A Dark Decade

It has already been 10 years since the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001. The victims’ families have obviously had the most difficult experience. Every reference to this sad anniversary is a sober reminder of the immense void that the victims’ sudden departure has created. For North Americans and millions more around the world, Sept. 11 led to a tightening of security measures concerning a number of everyday routines. They range from minor measures like the cement pylons around the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa, to the incessant worries that feed obsessive security controls at airports, borders, around the Parliament and federal buildings, etc.

In short, there is no way to forget that the world changed that day. It has been somewhat overused, but it must be acknowledged: Nothing has been the same since the U.S. was the target of this bloody attack.

From a virtually unknown status, Osama bin Laden has risen to the rank of a world renowned criminal and the most wanted person on the planet. Attacks inspired by the al-Qaida terrorist movement have continued around the world; among others, in Morocco (2003), Spain (2004), England (2005) and Algeria (2007). Other groups, more or less freely influenced by al-Qaida, have claimed more terrorist attacks, especially in the Middle East.

Canada has been spared, but many recall that at regular intervals — and even this week — a sense of security does not shelter us from an attack, as we may have once thought. Remember the arrest of 18 Islamists in Toronto in 2006 who were plotting attacks against nuclear power plants, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Ottawa and Parliament.

This justifies, in many people’s eyes, all the security measures imposed since 2001. In this sense, the theory that al-Qaida has won this battle holds water to a certain extent; all these preventive measures are reminding Canadians that there is an Islamist threat. Our security budget has exploded. In the United States alone, these measures cost at the very least $92 billion annually, five times more than before 2001, Radio-Canada reported. This means that, in addition to suffering the inconvenience, taxpayers must also foot the bill. Normally, that’s fine. But when the economy is faltering, all those billions spent elsewhere put a strain on an eventual recovery.

Of course, those billions are nothing compared to the hundreds of billions that the U.S. consumed in two wars during the 21st century. First, there was Afghanistan, which, since October 2001, Canada contributed to under the leadership of the U.N. Security Council. Then, followed the most expensive one, in Iraq, from March 2003, limited to Americans, British and some allies. Canada’s refusal, articulated through Prime Minister Jean Chretien, has cast a shadow over U.S.-Canada relations.

Former President George W. Bush has embodied this second war to some extent. He must now take responsibility for the current economic collapse of his country, which was worsened even more by a mercurial stock market and a greedy real estate sector.

The sympathy we have for Americans, the victims of the 9/11 attack, has evaporated. President Bush divided the world into good and evil; on one hand we have the axis of good and on the other, the axis of evil. Ten years later, we are still trying to emerge from this primordial conflict between light and darkness, good and evil; however a shift to the right for the major world governments (Canada, France, Germany, Japan, England, etc.) has put us right back where we started. Americans, who attempted the challenge of change with the “Yes we can” of President Barack Obama, are disillusioned because their economy is slow to recover from all its ills, and the tea party, the right-wing fringe that has emerged from the chaos, is benefiting.

2001 was followed by several years of uncertainty and an economic crisis; a difficult and painful decade, lived in doubt and uncertainty. Certainly not the ideal of peace and fulfillment that forecasters had predicted for 2000 to 2009. How can one conclude other than believing that the dark side of the world has won, so far?