I continue to read things from overseas bloggers about America’s response to the attacks on September 11, 2001 that puzzle me. For example this:
Fear and hysteria are the two words often mentioned in the wake of 9/11. To this I would add ‘insecurity’.
I don’t believe that I responded with any of those emotions.
Events of the 9/11 sort are commonly remembered quite vividly (although possibly inaccurately). As I recall my reactions as the events unfolded on that days and those that followed I initially experienced shock, followed very rapidly by a mixture of sorrow and anger. I don’t recall a single second in which I felt fear, hysteria, or insecurity.
I also don’t find the nation’s corporate response as fearful or hysterical. Had there been a mass reaction against West or South Asians it would have been an hysterical reaction. There wasn’t. Had there been blanket detentions of West or South Asians it would have been an hysterical reaction. There weren’t. If we had deployed the ICBM’s against Arab or Muslim capitols, that would have been an hysterical reaction. That didn’t happen, either.
I think that our response has been remarkably tempered under the circumstances. I’ve disagreed with most of it, thinking it ill-considered, but I think it was tempered.
Most of the fear and hysteria I’ve seen has been on the part of those who fretfully complain that this or that action by Americans or our government means that the terrorists have won.
So, here’s my question. Did you, personally, react with fear, hysteria, or even insecurity to the events of 9/11?
Fear? No. Horror, yes. Then anger, quiet steely resolve, and a kind of raw tenderness (that was a New York emotion).
None of the above. First the sheer numbness that comes with disbelief. I was more in a state of shock than anything else. But fear was so far from it, it actually took me a couple of hours to be concerned about my brother in Manhattan. It just didn’t occur to me that he wouldn’t be OK.
And although I know that unless Al-Qaeda has been severely weakened (possible), we will eventually be hit here in Canada, and seeing as I live in the capital, it could very well hit very close, I can’t say that I’m afraid, any more than I am of crossing the street or driving a car. I’ve accepted that the danger is there, but that is not the same as living in fear.
It’s strange Europeans would react that way. It was British tourists who forced a man off a plane, a German airline that refused a Spanish man with a beard because the passengers were afraid, and Spain that danced to Al-Qaeda’s tune after the Madrid bombing. If that isn’t fear, I don’t know what is.
I think that which struck me most were the clips of Pakestinians celebrating in the streets. Any sympathy that I might have had for those people evaporated. Totally.
For the first time in my life, I realized that there were people who wanted to kill me. Fear — no; shock and horror — yes a real eye-opener — yes; anger at the terrorists for doing it and my government for not stopping it — yes; a feeling of violation and regret at the world that was lost – yes; but, most of all, self-recrimination for being so unaware of the nature of the world I live in.
None of the above. I had my own problems at the time; woke up at about 2PM in a hospital cancer ward to the sound of the news broadcast on TV.
After that, anger; which only increases, not only at the perpetrators and their backers but at the incompetent idiots who not only failed to prevent it despite years to do so, but also reacted in such a way as to make a repeat more likely.
As a matter of fact I am British, so this event makes it arguably less likely that I will be killed in a terrorist attack; the supply of money to the IRA from America dried up the day after. Maybe certain Americans have grown up.
It also made the Eire government less of an apologist for terrorism.
No. In fact, it was immediately clear that we had a big problem and that it was essential to use our heads. This European reaction is really a put down: The poor idiotic Americans can’t help themselves. They don’t have our superior understanding of the world. You have to understand how limited they are. We don’t have a problem with the Islamic world because we know the importance of dialogue. Blah, blah, blah. It’s been 5 years and the Europeans are just beginning to acknowlege that there is a problem.
I might add that this sense of superiority comes through when they talk about any group that doesn’t share their enlightened views. I suspect it contributes to the rage among young people from immigrant populations.
Fear. Fury. Terrible insecurity. I came back, in time. But oh yes, I was in the thick of it for a bit.
But then again, I lived in Manhattan, and we could smell dead bodies in the air, and stink, and fuel. I stopped taking in my mail when Anthrax hit a nearby post office.
I was on a hair trigger for the sound of airplanes afterward for at least half a year. I still almost fall off the sidewalk when a plane flies too low overhead.
9/11 was different for people who lived in the city. It still is, I think. It was not abstract to us, it became part of our daily life. From the eyes of those around us, to the billion flags to the security to the blocked off streets to the elephant in the room at all times. (I take it you didn’t live there?)
And as far as hysteria, I lamented the immediate backlash on muslims. People were irrational. I wrote, on Sept 14, “im sickened by how we are treating the muslims and arabs. i am sick to death about this. this is how you let bin-laden and his ilk win, you ignorant f****. we’re all scared. and now you feed the enemy and thus he grows by your exact number.”