#i cringe being called A Man (with the implication of being binary) as much as i do being called A Woman (w/ binary implications).

[sovaharbor]

no actually going on T somehow awakened me to a part of my gender that i didnt rly think existed and that's honestly so cool. like. i fully went into starting T thinking i was a Trans Man(tm) but as i'm weaning off it a year and a half later i've realized my genderfuckery is so much more fucked than i previously thought and like......no genuinely that's so cool.

#like i still consider myself transmasc? and i am very gay in a man who likes men way. but also....... #girlboy/boygirl is a dichotomy i genuinely Get now. im like ya thats meee..... #and i fuck even heavier w androgyny than i did before going on T. i LIKE the weird in-between my voice is at rn and the more it settles. #the more im getting my higher range Back in ADDITION to the lower range i have now. im jst like wow. my power. thts hot. #like i fully consider myself nonbinary. MORE dubiously than i did before. idk it's just cool yk. #like figuring things out abt myself. and all of that shit. i feel like im growing into my gender. like a tree planting roots or smthn. #it just feels very cool and beautiful and natural and i like it a lot! #i cringe being called A Man (with the implication of being binary) as much as i do being called A Woman (w/ binary implications). #but if u call me A Man or A Woman with dubious gender intent........no ya do that. please. it's hot it's sexy it's intangible much like me. #anyways i need to go to bed 🛌 #summer's text tag #might even fuck around and start usinf she/her again who knows not me

[thatsonemorbidcorvid]

This is cringe and annoying but i have nowhere else to go. I used to love going to ren faires and dressing up and having a good time, but im very gnc and always dress like a knight or a ranger or typically male things, not like a fairy or princess or w/e. Anyways, when i went last time, everyone asked for my pronouns, others called me HE, people stuttered and stopped when they saw me.

places like these used to feel like a safe space, like i could dress and be whoever i wanted w no judgement from conservatives bc i am gnc. But now i get so much judgement from liberals and it feels so isolating. I went home sobbing bc i realized that if im gnc in any space now, left or right, i will be seen as a man or trans and not just a female. Thinking about how girls are growing up today with this mindset, realizing that to be a girl means to be feminine, and the only gnc role models they have are going trans.

This is NOT cringe, and it is NOT annoying. Anon, it is completely understandable that you’d find this upsetting and infuriating. I really appreciate you sharing your experience, and you have my sympathy and solidarity.

I’ve had similar experiences, because of how I dress and my choices around my appearance, and I’ve found them upsetting too - either for myself, or for the people who don’t realise how narrow minded they’re being, in inflicting their assumptions on me.

I don’t know if you’ll relate to this, but part of what I find insulting is the implication that I must choose to look and act the way I do out of a desire to be different from who I am - that the only reason a woman would look and act the way I do is because she doesn’t like being a woman, or being herself. When in reality I love being a woman, and not conforming to gender roles and stereotypes, simultaneously. The idea that my motivation must be self-hatred instead of self-love is so reductive and patronising.

If you’re open to advice, I’ve found the key thing that helps me when I get this treatment is laughter. It is absurd, after all. The idea that my choice of what fabric to wrap around my clearly female body sends people into a tailspin reflects so poorly on them that all I can do is pity and laugh. Don’t let them change you though - just because they insist on seeing the world in a binary, doesn’t mean you have to make yourself fit their childish view. It’s good for them to be confronted with their incorrect assumptions - cognitive dissonance is a powerful thing. Sending love xx

[promiseimnotacop]

let's go about this a different way: pick your fave ten questions from the trans journey ask game and answer them!

bold of you to assume I’ve ever managed to make a decision in my life. also warning this gonna be looooooong

from this ask game

1. How did you choose your name? 

so I’ve always been interested in names and a couple years before i ever came out to anyone I asked my mum casually if there were any other names she’d considered giving me. She said that Finn or Finnbar were up there had I “”been born a boy”” and so I latched on to that. It worked pretty well for me because I wanted something that felt like an equivalent exchange for my birthname and that I didn’t associate strongly with a particular individual and I’d never had a Finn in my year at school so that was all hunky dory. Took me a while longer to figure out middle names (because my birthname has two middle names and it’s sort of a tradition on my dad’s side so I wanted to have those). 

There was a hot minute when I considered calling myself “Hugo Finn” which I’m so glad I didn’t, not that it is objectively a bad name, but because my reasoning was erm....bad. It was at a time when I had a lot of internalised self hatred/disgust and the name Hugo I first came across and associated heavily with the morally ambiguous “freak” from ASOUE. At the time I thought using a name I associated so heavily with the word freak was a way of subverting negative feelings but tbh it wasn’t. I’m so glad I didn’t tether myself that negativity. 

Also fun fact, my birthname is Shakespearean protagonist who spends most of the play dressed as a boy so again for a hot second I considered using the name she does, Fidele, but I wasn’t about having a super conspicuously uncommon name. 

For middle names in the end I went for James Lee (though nothing is legal or set in stone feedback and opinions are welcome lol). Lee came first, after the river in my village that I have a lot of postive memories associated with, outside of all the gender bullshit. The problem then became that the name “Finn Lee” would sound like/get mistaken for “Finley” and “Finnbar Lee” would sound like “Finn Barley” which would be eccentric and confusing. So it needed a buffer. In the end I went for James, partly because the first middle name of my given name is a saint, but mostly because James can be Jim and that allows for some of my childhood nicknames (im jim jam, imbo jimbo) to sort of still apply. that was a long answer to a short question lol but I spent a lot of time thinking about this because for some reason I felt  like I couldn’t come out until I’d already settled on a full name. 

3. Do you have more physical dysphoria or more social dysphoria?

I don’t think they’re separable. I have dysphoria about my body but it is because of societal perceptions of my body

8. How would you explain your gender identity to others?

depends on how savvy that person is to trans jargon honestly. The best, if clunky, label I’ve found for my gender is “transmasculine non-binary” which is two different quite broad umbrella terms lol. I like the looseness of it. For me personally, it means that the framework of masculinity and maleness is not an exact fit and does not cover some of the complexities of my gender but, in my daily interactions it is a close enough approximation and I do desire to pursue parts of what might be considered a “trans masculine” medical transition. For the most part masculine coded language (including he/him pronouns) is what suits me the best, with only a few particular exceptions. So, for most of the world I am functionally “a man” (even though that is one of the few bits of masculine coded language I don’t gel with), or maybe “a gender non-conforming man” and I am not gonna split hairs about that if we aren’t close. 

But if we’re seriously getting into a chat about gender there’s a lot more to be said. If drawing a diagram of my gender I would say I’m about 55% male, 30% “other”/third gender/maverique/genderqueer/whatever you want to call a gender identity autonomous and seperate from male or female, and 15% nothing/void. And all of that is subject to fluctuate a bit and which parts I might connect with most can be slightly contextual. I am more “a man” than anything else but also pretending to be a binary man is cutting out a significant part. 

12. Do you pass?

Let’s unpack the most Problematique question lol. Just kidding. It is important to acknowledge how “passing” or not effects daily safety/experiences but....god can we not use that word? Can that not be the agreed upon term? The implication that you are otherwise “failing”? The way in which it is incredibly difficult to apply to no-binary people? The way it does not acknowledge the nuances and the way that being read as a certain gender can be conditional? 

I prefer to use the terms “read as” because it allows for more nuanced discussion, does not have moralistic implications, puts the onus on the people viewing - not the individual being viewed and is kinda intuitive to understand.

To answer the question though? For the most part (like maybe 80% of the time) I am read as male. By no means always, and it is conditional on me following a certain level of gender conformity, but for the most part I interact with the world being addressed as a guy. As someone who is very much pre-t it seems that this alone subverts the standard “trans narrative”. Hell I was mostly read as male for a while before I ever came out. I’ve been corrected and laughed at in the women’s bathrooms. I’ve been harassed for gender nonconformity not in spite of but because I was wearing “girl’s” uniform. I have had fellow trans people assume I was a cis man (on more than one occasion) even when I introduced myself by my very much feminine birthname. I have little kids point blank refuse to believe I am “a girl”. I have had strangers confront and correct my mum for addressing me with she/her pronouns (before I was out). I have had kids yell the T slur at me (before I had begun to learn the invisible rules - which to be totally clear are bullshit -that need to be followed in order to be more consistently and unerringly read as male). I’ve been read as male occasionally in contexts where it was impossible for me to be out (near strangers on holiday whilst using birthname, new teachers and students at a school i’d been at since I was 11 and worn “girl’s uniform” until 16, etc).

It’s by no means always though. Which makes the times I don’t difficult and awkward. The technician on my course refers to me with feminine language but none of my tutors. The other day I tried out wearing eye shadow to class and I guy I bumped into later said that he hadn’t recognised me because it made me look like a girl (cringe). etc.

17. What do you do when you have to go to the bathroom in public?

haha i don’t go. I literally haven’t been to the men’s bathroom (apart from once on holiday) but also i get harassed in the women’s/get directed towards the men’s so.....here’s to hoping I don’t get a UTI lads. Literally been in a public loos once since June (not including holiday abroad) and then i nipped into the disabled one during shark week. 

19. Would you ever go stealth, and if you are stealth, why do you choose to be stealth?

so at the beginning of uni I sort of tried to go stealth to see if I could/if it was comfortable (and by go stealth I mostly mean I just didn’t openly talk about my trans-ness for a while). I didn’t wanna be known as ‘the trans one’ and so i didn’t want to introduce myself with that fact. It fucking sucked would not recommend 0/10. It’s incredibly lonely-making to try and filter your experiences and to not be able to discuss certain issues with anyone irl. 

32. How do you see yourself identifying and presenting in 5 years?

I used to do this thing when I was feeling particularly dysphoric/hopeless where I would draw myself now, and myself in 5 years time. Help construct something to look forward to, and work out what I would sincerely like to wear/express but don’t due to dysphoria. For me I really want to get to a place where I am comfortable in androgyny. I want to grow my hair out without sacrificing being read as male. I want to wear long skirts and crop tops whilst still being read and understood as a guy. I’ve done a lot of self reflection and I don’t think I can get to the place of being comfortable until I have had top surgery and I might also require T (though top surgery is really the necessity for my day to day life). Fingers crossed that will be possible and slightly healed within 5 years but given the NHS it really is not certain. 

39. Is your ideal partner also trans, or do you not have a preference?

T4T is self care. Jk. Honestly probably but that’s not to say a cis person couldn’t be my ideal partner? like at any rate it’s fucking necessary that my partner fully understands/perceives me to not be a woman. They could just be cis and no. 1 ally but in all likeliness they’re probably gonna be trans (particularly given the number trans and/or nb cuties out there)

40. How did/do you manage waiting to transition?

I’m not managing. Send help.

seriously every week I have a break down about how long NHS wait times are.

42. Do you interact with other trans people IRL?

I’m an art student in Brighton. Yes. 

(Also my sibling Sumner is an NB lesbian, and my childhood best friend Hunter is NB). 

Literally going to be one cis person in my house of six next year. 

#rockintwink

[a-gay-bloodmage]

—Sera Was Having None of This—

Pairing: Platonic Sera x Male-Genderqueer Trevelyan, Minor/Background Blackwall x Male-Genderqueer Trevelyan

Pairing Type: M/F, Minor M/M

Words: 2,425 

Warnings: Body Dysmorphia/Gender Dysphoria, Medieval European Society Has No Word for Being Genderqueer and It's Frustrating, Mallory Still Wouldn't Use They/Them Pronouns Though, He's Still Pretty Binary in all honesty, You Pry This MlM and WlW Friendship From My Cold Dead Hands

Mallory had fallen into another depression. Well, not exactly another, but today it was worse than it'd been in a few weeks.

Ink smudged on his hand from writing in such an exhausted state, not used to having to notify people whenever he'd be out of commission for a while. All the energy seemed to be drained out of him, making the simple task of penning a few letters like crossing a mountain.

He waited for the ink to dry, eyes stuck on an open wine bottle on his nightstand.

No, he told himself. Not today. Please, Maker, Mallory, not today. He rested his face on the desk, cheek pressed against the wood. As much as he ached to drink and forget, he knew that it'd make things worse like this. He didn't have anybody to hold him back from poisoning himself with every drop of alcohol in his room—and there was certainly no shortage.

After a few more minutes of lying half on the desk, he brought himself to finally pin the note to his door, careful to make sure nobody saw him do so. He looked awful today.

"Please, do not disturb me. I am not feeling well and wish to get some rest! Thank you." It was signed with a little heart.

He all but crawled his way back up the stairs, shedding the thin blanket he'd wrapped himself in as he slid into the thick covers of his bed, tucking a large pillow between his legs and against his chest as he curled up into himself. The room was dark—curtains drawn to block out the light—but it wasn't dark enough. He could still see his hands. Any view of his flesh made him sick.

He drew the covers over his head and tried to cry out his illness.

• • ♡ • •

Sera was having none of this.

She read the note and decided that if the door was locked, she was going through Mallie's window.

She jumped onto the Inquisitor's porch, trying to ignore the fact that she'd nearly fallen a few steps back. Skyhold should really do something about its loose bricks. She knocked a couple times, waiting for Mallie to open up. Surely she wouldn't ignore knocking if it came from someone willing to scale a wall to talk.

It made Sera uneasy when Mallie didn't answer. The shut doors, the curtains covering the windows, and that note on the door all spelled trouble.

"Inky! Let me in!" No response. "I'm gonna pick your lock!" No response. "Mallie! Mallie-Mallie-Mallie!" No response.

Fuck it, she thought, pulling out a pin. I'm going in. She set to picking the locked door.

Mallie didn't respond as Sera flung open her door. The light weakly spilled into the dark room, and Sera could see the lump curled up on the bed. Despite being under a layer or three of blankets, she could tell Mallie was all curled up and pathetic.

"Mallie?" Sera went to the side of her bed, leaning forward and pressing her hands into the mattress. "Come on, what's wrong?" No response. "You drunk again?" If Mallie wasn't fighting the Breach or camping in the wilderness, she was drunk. Sera tried not to think of the implications of her habit.

"No. Go away, Sera. I don't feel good." Her tone was dangerously... wet. Like she'd been crying. A lot.

"Should I go get a healer?" She bent down slightly to be on eye-level with the blankets.

"No."

"Nonsense, dummy!" She reached forward and yanked back the covers. "Come on, fresh air!" Mallie was curled around a pillow, naked except for her loose boy-breeches. It was still weird seeing her without her makeup and tits. "Ugh, you look like shit." Mallie's eyes were red-rimmed from crying, and she was covered in a nervous sweat.

"That's why I don't want anybody fucking seeing me," she hissed, yanking the covers back over her head. "Fuck off, I'm sick."

"You depressed again?" Sera asked, pulling up the covers to look at the Inquisitor again. Mallie yanked the blankets back down over her head.

"I'm always depressed."

"No you're not," Sera smiled, jumping up onto the bed. She kicked off her shoes. "You're usually all peppy and shit."

"Still depressed, idiot," Mallie groaned. "Please, just- just leave me alone to die."

"Nope, you're not dying on my watch," she said, flopping down so that she was lying on the bed, staring at where Mallie's face was beneath the blankets. "Tell me what's wrong, dummy." She pulled the blankets up just enough to peer into the darkness, her elven eyes allowing her to see Mallie's pretty blue ones.

"Nothing, now leave." She didn't yank the blankets this time.

"Nope. Staying." Sera wiggled a little closer. "Come on, tell me what's wrong, maybe cry a little, and then we can go do fun stuff. Make you less sad." Mallie's eyes were trained on the pillow she was hugging. "We can go drinking," she offered. She huffed at Mallie's lack of response. "Really? You always wanna drink, boozer."

"Sera, stop," she choked out. "I don't wanna do anything. I don't wanna go out where people'll see me. I-" She cut herself off as she began to choke on held-back tears, lasting only a few seconds before burying her face in her wet pillow and beginning to sob. "I just want to be alone..."

"Mallie, come on..." Sera hated having such a weird friend, sometimes. Not the whole sorta-lady man thing, but the fact that yesterday, Mallie was so happy. She was drinking, and laughing, and just being happy. Mallie was so much better when she was happy. But then there were days like this, where she was sobby and depressed, locking herself away and just wallowing in misery. Of course she and Beardy are in love. They're both dumb sad-sacks.

"Sera, please, I feel awful..."

"But why?" Sera frowned at her. "You're not sick, and nothing bad happened yesterday. We were, like, sealing breaches and killing demon stuff."

"Doesn't matter," she muttered, face still buried in her gross, soaked pillow. "I feel like shit because I am shit, Sera."

"No you're not," Sera laughed. It was ridiculous to think Mallie wasn't amazing.

"Yes I am!" Her muscled arms gripped her pillow even tighter, her biceps shaking with the strain. "I'm so- so stupid and I'm wrong and I'm just- just-" A scream was hardly muffled by her pillow. Sera flinched, inhaling sharply though her teeth.

"Mallie!" She instinctively reached out and grabbed Mallie's quivering shoulder. "What is wrong with you?"

"I'm what's wrong with me!" Her pretty pink nails looked like they were about to break into the pillow. "I'm so fucking wrong!" Sera didn't know what to say. "Maker, I'm so fucking wrong..."

"No, you're not," Sera repeated, soft and nervous against the heavy sadness that seemed to emanate from the Inquisitor. "Maker, Mallie, what's wrong?"

"I can't even explain it," she muttered, still not showing her face. "I just can't."

"Try then," Sera said, instinctively shrugging. "Won't know how to help 'til you tell me, stupid." Sera internally cringed at calling the crying mess an idiot again. Whoops.

"I hate this body," she said, her tears slightly quieter, but still seeming to strangle her. "It's wrong. It hurts."

Sera puffed out a cheek, squeezing one of Mallie's well-built biceps. "You're all strong and pretty and shit."

"I don't wanna be a girl," she sobbed, the sudden, odd statement throwing Sera off.

And yet you spend your whole life putting on makeup and dresses, Sera thought. Sure, Mallie had mentioned before that she wasn't all-the-way-girly, but she still liked being called a she and dressing the part. And now you tell me that's wrong?

"I don't want a cunt and I don't want real tits, but-" She groaned into her pillow. "But I want the rest and I- I don't know..."

"So you want to be a girl with man bits," Sera said, smiling at Mallie, even if the Inquisitor couldn't see her. "Why's that making you cry, Inky?"

"I just, I... I just feel wrong," she said, finally lifting her eyes from the pillow, wiping at them with shaking hands. "I probably sound absolutely mad."

"Yeah, but I always knew you were mad," Sera laughed, rolling her eyes. She could only hope that Mallie didn't think that she was being insensitive. She just wasn't someone who knew how to be mushy-gushy sweet and sentimental.

"Sera, I get that you're trying" Mallie sighed, "but you don't get it. I can't-" She looked away from Sera, messy, silky blonde hair falling every which way across her freckled face. "I don't want to be a man. I don't want to be a woman. But I want to have... stuff from both." She bit down on her lip, whining.

"Should I go get, like, Krem or something? He's all mixed up, too," Sera suggested. She really didn't really know what else to say.

Mallie shook her head. "No he's not. He knows that he's a man. I'm... lost, I guess." 

Lost was a hard word to hear coming from Mallie. Before Sera knew about what was under her skirt, the Inquisitor was one of the most fun people she'd known, even if she had her off days. She always wore a full face of makeup, pretty outfits, and her hair was always in perfect styles. She was girly and dumb and giggly, but she could drink as much as Bull. She was never lost.

Even if it wasn't a total lie, knowing that Mallie was putting on a show of happiness for everyone made Sera hurt. It hurt her to see Mallie hurt. Mallie didn't deserve to hurt.

"You're not going to get better just by lying here," Sera whispered. Her small, rough hand squeezed Mallie's shoulder. "At least get up or something. You smell like sweat and... sad." She pursed her lips. "What happened to roses and hard liquor?" She grinned when Mallie smiled, even if it was pretty damn slight.

"You're going to be the fucking death of me," she groaned, shifting around in her bed to move the pillow away from her front.

"Based on what I just witnessed, I think you're going to be the death of you."

"Eh, probably," Mallie responded, rolling her eyes. She reached over, wrapping a big, wonderfully muscled arm around Sera's thin elven body. Sera struggled against the hold half-heartedly, still not accustomed to the bare, masculine embrace, but not wanting to leave Mallie's side. The Inquisitor mumbled something out, quiet and basically inaudible.

"Huh?"

"I said thanks," she said. "I didn't think anyone would bother with this... stuff." Mallie's body was toastier than a piping hot kettle, the comforters of her bed obviously stifling in their heat. Mallie didn't seem to mind. She had often bitched about the fact that Ferelden was far colder than the Northern Marcher city she was from. "It surprises me how okay you are with all this."

"Why wouldn't I be?" She laughed. "The sky is shitting demons and I live in a tavern in a castle now! You can cry over being a not-man-not-girl-in-between-something-or-another! It's not the weirdest thing that's happened this week!" She turned over to smile at Mallie's soft, freckled face. "Did you know the friggin' tavern bard wrote a song about me? That's weird!"

"That's why you should never sleep with an artist!" Mallie was smiling. "And I heard that song, too! What was it? Her tongue tells tales of rebellion?" She was laughing, wiping away at a tear that ran down her freckles. "Fucking brilliant!" She shook her head, grinning. "Maker's tits, Sera, how do you always manage to cheer my sorry ass up?"

"I'm just that good," she said, smirking. "Your depressed butt can't handle my goodness."

"Right about that," Mallie said, poking Sera's cheek. "Thanks again, though."

"Stop with the thanks!" Sera groaned. "Friends cheer friends up. It's a friend thing! I'm just being... friendly."

"Friendly is an oddly casual word for pulling me from the dredges of self-hatred and disgust," Mallie laughed. "Most people don't bother trying to understand."

Sera shrugged. "I'm kinda nice when I wanna be," she said. "You deserve to be treated nice, you dumb, blonde bastard."

"Oh, shut it, you dumb, blonde bastard." The two of them quickly dissolved into snort-laced giggles.

They ended up just lying there, at ease with one another's presence. Sera always liked having friends who weren't touchy-feely, who gave her space but weren't obsessed with being uptight or proper. Mallie was different. She was so painfully obsessed with touching and feeling and hugging and kissing it was a miracle not everyone in the Inquisition had smudges of her makeup on them. Sera had at first been scared of it, not used to a girl wanting to cuddle her while just being friends. It was weird having a close friend pick her up in a hug and kiss her on the cheek, leaving behind bruised lungs and pink prints on her face. Closeness was weird. But Mallie was so weird that the weirdness was just another part of Mallie that Sera considered her friend.

When she looked over, she noticed that Mallie had fallen asleep, long lashes resting quietly on wet, freckled cheeks. Breathing softly and just existing as a person. Maybe she was dreaming about something. Probably her beardy boyfriend. Sera wasn't sure why someone would want to sleep with a man who smelled like a barn and had hair that probably scratched during kisses, but Mallie seemed to like him. He made her happy, so that meant he was really good. He was pretty funny, too, when he wanted to be.

"I hope you feel better," Sera whispered, smiling over at Mallie. "When you wake up, we'll bake some us cookies, alright?" She knew Mallie couldn't hear her. She didn't really care. A promise was more a promise when it was said out loud. And she really wanted to go bake cookies with Mallie—even if neither of them were good at baking. It was just fun. And they could sit on Sera's roof and throw the burnt cookies at guards and birds, too. That was always fun.

Maybe Mallie would feel better someday. Maybe she wouldn't. But, no matter what, Sera would be there. Because friends were friends no matter how weird.

#hmm yes i liked this one #purely self-indulgent fic for friendship and character building #i really never see genderqueer ocs like mallie in this fandom so.... i wanted to just explore his dysphoria in this tbh #original content #dragon age #dragon age inquisition #fanfiction #da inquisitor #mallory trevelyan #da sera #friendship #hurt/comfort #fanficiton #i myself am not genderqueer but i did do a lot of research into this and thought about a lot of my trans friends and their experiences #and the problem i have with mallie is that despite the fact that he actually does enjoy being male and the body he has it's so tangled up #with all his femininity and the gender roles of the society he lives in (''you have to masculine to be male'' bullshit) #and his love for femininity is as much a part of his existence as his appreciation for his male anatomy #and he really does enjoy being male on occasion but not to the extent where he would enjoy at all living full time as a male #he's not a trans woman but he's not cis.... he lives in an annoying grey area he can't figure out #and without his group of trans/gq/gnc friends from ansburg he's in bad shape since he has nobody who just understands what's wrong #thankfully sera's a good girl who takes a lot of shit in stride

[newstfionline]

What If America Hadn’t Done the Dumbest Things Imaginable After 9/11?

By Danny Sjursen, TomDispatch, November 29, 2017

“Of all manifestations of power, restraint impresses men most.”--Thucydides

You’ve heard the platitude that hindsight is 20/20. It’s true enough and, though I’ve been a regular skeptic about what policymakers used to call the Global War on Terror, it’s always easier to poke holes in the past than to say what you would have done. My conservative father was the first to ask me what exactly I would have suggested on September 12, 2001, and he’s pressed me to write this article for years. The supposed rub is this: under the pressure of that attack and the burden of presidential responsibility, even “liberals”--like me, I guess--would have made much the same decisions as George W. Bush and company.

Many readers may cringe at the thought, but former National Security Adviser and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has to be taken seriously when she suggests that anyone in the White House on 9/11 would inevitably have seen the world through the lens of the Bush administration. I’ve long argued that just about every Bush-era policy that followed 9/11 was an unqualified disaster. Nevertheless, it remains important to ponder the weight piled upon a president in the wake of unprecedented terror attacks. What would you have done? What follows is my best crack at that thorny question, 16 years after the fact, and with the accumulated experiences of combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Taking It Personally. 9/11 was an intimate affront to me. It hit home hard. I watched those towers in my hometown burn on televisions I could glimpse from my plebe (freshman) boxing class at West Point. My father worked across Church Street from Manhattan’s World Trade Center. Only hours later did I learn that he’d safely escaped on the last ferryboat to Staten Island. Two uncles--both New York City firemen--hopelessly dug for comrades in the rubble for weeks. Stephen, the elder of the two, identified the body of his best friend, Captain Marty Egan, just days after the attacks.

In blue-collar Staten Island neighborhoods like mine, everyone seemed to work for the city: cops, firemen, corrections officers, garbage men, transit workers. I knew several of each. My mother spent months attending wakes and funerals. Suddenly, tons of streets on the Island were being renamed for dead police and firefighters, some of whom I knew personally. Me, I continued to plod along through the typically trying life of a new cadet at West Point.

It’s embarrassing now to look back at my own immaturity. I listened in as senior cadets broke the news of war to girlfriends and fiancées, enviously hanging on every word. If only I, too, could live out the war drama I’d always longed for. Less than two years later, I found myself drunk with another uncle--and firefighter--in a New York pub on St. Patrick’s Day. This was back when an Army T-shirt or a fireman’s uniform meant a night of free drinks in that post-9/11 city. I watched the television screen covetously as President Bush delivered a final, 48-hour ultimatum to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. I inhaled, wished for a long war, and gazed at the young, attractive lead singer of the band performing in that pub. She was wearing a patron’s tied-up New York Fire Department uniform blouse with a matching cap cocked to the side. It was meant to be sexy and oh-so-paramilitary. It might seem unbelievable now, but that was still my--and largely our--world on March 17, 2003.

By the time I got my “chance” to join America’s war on terror, in October 2006, Baghdad was collapsing into chaos as civil war raged and U.S. deaths were topping 100 per month. This second lieutenant still hoped for glory, even as the war’s purpose was already slipping ever further away. I never found it (glory, that is). Not in Iraq or, years later, in Afghanistan. Sixteen years and two months on from 9/11, I’m a changed man, inhabiting a forever altered reality. Two wars, two marriages, and so many experiences later, the tragedy and the mistakes seem so obvious. Perhaps we should have known all along. But most didn’t.

How to Lose A War (Hint: Fight It!) From the beginning, the rhetoric, at least, was over the top. Three days after those towers tumbled, President George W. Bush framed the incredible scope of what he’d instantly taken to calling a “war.” As he told the crowd at a Washington national prayer service, “Our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.” From the first, it seemed evident to the president: America’s target wasn’t anything as modest as the al-Qaeda terrorist network, but rather evil itself. Looking back, this was undoubtedly the original sin. Call something--in this case, the response to the acts of a small jihadist group--a “war” and sooner or later everyone begins acting like warriors.

Within 24 hours of the attacks, the potential target list was already expanding beyond Osama bin Laden and his modest set of followers. On September 12th, President Bush commanded his national counterterror coordinator, Richard Clarke, to “see if Saddam did this... look into Iraq, Saddam.” That night, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told the president and the entire cabinet, “You know, we’ve got to do Iraq... There just aren’t enough targets in Afghanistan... We need to bomb something else to prove that we’re, you know, big and strong...”

Nonetheless, Afghanistan--and its Taliban rulers--became the first military target. Bombs were dropped and commandos infiltrated. CIA spooks distributed briefcases of cash to allied warlords and eventually city after city fell. Sure, Osama bin Laden escaped and many of the Taliban’s foot soldiers simply faded away, but it was still one hell of a lightning campaign. Expected to be brief, it was given the bold name Operation Enduring Freedom and, to listen to the rhetoric of the day, it revolutionized warfare. Only it didn’t, of course. Instead, the focus was soon lost, other priorities (Iraq!) sucked the resources away, venal warlords reigned, an insurgency developed, and... and 16 years later, American troop levels are once again increasing there.

Over the days, the months, and then the years that followed, the boundaries of the Global War on Terror both hardened and expanded. In his January 2002 State of the Union address, President Bush ominously included Iraq, along with Iran and North Korea (though he left out “liberated” Afghanistan), in what he called “an axis of evil.” Who cared, by then, that none of those countries had had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks? In a flash the president conflated all three in the public mind, ultimately constructing a self-fulfilling prophecy. Saddam would be toppled and Iraq occupied 15 months later and, had it not been for the ensuing chaos, Iran and North Korea might have been next. Unsurprisingly, both countries intensified their bellicosity and grew all the more interested in nuclear weapons programs.

So much followed the 9/11 attacks that it’s no small thing to sum up: the Patriot Act, warrantless domestic wiretapping, Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, a Taliban resurgence, an Iraqi civil war, drones as global assassins, the Arab Spring, the overthrow of Libyan autocrat Muammar Gaddafi and the collapse of his country, the Syrian bloodbath, the worst refugee crisis since World War II, and that’s just to begin a list.

In short, U.S. policies have left the Middle East in chaos: perhaps a million dead, Iran empowered, and radical Islamists resurgent. Meanwhile, this country has become a garrison state, forever at war, its military budget doubled, its populace seemingly indifferent, and its warrior caste shattered--physically and mentally. Sixteen years have passed and Washington is no closer to its goal (whatever that was). Retired general David Petraeus, our nation’s prodigal “hero,” has now ominously labeled the Afghan War (and by implication the rest of the war on terror) a “generational struggle.”

Few, to be honest, even remember the purpose of it all. Keep in mind that Army recruits today were perhaps two years old on 9/11.

Lost Opportunities. It didn’t have to be this way. Nothing about it was predetermined. Much of the necessary information--certainly the warning signs of what was going to happen that September 11th--were already there. If, that is, one cared to look. History is contingent, human beings have agency, and events result from innumerable individual decisions. The CIA, the FBI, and even the Bush administration knew (or should have known, anyway) that an attack of some sort was coming.

As the 9/11 commission report painfully detailed, none of those agencies collaborated in a meaningful way when it came to preventing that day’s attacks. Still, there were warnings ignored and voices in the dark. When Richard Clarke, counterterror czar and a Clinton administration holdover, requested through official channels to deliver an emergency briefing for Bush’s key foreign policy officials, it took four months just to arrange an audience with their deputies. Four more months elapsed before President Bush received a briefing titled, “Bin Laden determined to strike the U.S.” Unimpressed, Bush quickly responded to the briefer: “All right... you’ve covered your ass now.”

Barely more than a month later, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were burning.

Whatever else it did, 9/11 presented the United States with an opportunity, a Robert Frost-like fork in a divergent path. And we Americans promptly took the road most traveled: militarism, war, vengeance--the easy wrong path. A broad war, waged against a noun, “terror,” a “global” conflict that, from its first moments, looked suspiciously binary: Western versus Islamic (despite Bush’s pleas to the contrary). In the process, al-Qaeda’s (and then ISIS’s) narratives were bolstered.

There was--there always is--another path. Imagine if President Bush and his foreign policy team had paused, taken a breath, and demonstrated some humility and restraint before plunging the country into what would indeed become a war or set of wars. There were certainly questions begging to be asked and answered that never received a proper hearing. Why did al-Qaeda attack us? Was there any merit in their grievances? How did bin Laden want us to respond and how could we have avoided just such a path? Finally, which were the best tools and tactics to respond with? Let’s consider these questions and imagine an alternative response.

Why They (Really) Hated Us. Americans and their government were inclined to accept the most simplistic explanation for the terror attacks of 9/11. As George W. Bush would assure us all, Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda just “hate us for our freedoms.” The end.

Something about the guilelessness of that explanation, which was the commonplace one of that moment, never quite seemed right. Human motivations and actions are almost always more complex, more multifaceted, less simpleminded than that. While Bush boiled it all down to “Islamic” fundamentalism, even a cursory look at bin Laden’s written declaration of “war”--or as he called it, jihad--demonstrates that his actual focus was far more secular and less explicitly religious than was suggested at the time. Couched between Koranic verses, bin Laden listed three all-too-worldly grievances with America:

* The U.S. military had occupied bases in the vicinity of Saudi Arabia’s holy sites of Mecca and Medina. (Well... that had indeed been the case, at least since 1990, if not earlier.)

* U.S.-imposed sanctions on Iraq had caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children. (This was, in fact, a reality that even Secretary of State Madeleine Albright awkwardly acknowledged.)

* America’s leaders had long favored Israeli interests to the detriment of Palestinian wellbeing or national aspirations. (A bit simplistic, but true enough. One could, in fact, stock several bookshelves with respected works substantiating bin Laden’s claim on this point.)

None of this faintly justified the mass murder of civilians in New York and Washington. Nonetheless, at that moment, an honest analysis of an adversary’s motives would have been prudent. It might have warned us of the political landscape that bin Laden was beckoning us--in his own bloody, apocalyptic fashion--to enter. In addition, as journalist Stephen Glain astutely observed, “By obscuring the real motives behind the attacks, Bush relieved the U.S. government of any responsibility for them.” This was a fatal error. While the overwhelming majority of Arabs and Muslims worldwide did not approve of bin Laden’s methods or his theology, much of his critique of Washington’s Middle Eastern policies was widely shared in the region.

Avoiding the Al-Qaeda Script. Al-Qaeda’s leadership knew this perfectly well and they dangled it (and their suicidal acts) as a kind of bait, yearning for the sort of conventional U.S. military response that they knew would further inflame the Greater Middle East. Even in 1996, when journalist Abdul Bari Atwan interviewed bin Laden, the Saudi militant had expressed the desire to “bring the Americans into a fight on Muslim soil.” Only then, bin Laden surmised, could al-Qaeda buttress its argument, win converts from the apathetic Muslim masses, and--hopefully--bankrupt the United States in the bargain.

Suppose, for a moment, that President Bush had taken the high road, a path of restraint focused on twin tracks. First, he might have addressed broadly-shared Arab grievances, pledging a more balanced approach to the question of Israel and Palestine in his still-fresh administration, tailoring Iraq’s sanctions to target Saddam and his cronies rather than innocent citizens, and vowing to review the necessity of military bases so close to Mecca and Medina (or even the necessity of so many of the American bases that littered the region). He could have followed that with lethal, precise, targeted action by America’s intelligence, law enforcement, and Special Operations forces to hunt down and kill or capture the men actually responsible for 9/11, al-Qaeda’s leadership.

This manhunt needed to be ferocious yet measured in order to avoid the very quagmires that, 16 years later, we all know so well. Allies and adversaries would have had to be consulted and cautioned. Remember that, although al-Qaeda was disciplined and effective, on September 12, 2001, it remained diminutive in size and utterly marginal in its regional support. Dismantling its networks and bringing the true criminals of that day to justice never required remaking distant societies or occupying fragile nation-states with conventional military forces.

And keep in mind that such thinking about the situation isn’t purely retrospective. Take the Nation magazine’s Jonathan Schell. That October, after the invasion of Afghanistan had begun, appearing on the Charlie Rose show he called for “police work” and “commando raids,” but not war. He then prophetically observed:

“I think the question doesn’t revolve so much around the justification for war but about its wisdom, and I know that’s the question for me. I know that, from my point of view, terrorism is chiefly a political issue and secondarily a police issue and then, only in a very minor way, can it be addressed by military means and I think that, on the contrary, the war we’re fighting now will tend to worsen our problems. The question I ask myself is, at the end of the day, do you have more terrorists or do you have fewer and I think... today, right now, it looks like there are going to be more.”

Of course, at the time, just about no one in this country was listening to such voices.

A prudent president might also have learned from his father. Just as George H.W. Bush had meticulously constructed a broad international coalition, including all-important Arab states, to dislodge Saddam Hussein’s military from Kuwait in the Persian Gulf War, George W. Bush could have harnessed widespread international sympathy after the 9/11 attacks to blaze a judicious path. A new, broad, U.N.-backed coalition, which ought to have included several Muslim-majority nations, could have shared intelligence, rooted out jihadis (who represented a serious threat to most secular Arab regimes), and ultimately discredited al-Qaeda, dismantling its networks and bringing bin Laden himself to justice.

The Right Tools. Global sympathy--Russian President Vladimir Putin was the first world leader to call George Bush after the attacks--is as rare as it is fleeting. So that moment represented a singular and singularly squandered opportunity. The United States could have led a massive international effort, emphasizing law enforcement, not warfare, and including increased humanitarian aid, U.N.-sponsored peacekeeping operations, and a commitment to live America’s purported values by scrupulously avoiding crimes like torture and civilian casualties. Of course, it wouldn’t have been perfect--complex operations seldom are--but sober strategy demanded a rigorous effort.

One more imperative for the new campaign against al-Qaeda would have been garnering broad support and a legal sanction from Congress and the American people. Two weeks after 9/11, President Bush vapidly suggested instead that this country’s citizens should respond by getting in airplanes again and “enjoy[ing] America’s great destination spots. Get down to Disney World in Florida.” Instead, he might have steeled the population for a tough fight and inspired a new era of public service. Think: John F. Kennedy. Think: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” Bush might have requested from Congress a narrow, targeted authorization for the use of military force rather than the rushed, expansive, open-ended sanction he actually demanded and received and that is still being used two administrations later to justify any acts against any group or country across the Greater Middle East and Africa.

He could have followed this with the presentation of a new National Service Act, rallying the young and incentivizing military or Peace Corps enlistment, infrastructure improvement, inner-city teaching, and various other kinds of public service. Imagine a new “Greatest Generation,” pulling together in a time of crisis. This, in retrospect, was a real opportunity. What a pity that it never came to pass.

It’s hard to know, of course, how such an alternate path might have played out, but honestly it would have been difficult to do worse. The U.S. remains stuck, spinning its wheels in regional conflicts and feeling no safer. The number of worldwide terrorist incidents has exploded since 2001. New Islamist groups were formed in response to U.S. actions and counteractions and they continue to spread without an end in sight.

I don’t know if there will be a next time, a chance to do it right. But should new threats emerge, more devastating attacks be endured, there simply has to be a better way, though the odds that President Donald Trump and his generals will find it are, honestly, next to nil.

Complex ideological threats sometimes demand counterintuitive responses. In such moments, hard as it may be to imagine, rational calculations should rise above the kneejerk emotional responses. True leaders step up and weather criticism in times of crisis. So next time, Americans would do well to set aside comforting illusions and take the world as it is, not as we imagine or wish it to be. The future may depend on it.

Major Danny Sjursen is a U.S. Army strategist and former history instructor at West Point. He served tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has written a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War, Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge.

#9/11 #Iraq War #War on Terror #military intervention