The Berlin Wall fell on 9 November 1989; the Twin Towers fell on 11 September 2001. 9/11 is the European way of writing 9 November.
This prompts me to dare to put a toe in the water & record one thought which comes back to me when I think about the American 9/11: it was a brilliant plan.
In saying this I do not wish in any way shape or form to say that I approve, admire or support the cause of the attackers. I have tried to think of an alternative word, one that combines in just the right way the ideas brilliant & malign ( or malignant in the old sense of disposed to rebel against God or against constituted authority), but remain stumped.
Before September 2001 the talk was of rogue states, or terrorist attack by small dirty bombs containing chemical, nuclear or biological agents.
9/11 took two of what, to outsiders at least, seemed like attractive & cherished freedoms of America.
The first was just to be able to fly from A to B in the same casual, take it for granted way that we English took a train. I was so impressed to see this the first time I took an internal flight in the States, landing at what were still small airports with just a low concrete building for a terminal, passengers walking on without clearly having to be rich or on a cheap package holiday.
The other freedom concerns American education or training. Despite improvements over here, it has always been possible to access education more freely in America, without the need to start specialising from a very early age, or losing everything if you have temporarily to drop out along the way. Learning to fly in England is still not an easy thing to do, & the way the bombers were able to take lessons with a minimum of formality made this frustrated pilot at least feel envious.
And so that is why the word brilliant pops in to my mind. A surprise attack, which perhaps caused even more immediate physical destruction than the perpetrators had hoped for, while at the same time achieving the result of knocking the stuffing out of belief in some cherished American everyday freedoms. They took the ordinary & the everyday, not the frightening & the unknown, & turned them into weapons.
Related post
