Four years down the track

It's four years since THAT day.

I must be one of the very few people in the Western World who hasn't seen those images in moving picture form. Yep, I've seen the odd still and I've seen a few seconds of footage of the collapse but I really haven't seen anywhere near all of it.

8:46 AM New York time is, on September 11th, 10:46 PM September 11th Melbourne time. And by sheerest coincidence that was one of the very few times in the last 30 years that I've gone to bed before 2 AM. I slept through the whole thing.

The next morning, Sept 12 my time but mid afternoon Sept 11 in the US, I was in the car driving to work at about 8:32 AM. In those days I listened to ABC Radio Melbourne, the Jon Faine Show. That morning it was maddening; they kept talking about what had happened in the US but would they say exactly what? Nope! Tense reports of missile activity over Kabul which seemed somehow connected with the mystery event that had happened in the US. The way it was portrayed was much the same as those couple of tense days in September 1983 just after KAL 007 was shot down by a Soviet Fighter plane. Back then I remember waking up expecting to see the nukes flying overhead; it almost came as a surprise each morning to awaken.

Eventually, maybe 20 minutes into my drive to work they got around to repeating what must have been old news to almost every Melbourne resident.

When I got into the office everyone was agog and very tired; they'd spent the entire night awake watching the broadcasts. I recall that sometime about noon or maybe 1 PM our time President Bush did a live news broadcast; everyone crowded into a small office to watch a portable TV.

We held our breath, almost certain that America would do the boots and all routine. Sighs of relief as the nukes weren't launched.

The news coverage from the US was wall to wall in Australia at the time; or so I believe. I saw very little of it. Why? Well, I was going through my own personal crisis at the time (it involved a woman) and I wasn't really in the mood to follow TV. So I missed seeing the coverage and, within a fortnight, all of that footage had dropped off the radar, soon to be replaced by embedded journalists in the invasion of Afghanistan. Tora Bora et al.

A year later it was arranged that we would all turn our lights on as we drove to work at 8:46 AM. Not the exact time of the anniversary but everyone who's driving has their lights on at 10:46 PM. I was driving to work again, just emerged from the tunnel under the Yarra River. The radio station I was listening to was doing the countdown; I assume the others were also because suddenly everyone turned their lighs on. A moving moment. More moving later that evening as we listened to the names of the dead recited at ground zero.

We even understood the why of the invasion of Afghanistan; our media had made almost as much of the dynamiting of the Buddha Statues as the US media had. And those bastards had also harboured the most wanted man in the world. Go on, give em curry!

By March 19th 2003 I was living in the US. Just in time to see the US coverage, embedded journalists and all, of the invasion of Iraq. In time to see the squabbling over the renaming of Squaw Peak to Piestawa Peak (local mountain renamed after an Arizona Native American killed in Iraq).

And to what end? Billions of bucks wasted; thousands and thousands of lives lost. Almost the only comfort I can take from events of the past four years is that there hasn't been a single hijacking since then. Pennsylvania changed the rules; we no longer assume a hijacker expects to be alive at the end of the exercise. And if we, the cattle, can no longer assume that, the hijacker can no longer assume our cooperation.