The difference a day made

We sat in the garden today, just one of those perfect Indian summer days we sometimes have. The sky was blue, the air still. The prattling on the radio was turned off. Music played nearby. The coffee brewed. Just a perfect day.

And the sky? It was the same clear blue that was above and around the World Trade Center on September 11 last year.

I was in the air myself when the planes struck, but an ocean away. I took off in the 20th century, you could say, and landed in the 21st. From innocence to worldliness, from hope in Dublin and into confusion and fear in London, rumour and rumour squared, that a plane had been hijacked over France and was headed our way. Canary Wharf and the City were evacuated. Anything was possible.

But, that was then. So much has happened since.

There was the war against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda to install a new, though not necessarily better, regime in Afghanistan. There’s the increased danger faced by anyone who might be taken for an American in the more Islamic parts of the world. By way of example, there is the low-intensity operations being carried out in Pakistan against Christian churches and schools. And of course, there’s all the hassle we now face in travelling by air, as anyone who’s had a nail file removed from his or her hand baggage will testify.

On the big scale there’s the economy. As we are hearing in dribs and drabs, the attack on the twin towers did for the Celtic Tiger. It also gave the capitalist system a right jolt, an unexpected bonus for Osama bin Laden. Of course, capitalist leaders themselves did the most damage, what with their corruption, dubious accounting and self-interested share bonuses. But still...

I search for an appropriate analogy for the war between global capitalism, in the guise of the USA, and global terrorist Islam, presently in the guise of Al-Qaeda. They are like two sluggers beating the shit out of each other. You’d let them at it except they keep climbing out of the ring to knock stars and bars out of the audience as well – that is to say, you and I.

And that’s the trouble with wars, whether on autocracy, as in Serbia, or terrorism. It’s all very selective and the moral high ground is seized by those who control the media. The idea that the war on terror is now segueing into a war on Iraqi children is untenable. But it’s out there.

Of course, the Americans already had their go at Iraq 12 years ago, and they failed to complete the job. In fact, the view at the time was that on the whole it was better to leave Saddam in place because if he was taken out there would be a vacuum that could be filled by something worse! And the Americans abandoned the Kurds to Saddam's mustard gas just like that. A despicable betrayal of a people who had simply done what the Americans and British had urged them to do: revolt!

So here we are, a year after September 11, a decade after George Bush’s father didn’t follow through on his swing. Apparently, we are all expected to sign up for a war on a people now motivated to support a hated leader by threats made from afar.

A year ago, the American regime indisputably held the moral high ground. The country had been subjected to an atrocity without parallel. There was almost universal support for the so-called war on terror, and the ousting of the primitivist plug-ugly Afghan regime.

But the war on terror has been hijacked by the Israeli government, itself descended from the terrorists of the Irgun and the Stern Gang, terrorists who thought nothing of planting bombs in market places and from whom, some believe, the Palestinians learned much. It has also become a kind of crusade against particular people, like Saddam.

Of course, if you are killed by a bolt from the blue, it matters little to you whether it was a smart bomb or a hijacked plane. Think of a wedding party in Afghanistan, the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, or the twin towers. You’re dead anyway. And the person who tries to dig you out, whether it’s an Iraqi civil defence ‘volunteer’ or a New York fireman, is a hero.

Ground Zero has been cleared, finally. And with it one of the most moving and terrifying experiences and images of this or any other era. So tell me, in what way will truth and justice and freedom be served by replicating it somewhere else?