9/11 @ 2011

They say we can all remember what we were doing when we first heard of 9/11.

Interesting that. I wonder what else happened that day. Families lost loved ones. People lost love. Others found it. Some died noticed and others without notice. Some died from preventable causes of diseases easily cured, and of hunger and thirst. (What happened in Darfur that day I wonder.)

But the event that defines the day was the four-part scene in the US.

In itself just another death scene. Perhaps no other single event that day took as many lives as were lost in New York’s World Trade Centre. More (many more) died elsewhere but that’s the one we remember. Why? The intentionality. The originality of this edition of asymmetrical warfare. The graphic images. (Think of that man in the white coat falling through the air.) The sheer randomness of those who died and those who missed an appointment with their Creator.

However, of all the deaths that day, those are the ones we remember. Ten years on we can say it was a day that changed the world. The first mainland attack on the US that shattered it’s self-confidence. A trigger in the path to two Gulf Wars and to the endless Afghan campaign. The day gains its significance as much as from what followed as what happened.

I have been in the US several times since 9/11. In recent years I notice a diminishing confidence in American ‘can do’. The ‘audacity of hope’ has yielded to the collapse of hope. Grim sullenness is omnipresent about the economy, America’s place in the world and its sense of identity. Will the US be the same again?

I went to New York this June and caught a ferry out to the Statue of Liberty. It was a glorious summer day with blue sky, puffy clouds and green grass making for peaceful pleasantry. It was inspiring to see the statue close up, read the inscriptions and consider how this had been a place of hope for so many. They craved the new land in which to carve new liberties. It was, however, poignant to turn and gaze across the water to lower Manhattan and that empty space.

Whither liberty?

Wither liberty?