A Cursed Date

Does Feb. 13 mean something in particular? For most of us, no; it’s no different than Aug. 6. Yet February 12, 1945, was the bombing of Dresden that caused the death of 35,000 people. And Aug. 6 of that same year the first atomic bomb exploded at Hiroshima, where there were more than 70,000 victims.

On the other hand, as soon as one says Sept. 11, two towers in flames stand and then crumble in our minds.

Since the attacks on the World Trade Center and their 3,000 deaths, each Sept.11 is lived as a peculiar day, at once both cursed and sacred, a day that one would prefer to have never existed and which has profoundly changed history.

After the Cold War, one had been able to hope for a long period of peace. Al-Qaida has signaled to the Americans, and in the worst way, that the United States’ mania of lighting firecrackers in all four corners of the globe under the pretext of preserving their security was a high-risk method. The CIA believed it could control the planet from Washington, even putting dictators into power in other countries: who remembers another Sept. 11, the one where Pinochet settled his score with Chilean Democracy.

But South America has neither the means not the ferocious fanaticism of al-Qaida, who has made the blunders of the “great Satan” pay in the Arab countries. Now the ideological wars have given way to confrontations with religious extremists. Since Sept. 11 there are religious fanatics, who in Washington or Karachi, in Kabul or in Florida’s churches, are playing with matches.

The second reason why Sept. 11 is now inked in our hearts is that this catastrophe had been broadcast live, minute by minute, across the entire planet. And that everyone could take it for better and for worse. We did not have the time to distance ourselves from this drama. It was immediately absorbed, directed and, above all, spit out by the internet. Conspiracy theories, rumors, false information, myths and frenzies were immediately grafted into this event, smothering the voice of historians. These martyred towers plunged the world into whirlwind of uncontrolled words and images. This tragedy probably marked our entrance into the 21st century, for it combined disinformation, sophisticated technology and extreme cruelty. It is truly a cursed date.