I was sleepy and propped upped lazily on the couch when I first saw and heard the breaking news on TV. The World Trade Center was billowing with smoke. It was all too surreal, I thought I was in twilight zone. I woke up my friend and told him what was happening and as the newscaster droned on and on, another plane hit the other building. Pentagon was hit, and another crashed in a grassy knoll in PA. I must be dreaming. This cant be happening. In a daze, I sent a text message to my Mom, and she told me that one of my Dad's former co-workers who migrated to the States worked at WTC. She was on the 75th floor that day. I remembered playing with her kids when they were still the Philippines. Now those former playmates lost their Mom. It was such a sad sad day for the world. How thousands of lives lost because of an extremely flawed American foreign policy, combined with a lethal and deranged interpretation of a supposedly peaceful religion.
It started nice but you had to be critical.....hardly the time for that..that could have waited a day.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is, why are people not asking WHY does 9/11 have to happen in the first place? WHY all this hate directed against the Americans? WHY is it that people are willing to sacrifice their lives to harm, maim and kill American interests and their allies?
ReplyDeleteThe United States supported the Taliban and Bin Laden in the war against the Soviets. The US helped propped up the corrupt and oppressive Shahs of Iran. Washington supported Iraq (and Saddam Hussein) in the Iran-Iraq war (in fact, Donald Rumsfeld even met the former dictator). When Hussein dropped chemical weapons in Northern Iraq to exterminate the Kurds, no one, not even the European Union said anything. The much scorned Fahds of Arabia actually practice the more fundamentalist Wahabbi Islam, but why Washington doesnt protests the very public executions of criminals, your guess is as good as mine. In Latin America, the former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega (now languishing in a Florida jail) was a former CIA agent. Washington DC supported the assasinations of leaders suspected of being anti-American. In Europe, a former US President (I think it was LB Johnson) once said "I dont give a fuck about their parliament" referring to the Greek parliament on the Cyprus problem. Washington supported the dictatorship of Marcos in the Philippines for so long that Bush Senior on his visit to Manila even commended the hated dictator "for your (sic) adherence to democracy". I could just go on and on.
After the attacks, although it is highly expected that fighting back is a natural, knee-jerk action of self-preservation, Americans lost all the world's sympathies when it launch a highly illegal war in Iraq. While no one would contest the fact that Saddam Hussein's regime was insidious, the United States, by acting carelessly and with wanton disregard of the United Nations, launch a unilateral attack of Baghdad.
5 years since the horrible attacks in the United States, are we still deluding ourselves that our world's gonna stay the same? After 9/11, there was the train bombings in Madrid, the London bus bombings, the Bali bombings, and so on. Bin Laden and Al Qaeda is still much alive and plotting the next big mass murder.
I remember, I was to pick up a friend at the train station in Makati, but since I was too tired, I decided to stay at Starbucks (about 2 kilometers away) with a friend instead and let her meet us there. After 15-20 minutes after she arrived, we received a text message that bomb was detonated in a bus right below that train station.
After 9/11 everything changed. Everytime I bored the train to work, I cannot help but have a feeling of dread. The same train I took every day to work was bombed in 1998 (by Southeast Asian Al Qaeda affiliates Jemaah Islamiyah). Even staying at Starbucks or any open space, I cant help but wonder at the back of my mind whether a sick terrorist might ram a truck bomb and blow me to kingdom come.
9/11 raised more that so many questions. About American foreign policy, globalization, multiculturalism, religious tolerance and crossborder terrorism among others. These are the issues that needs to be addressed. And what more, we need to ask these questions on the same date, lest those 2,700++ people died in the attacks in vain.
And these questions, my friend, could have never wait another day.