September 11, 2001

Personally...

The night before, I had taken my mother to emergency and was up rather late, so I had slept in a bit. I had just turned on the TV to CNN and was watching a bunch of people pointing upward and SLAM, I saw the (second) plane hit the World Trade Center. At first, I’m sure like a lot of people, I wondered if I was watching the trailer for some movie or TNT production. I’m embarrassed to say how long it took (including a phone call from a friend) before it began to sink in that it was really happening. I also had to track down my Dad who had just visited New York, to make sure that he had actually come back as scheduled (fortunately, he had).

My Mom died the following week, so that her passing and the events of 9/11 have become forever linked/joined together in my mind. I can’t think of one event without the other and the pain I still feel for losing my Mom is heightened by the sorrow I still feel for the many thousands who lost their mothers, fathers, sons, daughters and other family in the four planes, the WTC and Pentagon. It’s very strange and not at all pleasant.

Historically...

Stepping back, as a sometime student of history, I felt at the time (and still feel today) that this was an epochal event that will in many ways define the 21^st Century. The only problem is, five years on, I still don’t know how. Driving through the USA a few weeks after 9/11 and it seemed that the country had been transformed. But subsequent visits have shown that most of those obvious signs are gone and the changes (if any) have occurred on a level more deep or subtle than is evident to the casual observer.

Five years is not enough to tell. It will likely take decades before historians decide whether the events of September 11, 2001, marked the decline and fall of the American empire, the rise of a new Muslim jihadist sect, or the failure/success of the ‘war on terrorism’. One thing I do not doubt. The conclusions that future historians draw from this period will, no doubt, surprise those of us who have lived it.