9/11

September 11, 2001. You likely remember where you were, what were you doing. How you watched those twin towers fall to ground and reduced to rubble of concrete and steel.

I was in ONGC Baroda, participating in a regional U-16 football camp and saw the images on a television set up in the mess as me and my school mates sat down for dinner. We went home a day later and the media was still covering the most audacious attack on American soil till date. And by then the term 9/11 had not even been coined. That was a term that came later on to tag along with the vague, intangible but decade spawning ‘war on terror’. Before that countries went to war on countries. There was an aggressor and a defender, a venue and a warfield. The 'war on terror' was more approximation, guestimation, red herrings and failed leads that frustrated the allies to no end. 9/11 changed the world’s external affairs. It is a day that still haunts many. With consequences that we still live with .

The 9/11 hijackers demonstrated that the terrorist game plan had changed. And now all of a sudden, they were willing to die on a mission. Since then the allies have gone to war to Afghanistan and Iraq, tracked down and killed Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. While going after Al Qaida and Laden was an immediate priority, the invasion of Iraq was done on the back of an incoherent strategic plan and in search of WMD’s that were never there as shown in Paul Greengrass’ Greenzone. People, even American citizens saw it as the US foreign policy to drill holes in other countries and suck the oil out . And after a decade and wars costing 3 trillion dollars, America will pull out of Afghanistan and withdraw its troops.

More than the immediate impact , the damage to America has been more layered with it fighting wars with money from credit, it went from bad to worse as the housing bubble bust, followed by the fall of investment banks and an economy that got itself down-graded .Even Osama bin Laden would not have dreamed of this kind of impact . As for Barack Obama who won on agenda of change, the capture of Laden also wouldn’t do him much good .With plummeting ratings, sick economy, an eminent second dip in recession, unemployment and policies that have failed to work as he might have expected, it might not be surprising if he doesn’t stand for a second term and George Bush might be every tempted to ask him the next time around…

‘It isn’t that easy to fix things, is it?’

The US 10 years hence has build the 9/11 memorial and commiserates and remembers the 10 year anniversary on Sunday.