans finally reach New York — for most of them, it was their first visit — they are amazed at its size, scale, and at the generosity of their welcome. Ferrer pronounces the Big Apple “beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.” (And in a now-wrenching scene, he and the others look south from the top of the Empire State Building toward the Statue of Liberty, and in the distance they see, without commenting on them, the WTC towers.)

I can’t help but compare that beautiful, hopeful feeling about America’s place in the world then to what I feel now, on the 5th anniversary of 9-11. Now, I feel disgust, and some other Americans feel fear, about the effect our country is having on the world, and about the world’s effect on us. Yes, we were attacked. Three thousand died. The memory of that morning hasn’t faded for me at all. It was horrifying. But the way we’ve reacted to it is more horrifying. Blindly, stupidly, we’ve invaded two countries, and we’ve declared war on a shadowy enemy that we can’t find, but in our rage and destructive power, it’s an enemy we’re creating ever more of with every door we break down, bomb we drop, and city we destroy.

We went into Afghanistan — justly — vowing to find Osama bin Laden, take down his terror camps, overthrow the Taliban, and rebuild that ancient nation that had suffered for a century under various corrupt and foreign regimes. We followed through on none of those promises, soon choosing instead to invade Iraq, threaten Iran, and Syria, and North Korea for that matter, and to what end? Are we safer now? Are you kidding?

And what about Cuba? The lovely side of that unlucky place that Ry Cooder helped to uncover for us is now, just seven years later, completely forgotten in the U.S., and our pathology about the Cuban “threat” now extends to Venezuela, Bolivia, and to immigrants to this country from virtually every other country in the hemisphere. Where will it end? When we fear them all?

And if the planet’s one superpower is consumed by its fears, and is feared by the rest of the world, will we be finally be safe then? Or great?

This entry was posted from Bob Geary on Monday, September 11th, 2006 at 10:32 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.