The Haunting Prospective
The events that marked September 11, 2001 set in motion a series of events that changed the world as much as that violent upheaval did for New York's tranquility of attitude and satisfaction with itself as a prosperous, conscientious and democratic heart of a great country. The trauma of the Twin Towers destruction and the deaths of almost three thousand innocent Americans, Canadians and people of other nations caught in the maelstrom of catastrophe, caused grave trauma to an entire world's sense of security.
But Americans, and by extension, the rest of the world, grew accustomed to thinking of themselves as newly vulnerable to unexpected violence. People simply cannot live with a constant fear of disaster striking. We have the capacity to shrug off the fears so they are less frequent, less imminent, more manageable. We become cautious, a little more vigilant, and get on with our lives.
The trepidation and fear that Islamists imposed upon Americans and others whom they targeted were dealt with by the normal human capacity to overcome incessant dread. The need to live normal lives awoke in people a sense of renewed purpose, a determination that their lives would not be devalued by the hatred of psychopaths who claimed to love death; their own and that of others. Normal, healthy people love live, and loathe death.
This set the majority aside from that slim, violent, hate-filled group that threatened and made every effort to continue imposing fear on the majority. Like the passengers on flight 93 that overpowered the jihadist highjackers over Shanksville, Pennsylvania, deciding to take matters into their own hands and foil a plan to murder greater numbers of Americans, people rejected the suffocating web of fear that Islamists sought to impose on them.
But the following, and ongoing costs of increased security to ensure that future attempts to highjack security and safety of the international community's populations has altered the way we live. Where once we casually undertook to transfer ourselves by air from one geographic point to another, we now do so with security measures that are costly and intrusive to our way of life.
Borders between countries became less porous, far more open to suspicion that through those borders, particularly the contiguous border between Canad and the United States, malignant forces would attempt to breach security. Britain, Spain, Indonesia, have played host to successful terrorist attacks. Attempts have been foiled in Britain, in the United States, in Australia and in Canada. Through increased security measures, costly in terms of our freedoms.
And the wars that were prosecuted post 9/11 to disrupt the plans of al-Qaeda have placed a difficult financial burden on the United States and its allies. When those costs, in terms of lives lost and treasury expended, in a determined effort to protect ourselves against the deadly virus of fanaticism and religious zealotry given over to violence are added up, they have consumed an enormous amount of global resources.
It can be said that without the burden of the costs related to the wars, to the security measures costing national treasuries whopping sums to create new security institutions, create new laws, put into place new protective technologies, the world would have weathered the global economic downturn far better than it did. The result we see now of the United States and European countries in parlous financial states, can be laid at the expense of protecting ourselves from terror.
Which means that in actual costs of "winning the war on terror", the expenditures swelled well beyond the mere concept of battling the forces of malignant terror through conventional means, for that war itself was unconventional. There was no standing army, no direct confrontation. The entire exercise was like facing off against an ambiguous, not-quite-there enemy who could fade into a background that hid its presence.
Like a dread figment of one's imagination appearing in nightmares from which we seem unable to awaken to find rescue from impending disaster. Which, in translation, means we have not shed the spectre of incessant concern, and that we live with the dread that the nightmare will return, night after night, to haunt us forever more.
But Americans, and by extension, the rest of the world, grew accustomed to thinking of themselves as newly vulnerable to unexpected violence. People simply cannot live with a constant fear of disaster striking. We have the capacity to shrug off the fears so they are less frequent, less imminent, more manageable. We become cautious, a little more vigilant, and get on with our lives.
The trepidation and fear that Islamists imposed upon Americans and others whom they targeted were dealt with by the normal human capacity to overcome incessant dread. The need to live normal lives awoke in people a sense of renewed purpose, a determination that their lives would not be devalued by the hatred of psychopaths who claimed to love death; their own and that of others. Normal, healthy people love live, and loathe death.
This set the majority aside from that slim, violent, hate-filled group that threatened and made every effort to continue imposing fear on the majority. Like the passengers on flight 93 that overpowered the jihadist highjackers over Shanksville, Pennsylvania, deciding to take matters into their own hands and foil a plan to murder greater numbers of Americans, people rejected the suffocating web of fear that Islamists sought to impose on them.
But the following, and ongoing costs of increased security to ensure that future attempts to highjack security and safety of the international community's populations has altered the way we live. Where once we casually undertook to transfer ourselves by air from one geographic point to another, we now do so with security measures that are costly and intrusive to our way of life.
Borders between countries became less porous, far more open to suspicion that through those borders, particularly the contiguous border between Canad and the United States, malignant forces would attempt to breach security. Britain, Spain, Indonesia, have played host to successful terrorist attacks. Attempts have been foiled in Britain, in the United States, in Australia and in Canada. Through increased security measures, costly in terms of our freedoms.
And the wars that were prosecuted post 9/11 to disrupt the plans of al-Qaeda have placed a difficult financial burden on the United States and its allies. When those costs, in terms of lives lost and treasury expended, in a determined effort to protect ourselves against the deadly virus of fanaticism and religious zealotry given over to violence are added up, they have consumed an enormous amount of global resources.
It can be said that without the burden of the costs related to the wars, to the security measures costing national treasuries whopping sums to create new security institutions, create new laws, put into place new protective technologies, the world would have weathered the global economic downturn far better than it did. The result we see now of the United States and European countries in parlous financial states, can be laid at the expense of protecting ourselves from terror.
Which means that in actual costs of "winning the war on terror", the expenditures swelled well beyond the mere concept of battling the forces of malignant terror through conventional means, for that war itself was unconventional. There was no standing army, no direct confrontation. The entire exercise was like facing off against an ambiguous, not-quite-there enemy who could fade into a background that hid its presence.
Like a dread figment of one's imagination appearing in nightmares from which we seem unable to awaken to find rescue from impending disaster. Which, in translation, means we have not shed the spectre of incessant concern, and that we live with the dread that the nightmare will return, night after night, to haunt us forever more.
Labels: European Union, Islamism, Terrorism, United States
posted by Pieface | 7:48 PM
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