By Orazio Albanese
September 11, 2001. One of the most serious terrorist attacks in history destroyed New York’s Twin Towers and claimed thousands of lives. Twenty-five years on from that day, when the Western world was shaken by an overwhelming wave of grief, the dead and injured are being remembered and the history of that tragic moment revisited — the moment when the United States was struck at its heart by the Islamist terrorist organisation al-Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden.
Beyond the outrage and grief provoked by the attacks, there was a political reality that was harder to ignore: for the first time, Americans experienced on their own soil what war actually means. It was a different kind of war from the conventional conflicts they had known — a terrorist war, fought not between states but between an Arab-Islamist paramilitary organisation and the United States.
It was, unquestionably, a criminal act. But so too are the indiscriminate bombardments of civilian populations that take place during conventional wars — wars that, until then, the United States had always fought far from home.
AFTER SEPTEMBER 11, EVERYTHING CARRIED ON AS BEFORE
At the time, although the nature of the attack was unprecedented, it seemed reasonable to imagine that Americans, having experienced such violence first-hand, might change course. Perhaps they would stop fuelling conflicts in one corner of the world after another, having learned through the wound inflicted on September 11 that wars fought thousands of miles away may look epic or heroic — particularly on a television screen — but invariably bring pain, death and destruction.
Instead, it is striking that this realisation never took hold.
Over the past 25 years, the Americans have continued to light fires around the world. And even as these words are being written, one could almost wager that somewhere they are bombing something — or someone.
