Seven Years
It's been seven years since I saw, live on television, a disaster that changed the world. It panicked the nations, shook the markets, and made rubbish of the Manhattan skyline. I had been listening to an evening rock concert with the Argonaut on the World Trade Centre plaza the year before; I would not be back till 2004.
We watched in horror as the first plane's hit was replayed. And while we were watching that, a second plane, laden with fuel and passengers, smashed into the building. Then the towers fell, like a demolition that had gone badly wrong in perfect time.
We heard more about the other targets and the other planes later. Around the world, many people believed, but did not say, that the Americans deserved it. The problem then, as it is now, was that American economic power and arrogance was perceived to be the yoke across the neck of the developing world. In the West, most people were branded traitors and worse for saying anything like that.
Nothing can condone the mass murder of thousands, wherever it is done. But the terror of realising that a mode of transport is a lethal weapon is matched only by the statistics that say the car is the most lethal weapon of all. Nothing can make you think it was ever right to destroy the towers with the people in them and some just outside them. But many things can make people bitter enough to think that it was adequate payback.
When I went back to NYC in 2004, people were more friendly and less abrasive. They were still Noo Yawkers. But they actually bothered with the rest of us. Things had changed, the world had moved.
Now, in the world of 2008, America has its quadrennial choice to make again.
What is change? Who is change? Do we really want it? Yes, we do? Or will the Americans raise that son of Cain to highest office, a Nimrod come to judgement?
We watched in horror as the first plane's hit was replayed. And while we were watching that, a second plane, laden with fuel and passengers, smashed into the building. Then the towers fell, like a demolition that had gone badly wrong in perfect time.
We heard more about the other targets and the other planes later. Around the world, many people believed, but did not say, that the Americans deserved it. The problem then, as it is now, was that American economic power and arrogance was perceived to be the yoke across the neck of the developing world. In the West, most people were branded traitors and worse for saying anything like that.
Nothing can condone the mass murder of thousands, wherever it is done. But the terror of realising that a mode of transport is a lethal weapon is matched only by the statistics that say the car is the most lethal weapon of all. Nothing can make you think it was ever right to destroy the towers with the people in them and some just outside them. But many things can make people bitter enough to think that it was adequate payback.
When I went back to NYC in 2004, people were more friendly and less abrasive. They were still Noo Yawkers. But they actually bothered with the rest of us. Things had changed, the world had moved.
Now, in the world of 2008, America has its quadrennial choice to make again.
What is change? Who is change? Do we really want it? Yes, we do? Or will the Americans raise that son of Cain to highest office, a Nimrod come to judgement?
Labels: Remembrance
etched with acid at 6:56:00 pm
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