Introduction: 911 and 9/11: Links to Link (2004)

Introduction911 AND 9/11: LINKS TO LINK Rembert Hüser (bio) The cause of the biggest traffic jam in the history of the United States carried a brand name: according to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's and Ramzi Binalshibh's testimony to U.S. authorities in 2003,1 the internal code word for the attacks was Porsche 911. On September 11, 2001, in an immediate response to the destruction of the World Trade Center, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered 3,949 planes airborne in U.S. airspace to the ground. Two hundred fifty-two jets arriving from Europe and Asia were redirected and were stuck in small Canadian airports north of the U.S. border for several days.2 "As the system crawled back to life on Thursday, Americans knew getting on an airplane would never be the same again."3 By contrast, the name for the admirable logistical operation with which the FAA cleared the sky, historic now as well, had to be borrowed from a scenario that in 2001 had already been outdated for more than ten years: SCATANA, an operation last simulated during the Cold War.4 What had threatened normality on September 11 could no longer be grasped in terms of enemy states.5 What is Porsche 911? "The 911 is all set up and ready to roll. . . . I don't really want to see a stop light when I leave metro NY."6 Porsche 911: a German high-tech vehicle, one of the most famous luxury cars in the world, a collective symbol of Western civilization,7 a prominent metaphor of cultural self-description. A racing car for everyday streets. Porsche 911 is the ultimate in-joke of the terrorists involved in the attacks that murdered 3021 people (2792 of them in New York City) [End Page 3] within one hour and twenty minutes, and it marks their ultimate fantasy. Why should Arab terrorists fantasize their last (suicidal) ride as a Porsche ride? First of all, of course, the name incorporates the date of the attack. It is a dated projectile, a bullet with a name on it. At the same time, it appropriates one of their enemy's most fetishized objects8 and turns it against them. The enemy's energy is the terrorists' now. In future times, the enemy's status symbol will have the terrorists' name on it.9 And from now on, Porsche 911 must also be read as "Porsche: HELP!" The Porsche 911 is the epitome of both high expense and high-tech standards. It has a reputation for perfection down to the last detail. Designed in Germany, its import to the United States was a success. Moreover, it belongs to our age: first built in 1956, introduced to the public in 1963, and available ever since,10 the Porsche 911 is more or less as old as the terrorists.11 It is a generational vehicle. We grew up with it—in Germany, my very first set of trading cards included a Porsche 911. Because the Hamburg cell played a leadership role within the Al Qaeda group, the highly ironic code word thus specifies a particular local/global point of departure. But there is more to it. The name for the last trip also expresses a fascination the terrorists and their targets shared, a fascination based on Western values. As a code word, Porsche 911 centered the internal communications of the group since February 2001, the beginning of the "hot phase." It is a word that at first glance serves to guarantee the clear distinction between inside and outside, between people who know the code and share the joke and those who don't. Like most code words, it therefore had to mimic at least some of the features of the "real thing" that it tried to conceal. The members of the Hamburg cell were longtime students of urban planning and electronic engineering at the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg. The series of substitutions, "Porsche to Boeing to Missile to BANG," narrates the fantasy of one's self emerging as a phallic techno-body, as something that has enough power and fuel to throw itself at the symbols of...