It’s difficult to believe that five years ago today some fuckheads flew passenger planes into the Twin Towers in New York city, killing thousands of people. Sure, it happened, but I find it difficult to believe that anyone could believe that doing a thing like this was anything other than an evil act.

As Bruce Lawson points out, those who have too much Heaven on their minds sometimes miss the atrocities being committed here on Earth. I’ve nothing against Muslims or against Islam; holding Islam as a whole to blame for the Twin Towers and the London Tube bombings is about as rational as blaming all Christians for the deaths of those burned as witches, or holding me responsible for the slave trade. Sure, I’m white, and some of my ancestors may have been involved, but I wasn’t, and I don’t condone it.

I do not believe that murder is an appropriate tool to try and bring about change, even if it is targeted at specifically decision makers, rather than innocents. However, I do to some extent see why some people would view those leaders as legitimate targets, even though I personally do not subscribe to that viewpoint. And it’s not the US and UK’s foreign policies that are to blame. I disagree with a lot of these foreign policies, but I do not, cannot and will not ever accept that it is right to murder innocent men, women and children simply because you disagree with something their country’s leaders are doing. And yes, that sentence could be made to apply to those foreign policies I was mentioning earlier…

Reading Eric Meyer’s Five Years Ago or Zeldman’s Five Years makes me appreciate how far we in the UK were removed from this particular incident — although we’ve suffered plenty of other smaller scale incidents in the past. Strangely, Eric’s reaction was something akin to my own: a confusion as to what exactly had happened at first, then a growing numbness and hollowness as you try — and fail — to take in the enormity of such an event.

There’s also the part of you that no-one likes to talk about that wants to know more, find out all the details, to fulfill your ghoulish craving for morbid detail. Fortunately for me, my own internal censor kicked in and decided I really didn’t want to know about some of the more unpleasant aspects — I’ve never listened to any of the calls made from the building, and nor do I intend to.

There’s stories of heroism; of people struggling through the rubble to rescue others. There’s the nobility of many of the people involved, although I’ve no doubt there would also be stories that are less appealing. There is also, like anything of this nature, the gallows humour involved as people attempt to move on. Plus, I think a natural reaction to the media who, like the Princess Diana thing again, seemed to be telling us what we should be feeling. Sure, I might have been feeling those things anyway, but I resent the tabloids who spend their time raking through the muck of people’s lives and destroying reputations (sometimes fairly, it has to be said) telling me how I should be feeling. Thank you very much, but I can make my own mind up on this one…

But, me being being me, I’ll leave you with one of those gallows humour thingummies — a quote from Rich Hall’s book Things Snowball:

I heard some people talking on TV, jaw-boning about whether September 11 had changed us, as a country. Some woman, one of them media types, said no, we’re just as arrogant and self-centred and oblivious to the plight of others as ever. Well, I thought about firing off a letter to that gal to tell her she was absolutely right. We’re still the same bunch of insensitive assholes we always were. I can’t believe that sonofabitch car rental guy kept my deposit. How the fuck is a daschund supposed to know it’s sitting on a remote control?

Rich Hall