I remember September 11th 2001 for a variety of reasons – it came towards the end of my first major motorcycle holiday, it was the last time I visited a particularly intelligent, gorgeous, and sport-crazed Cambridge PhD ex-girlfriend, and it was the time whilst walking back from a Cambridge bookshop to unchain my motorbike that a complete stranger walked-up to me and said Terrible thing about America, isn’t it? and pointed me into the nearest pub.

Whilst the buildings were still burning, I thought many things:

• Were my friends and colleagues OK?
• Given that transatlantic phonelines would be jammed, how could I use the ‘Net to find out?
• Who was likely to be behind it?
• How would the Americans react?
• How would the Americans react?

It struck me that having suffered the Oklahoma City bombing a few years previously, there would be a seed of doubt as to the identity of the terrorists – a possibility that they might be homegrown. This uncertainty would probably be enough to prevent some dramatic, Clancy-esque, knee-jerk reaction.

I don’t know at what point in the upper echelons of US Government was the finger of blame first definitely pointed at Saddam Hussein Usama Bin Laden, but however tragic the reason I do treasure the fact that politicians were forced by circumstance to stop and think about what they were doing, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

Watching the events unfold, one thought that I can hand-on-heart swear never entered my mind was My God, I’m Scared, It Could Happen Here Too; this sang-froid I attribute to getting all my Oh my god I am mortal and could quite possibly die young! angst out of the way in the early (Cold War / Reagan / Brezhnev) and mid (IRA bombing London) 1980s[2].

With this in mind, I watch what I believe to be reasonably expert emotional manipulation of the mob and media (both American and British) with some horror; I found this post-Republican-convention video both illustrative and amusing, and I look forward to an upcoming programme on BBC2 – for which I saw the trailer tonight, although I am yet to find a proper page regarding the content:

[www.bbc.co.uk]

The Power Of Nightmares – The Rise Of The Politics Of Fear

How fear of terrorism has come to dominate politics around the world A new series, from acclaimed film-maker Adam Curtis, tells the story and examines just how far that fear is based on an illusion
Wednesday 20 October on BBC TWO

Of course there is rarely any mileage in telling people they are being hoodwinked, but we cynics might as well enjoy it all now so we can do the I Told You So thing in a few decades.

Unless they kill us first, of course.

Footnotes:

• [1] Sun had offices in the second tower; as it was the only Sun employee to be killed by those terrorist events was an acquaintance, Phil Rosenzweig, a fellow ex-SunLabs geek with whom I was on chummy terms.

• [2] Student humour applied to that era: a fellow Astronomy student at UCL who once walked into a petrol station in a combat jacket, with a balaclava only half-pulled over his head, an empty milkbottle in one hand, asking the attendant in his extremely heavy native Armagh accent: Ah, could I borrow a hanky, please? – before legging it.

  In modern-day America, I suppose he’d quite possibly get shot for pulling that sort of prank.