Futile deaths

I belong to what one might call the “post 9/11” generation. When the attacks took place, I was a rather young boy of 13. Most of what happened at that time I did not understand. All I remember is the scary image of the two iconic buildings going up in flames and how my family kept frantically calling anyone within the rather large ambit of a typical Indian family who lived in USA.

Since then, as I grew up and became more aware of the goings on in my country and the world over in past 10 years, I have seen it affecting people all around me. I have seen the frustration of my brother when he was denied Visa after getting through to the Cornell University. I saw the indignation of my father when America marched into Afghanistan and refused to leave. I saw America set up a hegemony over the middle east and most other Islamic countries – either through diplomacy or open military action.

Through all this, I have developed an idea of what those attacks connoted in world history, which, even if disjointed and flawed, is far removed from the actual trauma.

There are two feelings that fill me when I think of these attack. First there is an extremely begrudging feeling of respect for the man Osama bin Laden, much akin to the sense of respect I feel for Hitler. Agreed that these men were psychopaths. They caused the death of a huge number of people and pain to entire nations. Being an outsider, I will never fully know the trauma that Europeans and Jews bear from Hitler or the Americans bear from Laden. I can only sympathise. Having said that, one cannot help but admire the organisational capabilities and leadership that allowed these men to shake up so violently nations that were far superior to them in terms of money, technology and military power.

The other thing I feel is bewilderment. When I look back at the aftermath of these attacks, I can't help but wonder at what they achieved, even if one looks at it from Osama's perspective. In a later release, Laden told the world that the reason for the attack was in protest of the fact that "for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorising its neighbours, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighbouring Muslim peoples.". The US protection of Israel was another point in Laden's hate for America. The question that remains to be asked is, did it? If anything it achieved something quite opposite.

In this, I find it extremely similar to the Japanese bombing of pearl Harbour. Till then America was tiptoeing around the edge of the war. They were helping the allies with funding and equipment but they had not actively entered the fray. What Pearl Harbour did was to irrevocably pull them into the war, which followed up to 'Little Boy' and 'Fat Man' descending upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki. America would have joined the war sooner or later but Pearl Harbour definitely ensured it was sooner rather than later. What would happen to the fates of the Axis powers if USA joined a little while later is moot.

Similarly, the WTC attack gave America a license to go after many of the nations that they had been wanting to go after but couldn't. She flexed her muscles and pushed country after country to toe her line – using diplomacy, political arm-twisting, and open aggression as and when required. Afghanistan got invaded. Iran, got pressurised and pushed into a corner by sanctions and other such action. Iraq fell soon after. America's support of Israel is as strong as ever.

All this would have happened sooner or later. A nation as powerful as America has become today will establish its hegemony sooner or later. But did Laden's jihad precipitate the matter, giving the Bush administration an explicit excuse and a guise, that of the “war against terror”, for their neo-imperialist agenda? In that case, the deaths of so many people, including Laden's fidayeen truly went in vain as they served no purpos – neither for the perpetrators nor the victims.