I wrote this column for "The Drive Magazine" Issue 10, October 2001.
Let us remember that day, the victims, and the loss. We need to reflect upon the past, and have continued hope for a future of peace. xo vagi
"The Aftermath of the Tragedy"
On Monday September 17th (2001) I spent four hours in my car, not moving, just waiting for a glimpse of the custom booths on the U.S. side of the Windsor/Detroit tunnel. There was a reason why I had to sit for so long; listening to the few c.d.’s in my car and drinking lukewarm coffee.
American Airlines flight #11, United Airlines flight #175 and American Airlines flight # 77 crashed into specific “targets” in a horrific act of terrorism. All passengers and crew died. My colleagues were all affected, as we huddled around a portable black and white television brought in so we could watch with
disbelief and anguish the day's events. The Oklahoma bombing is nothing in comparison to this. Pearl Harbour itself cannot mirror the destruction and fear instilled on this 11th day of September 2001.
Why do the innocent have to suffer at the hands of an organization so evil? Is Osama bin Laden the Hitler of the millennium? In an e-mail statement forwarded to me, Tamin Ansary writes, “When you think bin Laden, think Hitler.”
I do believe that suffering and poverty are the soil in which terrorism grows.
bin Laden and his cohorts want to bait us into creating more such soil.
The Afghans have suffered war and tyranny since 330 BC when Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire and defeated the last dynasty that ruled. Modern day Afghanistan has endured the invasion of the Soviet forces in 1979 and many anti-government factions were formed. The guerrilla forces were bank
rolled by the Americans (as well by Saudi Arabia, Iran and China) and in 1986 the U.S. supplied the Afghan rebels (many based in Pakistan) with Stinger missiles. Mikhail Gorbochev ended the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and the final troops left in February of 1989.
Previously in May of 1988, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the USSR and the United States signed agreements to end all foreign assistance and intervention. Afghanistan was left on its own; the rebels continued their own civil war.The rebel group the Taliban (supported by bin Laden) began in 1994 and their mission was to put a halt to the civil unrest and impose strict orthodox Islamic law. Since the late 1990’s, the Taliban has controlled most of Afghanistan, bankrolled, no doubt by bin Laden, a rich Saudi Arabian who is rumored to be the man behind the terrorist bombings of the U.S. Embassies in 1998 in Kenya and Tanzania. The U.S. retaliated by launching missiles at suspected terrorist training camps. How can the U.S. gain revenge now?
New York Senator, Charles Schumer stated, “They hate us for our freedom... We don’t take anything on our knees. We’re not going to take this.”
The Globe and Mail on Saturday September 29th (2001) ran an article confirming the presence of U.S. and British Special Forces troops in Afghanistan. President Bush in the article commented, “there may
or may not be a conventional military component to the mission,... the American people won’t be able to see what we're doing.”
This is not Saving Private Ryan. There is no glory on the battlefield in our modern age of technology and nuclear weapons. My uncle was a tank commander in WW II and would love to retell his stories of drunken nights and camaraderie while he was stationed overseas, I look at his picture taken in 1942 and know that the soldier in this war will not be telling the same stories.
The media has exposed to the world the sights and sounds of that Tuesday in September and not one of us will ever be able to erase in our mind people dropping from the sky to their death on the Manhattan streets below.
Is bombing Afghanistan the answer?
Will the American people retaliate?
As said by Schumer, “We’re not going to take this.”
Kill more innocent people? What will that solve?
Nothing.
Hunting down Osama bin Laden execution style will simply create an opening for another to take his place. The usual game of soldiers on one side of the battlefield aiming for the soldiers on the other side does not work anymore.
Robert Wright, a writer and scholar at the University of Pennsylvania shares my opinion, he states, “After all, a conventional war - a conflict between states or groups of states - is pretty straightforward. There is a clear-cut objective (control the other guy’s territory) and a clear-cut methodology (kill the other guy’soldiers)"
There are no soldiers, no uniforms to recognize the good guys versus the bad guys. This is a war that we will not see and it cannot be seen. It has changed forever the make-up of modern civilization and the global
relationships that countries share. Life must continue and more acts of terror will happen as history has shown us in Ireland alone with the British forces and the IRA. There will be innocent people killed, but hopefully, this will bring the world as we do know it today closer together and into one.
John Ashcroft, American Attorney General shares a similar view that retaliation will only cause more bloodshed and more acts of terrorism.
The war of the millennium, has, I am afraid begun.
