EVERYONE RECALLS how they learned of the jets crashing into the World Trade Center in New York on September 11th, 2001.
The greatest act of terrorism in modern history killed over 2,700 people and devastated downtown Manhattan. The 10th anniversary has prompted a global debate on how the world has changed since.
At first it seemed retribution would be quick and effective. A few days after the attack, a police officer escorting me through Ground Zero expressed the popular belief that Osama bin Laden was a “dead man walking”.
The attacks at first provoked worldwide empathy with a crippled New York. We were all Americans then, as French newspaper Le Monde had it.
It didn’t last. The Bush administration got sidetracked into a war in Iraq, which had no part in 9/11, deluding itself about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. In the patriotic fervour that swept the US, criticism of US foreign policy became confused with anti-Americanism. French fries became known as “Freedom fries” when France had the temerity to oppose the war.
Forecasts that war would be brief were also mistaken. Since 9/11, somewhere between 100,000 and 1 million civilians have died in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, along with 6,226 American and 559 British soldiers. Sophisticated roadside explosive devices and the cult of suicide bombing have become the violent narrative of the “war on terror”.
There have been other “9/11s”, notably in London, Madrid and Bali, and terror no less deadly has come to many Afghan villages from foreign drones in the sky.
Iraq is still racked by violence, and its Shia politicians are influenced by Iran. Nuclear-armed Pakistan has become dangerously destabilised. The cohesion of the US-led alliance has weakened as the appetite for war among European allies has diminished.
The greatest diplomatic failure of the decade has been the inability to resolve the festering Israeli-Palestinian question.
Politicians on Capitol Hill vowed the terrorists would not change the American way of life. But the Patriot Act eroded cherished liberties, homeland security became a huge industry, and the US record on human rights was damaged through water-boarding, rendition and the brutal treatment of prisoners. The practices have been curtailed but internment continues at Guantánamo Bay, while Fortress America has become a cold house for Muslims.
On a visit to Washington last week, I found people depressed at the prospect of recession, due not least to the $4 trillion (€2.9 trillion) of war expenditure, by the bitter gridlock in Congress, and by an inept presidency. The bleak mood is compounded by a feeling the US is in decline, while Asia is on the rise.
The Arab Spring has been a repudiation of al-Qaeda, but the US has lost strategic partners such as Egypt’s Mubarak, and worries what the Arab Autumn might bring. At least the US has not experienced another terror attack. Osama bin Laden is at last a dead man, and perhaps 9/11 was the high point of al-Qaeda’s war on the US. However, the country cannot yet declare “Mission accomplished.”