On the 9/11
compensation fund.
9/11 was a genuine act of savagery and a genuine tragedy. One is
tempted to forget that, in the face of the relentless, incessant,
over-bearing monumentalism going on in the U.S. right now.
U.S. payback was overwhelming, disproportionate, and wildly misguided.
And it was payback. Will there be a moment at which the U.S. finally
announces that they are even?
On 3/20 will the Iraqis hold a memorial to the 100,000 innocent people who
died in the American invasion? (We're talking about women and children
and non-combatants here). Will they solemnly read off the names of the
100,000 at the site of the one of the bombed out neighborhoods? Will
the families of the 100,000 sue whoever is nearby with a fat wallet for
"compensation"?
We know they won't get a penny. They just happened to be in the way.
About $3 billion was given to the 9/11 fund from charities.
The average family of a victim of the 9/11 terrorist attacks received about
$3 million from insurance companies and the federal government of the United
States. Altogether, the governments kicked in about $16 billion in
compensation. (Insurance Companies kicked in about the same amount.)
The government enacted legislation limiting the liability of governments,
airports, airlines, and other agencies or companies, in exchange for the
settlements produced by the 9/11 fund. [2011-09-26 I just
reread that and I couldn't believe it. So I double-checked. Yes,
$16 billion. And I'm sure lots of people watching it all unfold
on TV thought to themselves, boy, they can't pay them enough. Yes they
can. You just want the theatrical moment in your mind when you well
up with tears and awesomeness at how
As the Rand Corporation pointed out, the government's actions here
establish some precedents for compensation for the victims of a terrorist
attack. Politically, it was impossible to stand up to the families of
the victims of 9/11: all they had to do was go on TV and complain about
"unfair" treatment and politicians of all stripes would fall over themselves
to grant their every wish. They even demanded the right to censor any
entertainments eventually provided in facilities at the new World Trade
Center.
There were concerns that litigation would go on forever, would cost far
more than the roughly $30 billion offered by the government, and make
everybody feel really, really bad.
The lawsuits would have been a grave thing-- what jury could resist
giving a huge award to someone who lost a loved one because the airlines and
the airports didn't check for box-cutters? But no one, of
course, was going to be able to sue the people actually responsible for the
disaster: Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda.. Instead, you sue whoever
happens to be nearby, with large wallets. The government is always
handy, even if we say we don't want them intruding on our lives. Then,
when the Bush Administration couldn't get Bin Laden, they followed a similar
strategy of diffusion: let's kill Saddam. You sue the deep pockets.
The victims of Hurricane Katrina, of course, were not so lavishly
compensated for their losses. Of course, you couldn't sue Katrina
herself either. And for some reason, the victims of Hurricane Katrina,
and the remarkably inept government response, didn't have nearly the
political sway the victims of 9/11 had.
There was something about the hatred and bitterness and vindictiveness of
the 9/11 Families that seemed to have nothing or little to do with perceived
or real injustice. It was not pleasant to watch. It
caused me personally to begin to lose sympathy for them thought they had
suffered real losses.
It's a lot of money. I think you should only be able to sue for
that kind of money if you could clearly demonstrate that there was reckless
disregard for the safety of the individuals working in the towers. How
reckless were they, compared to all the other towers in Manhattan, most of
which are equally vulnerable to this kind of attack?
Not the Empire State Building: it was designed differently. A plane
did crash into it once -- it met an immovable object. The Empire State
Building is far, far safer than the World Trade Center was because the
builders spent enough money to make sure it was safe. That's all there
is to it.
It probably would have cost a lot less than $30 billion to have built the
World Trace Center to the standards.
