Almost seven years after that early Tuesday morning tragedy we truly do live in a Post 9/11 world.
That day the analysts and the pundits declared that the world would never be the same. That politics and history had reached another marker – like the way we talk about before WW2 or the Depression
Now, seven years on, I see that this really is true. As much as Rudy Guiliani got so much flak for seeming to harp on it and his experience with the event and the aftermath. Maybe in part he is an example of the American, or the Western conciousness. Maybe everything in his mind really does connect back to that event. For New Yorkers inevitably that day must weigh more heavily. Maybe he cannot think past that.
In McCain’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention last night, the Senator thanked President Bush for leading the country in the years following ‘the largest attack on American soil’.
But is it the post 9/11 world that we wanted? Not, of course, that anyone wanted a ‘Post 9/11 World’ as such, but tragedies seem to go either of two ways. People can become stronger from it, band together and understand each other more, or people can let it tear them apart. While America banded together with Patriotism after that day, it has also become an extremely divisive place, and the world too has become even more deeply divided.
This election, I’m willing to wager, will have a big impact on where we as a world go from here. Whether we continue to mistrust and blame one another, or whether we become part of a place where people, groups, organizations and states work together, and attempt again at diplomacy and multilateral action instead of guns and unilateral attacks.
Philippa Adams 