Before and After 9/11

People on this planet can seldom say what they were doing on the 6th, 7th or 8th of September 2011, at around 9 AM New York time. But millions can provide an account of where they were and what they were doing at that time on 9/11, when the terrorist attack was launched against the World Trade Center twin towers. For a long while, contemporary history will be structured into two large periods: the one before and the one after 9/11.

No one can say that the attack was the direct source of the current economic crisis or the deceptions that democracies are currently facing. But there is a connection between what happened then and the lack of enthusiasm we are seeing now. It is not difficult to browse through statistics and the press before 9/11 to discover that, back then, the Western world was advancing, the economy was flourishing, new technologies were held in high esteem and public debt was not an issue. In Europe, social-democrats were ruling many countries (or were part of government with the liberals), and the integration model proposed by the European Union was seen as a great historic achievement.

Nevertheless, 10 years later, America seems to be financially drained, the Euro Zone is at the end of its rope and economic forecasts are pessimistic almost everywhere. In Europe, the far right is gaining ground in the political landscape and in people’s minds, the integration policy for foreigners is considered to have failed in many countries (beginning with France) and Mrs. Angela Merkel is saying that multiculturalism is no longer working in Germany. Theories on the so-called inevitable civilization and culture clash are coming back with a vengeance; topics related to religion are approached more often than those related to civics and democracy. Had it not been for the revolutions in the Arab world at the beginning of this year, we could almost say that the decade that has elapsed since September 11, 2011, was one of regress on all levels.

For the U.S., this year serves as an adequate moment for taking stock of all errors made after 9/11. Accustomed to traditional conflicts, to classical wars, where opponents would fight more or less face to face, America sent hundreds of thousands of soldiers to Iraq and Afghanistan and thus actually doubled the losses it registered on September 11, 2001. Western strategists needed 10 years to understand that terrorism was a complex phenomenon that could not be fought against using the weapons of the Cold War or conventional strategies.

Worryingly enough, during the 20th century, wars have in fact evolved against civilian populations as well. WWI was a terrible massacre, but it is worth noting that 90 percent of the dead were soldiers in uniform: i.e. armies killed one another. WWII, a synonym for absolute horror, was not carried out only on military fronts, but also against civilians. 50 percent of the persons who died during this terrible conflagration were soldiers and 50 percent were civilians. It is strange how the wars invented by humankind have become completely and utterly absurd: Nowadays conflicts cause infinitely more casualties among civilians than the military. One might say that nowadays you are more likely to survive a war as part of a military than as a civilian. In Bosnia, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, civilians were decimated first. The attack on 9/11 is one full of morbid symbols in this sense. The civilians taken hostage became human bombs on the hijacked airplanes, and almost all the people killed in the World Trade Center were civilians (the volunteer firefighters who died there cannot be placed in any other category).

The fact that the Americans killed bin Laden is, without doubt, a moral victory, but it does not change anything from a strategic point of view. Terrorism was not defeated, nor will it disappear as a threat, not as long as entire regions on this planet continue to live in a kind of obscure and regressive, freedom-destroying and fanatical Dark Age. A French essayist and columnist named Jacques Attali said at one point that nothing could be done on the planet without first creating a unique and unified education system. For as long as some children learn to read and write with the Quran as their only reference, while others have only the Bible, we will not be able to put a stop to war.

The hijackers on 9/11 were far from being illiterate; they were all, however, religious fanatics. Perhaps the UN or another institution drawing on humankind’s last reserves of reason should create this common school of the globe. Maybe then members of the human race will no longer butcher one another when they become teenagers or adults if they learn the same things when they are small children. Besides having the same knowledge base, the only other necessity would be the procurement of the same decent living conditions.