New York remembers
As I write, the city that never sleeps is waking up. Manhattan commuters will soon begin their journey to work, just as they did five years ago. Flags across America will fly at half-mast. Ten thousand 9/11 orphans will think about their lost parents. Silence will be kept at the exact time of the first attack on the Twin Towers. And people what they were doing when they realised what was happening. I, like many others, watched the second plane crash into the south tower live on television, just seventeen minutes after the north tower had been attacked. At that point, we all knew this was not a tragic accident, but a co-ordinated terrorist action -- perhaps even an act of war.
Today's describes the Ground Zero site as a "hole in the city's heart". Five years on, the rebuilding work continues, but the site remains "a sinkhole of good intentions" as we wait for Freedom Tower complex to appear. Three years ago, Governor Pataki promised that the Tower would be in place by the fifth anniversary of 9/11, along with new train terminals, a vast piazza, and the Wedge of Light memorial. In the words of the Times' understated lament, "None of this has come to pass."
One business leader has spoken of the "anemic pace of rebuilding" at Ground Zero; that strategic sluggishness risks becoming itself a metaphor for our struggle to come to terms with 9/11 and the still-unresolved disputes in the middle east that fuelled the attacks. New York is not the only city with a hole in its heart today.
I lived for a time in New York, and when I first arrived in that vast city I quickly learned to rely on the Twin Towers. Wherever I was, the towers of the World Trade Centre, like a compass, would point south and give me my bearings in Manhattan's urban maze. Five years after the outrage that removed them, the world is tragically still in need of a compass.
Comments
Well said. Let's hope the world wakes it to this soon.
I'm interested to see Tony Blair marking the 9/11 anniversary in Beruit. He certainly must understand how significant a resolution to the middle east crisis is for finding the compass you write about here. But does George Bush understand that?
America's got a compass all right. It has four points: north(america), south(texas), east(coast) and west(hollywood).
That's the world according to Bush.
THE WHOLE STRATEGY AFTER 9/11 HAS FAILED. THE TALIBAN ARE STILL ACTIVE IN PAKISTAN AND OTHER PLACES. AL QUAIDA ARE STILL ACTIVE IN LONDON, AMERICA, THE MIDDLE EAST, AND ELSEWHERE. SADDAM IS MAKING A MOCKERY OF THE COURTS IN HIS KANGEROO TRIAL. AND WHY IS BIN LADEN STILL ALIVE?
CLINTON MESSED IT UP FOR YEARS BEFORE BUSH - IF HE'D ACTED ON FBI AND CIA ADVICE, HE'S HAVE TAKEN OUT BIN LADEN BEFORE HE LEFT OFFICE.
THEN BUSH GOT IN AND WAS PREOCCUPIED WITH OTHER STUFF.
CONDI IS AS MUCH TO BLAME FOR WANTING TO CONTINUE A FOCUS ON EUROPE RATHER THAN THE MIDDLE EAST.
WILL IT CHANGE WHEN BUSH LEAVES OFFICE? HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE AMERICA TO WAKE UP TO THE DANGER OF APPEASEMENT.
Both the Republicans and Democrats are to blame for doing nothing. As for concentrating on Europe and the Middle East, ALL OF THE WORLD [INCLUDING THE AMERICAN CONTINENT] NEEDS EVERYBODY'S ATTENTION.
William's post doesn't mention Bush once. Yet the comments previous to this one are keen to implicate Bush with some regard to 9/11.
I hate to burst your bubble, folks, but Bush wasn't even a part of federal government when Al Qaeda mounted the first attack on the Twin Towers in 1993. He wasn't in charge when Al Qaeda was running training camps in Afghanistan, teaching young Muslim men how to kill Americans around the world. He wasn't President of the United States when bin Laden began to arrange and finance the 9/11 attacks. As last night's landmark ABC miniseries 'The Path To 9/11' showed (and as J Londsdale mentions in his comment 3 above), the Clinton administration had several opportunities to capture or kill bin Laden during the 1990's, and failed to do so, well before Bush entered the picture.
You people appear to have bought into the soundbites of the British Left with regard to Bush to such an extent that it has totally clouded your sense of fact or perspective. Your anger is instantly directed at Bush in response to this article on 9/11, when it should be directed at the terrorist network of Al Qaeda.
When did your outlook get so skewed by partisan politics?
Just to bring a bit of rationality back into this discussion - you all know in your hearts that 9/11 and most other world problems ( Norn Ireland, Cyprus, India/Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and FYRs etc. etc. ) have been caused by religious fundametalism and nationalism but human evolution will eventually rid us of this plague. Only the rational will survive in the long term but they must fight - but fight fair!!
Alan- You say "Only the rational will survive" yet you want us to be persuaded of the validity of your point by knowing "in our hearts" that it's right?
John - perhaps I should have said 'by our intellect we know'
We surely all see the similiarity between 9/11 etc. and the medieval crusades of the popes 1000 years ago - just a tick in human social evolution
John you are living in cloud cuckoo land. How can u try to exclude bush from consideration of the US response to 911? It wasn't clinton to launched a war in the wrong country.
Should Bush have attacked Saudi Arabia? - or if not what should he ( and allies) have done? maybe nothing?
What we have to do is intellectually attack the irrationality of ALL religions - and their hangers on! - but why are you all so reluctant to do that??
Change the record Alan. You sound like a fundamentalist humanist. There is good religion and bad religion, just as there is good politics and bad politics. 911 didn't happen because of religion - it happened because of a political dispute.
Jan- The point of my comment was to say that terrorists were to blame for 9/11, not George W Bush.
And anyway, you're wrong. The invasion of Iraq was not based on 9/11; it was based on the fact that Saddam was almost universally believed to be a threat to the region and had been consistently defying the UN, failing to meet the requirements of Resolution 687. War was therefore justified under Resolution 1441. 9/11 and Iraq - two different issues.
Cloud cuckoo land? I'm not really sure what you mean.
Jan- What "political dispute" do you believe 9/11 happened because of?
I am a funametalist humanist! - so what? - all religions are man made -none are good - no matter how liberal - they distort human intellect and reason and are designed to promote the power of a leader and keep the followers in order and awe, preying on the slow evolution of humans from our eariest ancestors. We need to grow up. Were the 9/11 perpatrators not hangers on to a religion wanting to be martyrs for that RELIGION - or NOT?
and it's not too long ago since we had people WANTING to be christian martyrs!
Alan,
What proof do you have that your 'reason' can be trusted - if the human brain is just the result of random mutations over billions of years of evolution?
Modern science has its roots in a Christian worldview which believes that there is order in the Universe and this allows for reliable and repeatable investigation.
Perhaps you are exhibiting as much 'faith' as those religions you are quick to reject?