[FORUM] Some September 11th thoughts

[rfmcdonald]

I first learned of the September 11th terrorist attacks through my E-mail inbox, when a correspondent mention that a plane had hit one of the World Trade Center towers, ending the note with an acerbic "Who needs terrorists when you have bad pilots?" The second E-mail from him mentioned that he saw the plane hit the second tower, and that this all had to be deliberate. Then I entered my version of the common 9/11 whirlwind: Watching the television for more news, having Dad phone from work wondering if there was a war going on, my sister mentioning when I came back that one of the towers had collapsed, going to university and hearing that the campus was being evacuated and no one paying attention, hearing talk suggesting that the number of people who died in the attack was comparable to that of the entire city of Charlottetown, trying to send E-mails but finding that the Internet wasn't working, and one solemn young woman sitting in the Modern Languages/Religious Studies lounge saying as people watched the television that the Muslims are doomed, and finally coming back home to see WTC7 collapse at suppertime. The whole day felt unreal, and incomprehensible.

What's to be said of 9/11 seven years later?

• The 9/11 terrorist attacks were planned by people who did detest the sort of cultural liberalism exemplified in many societies, and accordingly attacked the largest city of the largest and most influential country--the only global superpower, in fact--associated with this liberalism.


• At least as important as this first motive was the widely-held belief that the Untied States was always doing terrible things to Muslims and that wholesale retaliation was justifiable. That line of thinking was a rather stupid, if only because of the certainty of a massive American retaliation, unless, that is, al-Qaeda was hoping to implement of politique de pire, trying to provoke the enemy into massive strikes so as to provoke a mass uprising. That worked in Argentina, as the generals of the dirty war could doubtless tell you. Besides, the United States lent aid first to Bosnian Muslims then Kosovar Albanians.


• That said, there is some justfiable cause for non-murderous resentment, whether it's Madeleine Albright did saying that the sanctions against Iraq that led to hundreds of thousands of premature deaths among children was justifiable or the United States' excessively strong tilt in favour of Israel even in the face of the expansion of Israel's settlement program (not that Palestinians don't have issues, God knows).


• Le Monde, that day or the next, referred to the attacks as an instance of hyperterrorism. That kind of thing isn't new, since the 9/11 brand of hyperterrorism, it should be noted, has been planned before. Elements of Algeria's Groupe islamique armé planned to crash a airplane into Paris' Eiffel Tower of Paris. These Algerians wanted to launch a massive terrorist strike against the largest city of the country that had such a destructive role in Algerian history; their successors in al-Qaeda did do the same thing to the capital of the country that they were most unhappy with. The same sentiments that inspired the failed attack against Paris inspired the successful attack.


• I'm willing to bet that the sort of hyperterrorism with casualties in the thousands is going to happen again, not only in the United States but in the capitals of other powers of notes with similarly conflictual relations with other, poorer countries: Brussels, London, MOscow, Beijing ...


What do you think?