Anniversary

[poliphilo]

I've just looked at the date.

Oh my- 9/11!

Why wasn't I apprised of this? Why weren't the papers full of commemorative stuff?

I guess because we've moved on. We have Iraq to worry about. Katrina has changed the paradigm just as the attack on the twin towers once did.

This is a fast-moving century.

We're packing more history into the available time than we ever did before.

Comments

Re: we are healed

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid you're right.

9/11 has become an excuse, a fig-leaf. Every time an American does something bad or questionable 9/11 is raked up to justify it.

9/11 was a horrible thing, but not uniquely horrible. Most nations round the world have experienced something comparable in living memory. Many have suffered far worse.

The people of Iraq for instance.

Britain has been luckier than most, but we too have had to deal with terror. In the 1940s the Luftwaffe had a go at us. In the 70s, 80s and 90s we suffered from a low-level IRA bombing campaign. My own city, Manchester, had its heart ripped out by a bomb. Luckily no-one was killed. We shrugged and rebuilt. Earlier this year London was bombed by Muslim fanatics stirred up by Bush and Blair's foreign policy.

9/11 was when America ceased to be an island continent and got initiated into that condition of vulnerability and fear that the rest of us accept as everyday reality.

Re: we are healed

[philtration.livejournal.com]

The fact that you accept the condition of vulnerability and fear as everyday reality is strange and sad.

Re: we are healed

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Well, most of the time I push them to the back of my mind.

But the fact is that terrorism of the kind we're mostly talking about here- which stems from small scattered cells and not from nation states- is very hard to defend against.

Re: we are healed

[philtration.livejournal.com]

True, but I refuse to live in fear in my own home. I can be cautious, aware or even suspicious but I am not afraid.