Ten years ago Channel Nine was playing show shuffle with the wonderful ‘The West Wing’ and consigned it to 11.oo on Tuesday nights. I’d set the video to record it as usual and went off to bed for my usual battle with attempted sleep. I was listening to Tony Delroy on ABC Radio to while away the time until I dropped off. News came through of something going awry in New York. As the story of the ‘light plane’ crashing into one of the towers at the World Trade Center I got up to see if anything was on the tele.
By the time I got up there was Jim Waley on the screen looking bewildered but reporting on what would develop over the hours as a story surreal and unimaginable. The irony was that a tv series about the machinations of the US Presidency and Government was interrupted by news that would affect that very institution at its core.
Like most people I was transfixed by what I saw on the screens or was hearing on the radio. It simply couldn’t be real could it. At what point was Steven Spielberg or Martin Scorsese going to walk into frame and explain how the CGI effects were done? Sadly, ultimately it wasn’t too be and what we were actually seeing (‘processing’) was a tragedy unfolding for a city, a nation, a world but most importantly, most deeply thousands of families and friends, workmates and observers.
I remember the next day at work felt as though in slow motion. You knew some people just wanted to talk about it, but where to start and it was clear others hadn’t come to terms with it all or didn’t want to go there. There was fear – what’s next, are we safe- there was hatred and there was absolute, unadulterated sadness.
Ten years on I wonder whether we missed opportunities, how well and mature the response was, if we reacted rather than acted well and what was lost that day in the streets of Manhattan, the field of Pennsylvania and the corridors of the Pentagon.
The invasion of Afghanistan may have been just but has it been successful? The Iraq bombardment was neither just nor worthy of countries attempting to prove they were on the side of ‘right’ or the good guys. Muslims were vilified, either directly or by implication and some were even physically attacked which shames us all. I have yet to see proof that Bin Laden engineered or ordered the attacks but I have no doubt it was done in his name. But that was Bin Laden not the religion and we ought to think a bit more about the difference sometimes and what it says about us if we act from a point of ignorance and hate rather than pause and think.
I don’t believe the world is a better place today than it was ten years ago but it is certainly different. September 11th 2001 allowed governments, including our own, to introduce vile laws, unfair and unreasonable sanctions against its own people. Security measures are often extreme and would shame repressive regimes – especially the ones were decry for their human rights abuses. It led to Guantanamo being a focal point of unspeakable acts and the dispensing of fundamental rights to a fair trial and basic justice. ‘The worst of the worst’ were supposed to be in there and yet there have been only one or two trials and the majority of those imprisoned have been released and most of those live back in their communities harmless and productive. So much bad was done in our names by our governments and the coalition of the all too willing; so much was done to enforce the negative image of the West rather than claiming the high moral ground and leading by example to say ‘this is the way a decent, just and free world works’. We missed the opportunity to bring our ‘enemies’ into the conversation and show through our actions that we wouldn’t reach for the gun but we’d say ‘enough’ and work through it together. It could have been done through the law, it could have been done by isolating the wrongdoers so that their followers would lose faith in them and it could have been done by getting on with our lives, enhancing our rights and treasuring our liberties.
I am angry that nearly 3000 people were taken from us on that day and I continue to be angry that hundreds of thousands more have died since in Afghanistan and Iraq and through other terrorist attacks. What stories that might have had, what history they might have made, what a world this could have been. My world, my history, they would have added to that and how dare any mindless, vile, evil and hateful act take that from me, from any of us.
Teach your children well, cherish yourselves and have a good heart.
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