Its hard to believe that five years have passed since the day when, like millions of others around the world, I stood transfixed in horror as the television brought us pictures of the terrorist attacks on the United States. The first we heard was a report of a plane crash in NYC involving the World Trade Center. Knowing the geography of New York and the proximity of both JFK and Newark airports to Manhattan my first thought was of some terrible accident; however, the impact of the second plane made it clear that there was horrific intent behind the catastrophe.
I was in New York City a couple of months ago and went to Ground Zero. As yet (and unlike, say, the site of the Oklahoma City bombing) there is no real sense of this being a memorial of any kind. A building site the size of a city block, surrounded by high wire fencing, with a very odd mix of tourists taking pictures of each other and street vendors trying to sell tacky souvenirs.
I'm intrigued - if somewhat repelled - by the aspect of the human psyche that apparently makes large numbers of people espouse ever more bizarre conspiracy theories regarding the events of 9/11/01. It seems to be some kind of collective denial that renders people incapable of accepting that aircraft were hijacked in the skies over the eastern USA and flown, by their hijackers, into the Twin Towers and into the Pentagon, and that those hijackers did so based on a twisted, deviant form of Islam coupled with rabid anti-Americanism. Do people go from the genuine bewilderment of "how could this happen" to wanting to bring blame onto their society or their government? It saddens me that, on this of all days, that I continue to read and hear those wanting to blame the actions of the US for what happened in New York and in Washington. Do people really think that changes in the US's foreign policy towards Israel, Iraq, or Saudi Arabia would have neutralized the threat of Al Queda (who were attacking US lives and interests for many years before 9/11, much less before military interventions in Afghanistan or Iraq)?
We are, sadly, in a world where the Communism vs Capitalism confrontations of the cold war are being replaced by a very different form of conflict. I don't recall who coined the phrase (although I suspect that I first encountered it between GWB's election in 2000 and the events of 9/11), but it seems frighteningly true that the growth of the Christian right / neo-conservative movement in the US and the increased radicalism of Moslem populations around the world seems to be pitting "one community that never had a Renaissance against another than wishes it had never had one". It really does depress me that so many seem all too willing to deny or ignore the most important discoveries of the human species: that it is possible for individuals to reach decisions about their actions based on the application of rational thought to their experiences of the world around them, without resort to superstitution or irrational "authority".