Each of us has a defining moment in our lives that are triggered by seminal world events. My first such moment was the landing on the moon. My second such moment was the death of President Kennedy and the last of such moments was the tragedy that became known as 9/11. I can recall, with great precision, what I was doing precisely at the moment that these events occurred. I witnessed the landing on the moon huddled around the television; I was in the barber's chair for President Kennedy's assassination and I was coming out of the shower when my wife announced a "fire" at the World Trade Center. We had just, the day before, come back from Europe the day before. Friends and travel companions were caught mid flight and shunted to Costa Rica. The world was in turmoil. Stock markets were closed. Americans rallied around 9/11 in a rare sense of solidarity that is so needed today. We faced a common enemy--even though we knew little about what enemy it was we faced.
My first reaction was to find out something about militant Islam. I read several books one of which, written 10 years earlier, was a pretty accurate predictor of the violence that ensued. Since that time our lives have changed irrevocably in ways that we could not imagine in the direct aftermath of 9/11. We have consented to being X-rayed. We have no fly lists. We endure invasions of privacy that were considered impossible just 10 years ago. All in take name of security. We have collectively grown to distrust anything Muslim whether friend or foe in the same manner that we distrusted (and interred) many Japanese during World War II. We have analysed the event to death without learning much about what caused it and what will work in the future. Most of our security precautions are reactive--that is we react only after a perceived threat. Very little of it is proactive. Last night the CBC ran a documentary on the trillions of dollars that are wasted on security installations but have resulting in developing a false sense of security. The truth is that if we are to have a relatively open society there is practically no defence against a single or a small groups of attackers bent on causing violence. While that is true about actions undertaken by Muslim militants it is equally true about domestic violence that is not based in religious fanaticism. Whether it is a lunatic gunning down youth in Europe or someone who decides to take down a Congresswoman in the US, we are not immune from violence and we can do very little to prevent it.
But have we learned anything about gratuitous violence or Muslim fanaticism? Not much. Osama bin Laden has achieved much of his objectives. He has caused the US and other Western countries to spend outragious amounts of money--that they don't have--to provide a false sense of homeland security. He has caused the US and other NATO allies to fight a war that they can't afford. He has installed fear and insecurity in the hearts and minds of Western societies. The damage goes far beyond crashing two airplanes into the world trade center. We have been relatively unsuccessful in fostering a platform for moderate Islam while indulging in our own forms of religious fanaticism and political extremism. What started out as a solidarity movement has ended up with more factionalism. He have not learned a thing.
We can react to 9/11 as an isolated act of terrorism, take proper precautions, and get on with our collective lives. Or, we can react to 9/11 as a defining event that has caused collective solidarity and a political will to move on. Or, we can dissolve into collective hyprochondria that erodes our way of life. I believe that we have chosen the third option. No amount of killing of Al Qaida operatives will make or obsessions go away. In the words of the great cartoonist Walk Kelly, in his strip Pogo, "We have met the enemy and he is us".
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