September 11, 5 years on...
Sep. 11th, 2006 08:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nyankoframeI still remember what I was doing on 9/11 almost like it was just yesterday. I'd gone to watch Swordfish with some friends of mine from camp, and we'd just finished watching the movie and come out when I received an SMS (a text message) saying that planes had hit the World Trade Center. I didn't believe it and I thought it was a joke, and I showed it to my friends and we all laughed about it.
That is, until I got home...and saw to my horror that it was no joke and that planes really had hit the WTC, and that they were hijacked by terrorists. I'd been born in a country that has had a full-scale civil war going on for the last 20 years, and I'd lived there for a few years, and gotten used to having armed checkpoints and suicide bombings, but 9/11 was on a scale so unprecedented that no one, least of all me, knew what had really happened, only that the world had changed permanently.
And the world did change a lot after that day. There was a lot of suspicion, anxiety and fear spreading, and security was heightened along with inter-racial tensions. It was no longer really the same kind of easy-going atmosphere that had been present before, even though people tried.
And, in particular, some of the actions that the US took seemed like they were throwing away the goodwill, sympathy and love that the rest of the world had extended to them the day after the attacks. It's easy to criticize and question in hindsight, and perhaps it wasn't really the right thing to do, but... if only they hadn't done some of the things they did, the world might have been a much better place than it is today.
That is, until I got home...and saw to my horror that it was no joke and that planes really had hit the WTC, and that they were hijacked by terrorists. I'd been born in a country that has had a full-scale civil war going on for the last 20 years, and I'd lived there for a few years, and gotten used to having armed checkpoints and suicide bombings, but 9/11 was on a scale so unprecedented that no one, least of all me, knew what had really happened, only that the world had changed permanently.
And the world did change a lot after that day. There was a lot of suspicion, anxiety and fear spreading, and security was heightened along with inter-racial tensions. It was no longer really the same kind of easy-going atmosphere that had been present before, even though people tried.
And, in particular, some of the actions that the US took seemed like they were throwing away the goodwill, sympathy and love that the rest of the world had extended to them the day after the attacks. It's easy to criticize and question in hindsight, and perhaps it wasn't really the right thing to do, but... if only they hadn't done some of the things they did, the world might have been a much better place than it is today.
