Ten years on 9-11

The annual “Tribute in Light” memorial echoing the twin towers of the World Trade Center illuminates the night sky during the 10th Anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks at the lower Manhattan site of the World Trade Center September 11, 2011, in this view from Bayonne, New Jersey. Also seen are the Statue of Liberty (C) and 1 World Trade Center (L).

9/11 - Ten years on
10 September 2011

Friends are getting married in Thailand tomorrow. The day was chosen because it is an auspicious day for them. One of the couple is a flight attendant at Emirates. Curiously there are very few crew at Emirates who would have been employed 10 years ago. The airline's growth has largely been post 9/11. People continue to fly. And the world's fastest growing airlines are based in the Middle East in Islamic countries.

Irony. Osama bin Laden wanted a war between Islam and the West. What he got, for the most part, was universal condemnation of the horror of that day.

Life goes on. The world changed ten years ago. But maybe the change was not as dramatic as people thought at the time. One way or another we would have had to take terrorism more seriously. If it was not an attack on 9/11 there would have been another attack somewhere.

The shock was how the attack was carried out. Hijackings had happened before. But the airplanes landed and hostages were held as tools for negotiation and ransom. Airplanes had not previously been a weapon. Hijackers had not been suicidal.

As my flying lesson landed in a huge hurry we tied up the airplane and ran into the lounge to sit and watch tv. It didn't take long to view all the disaster footage the television networks had to offer, and yet those first days I kept watching, and watching and watching. You had to watch. There was the huge uncertainty whether there would be more attacks and where. You had to watch for the miracle that people might survive. You had to watch in case you heard the one piece of information that might explain why and how. You had to watch because that connected you to the event.

Ten years on and the heroism of the public response to the horror of that day is as profound now as it was then.

But we have been let down. 9/11 could have been a chance to build a new world. Instead a new war was started - the so called war on terror; a war that can never be won and which has no clear end.

2,977 victims and 19 hijackers died that day; but the reality is that they were just the first of hundreds of thousands of victims in this war on terror.

The values that we enshrine in constitutions and our history were thrown out. The Geneva convention was forgotten. The legitimacy of other countries' sovereignty ignored. 9/11 was the west's justification for piling into Afghanistan, the tribal areas of Pakistan and Iraq. And we are still there.

September 11 was not considered an act of terrorism instead it was called an act of war. In reality the enemy was extremists operating in a cave. But the USA portrayed the enemy as having weapons of mass destruction hosted by regimes waiting to give them succour.

It should not have come as a surprise. It would have been impossible, political suicide, for a US government to have done nothing. I went to a Florida church a few days after 9/11 where a memorial service was being held. The preacher expressed anger, hatred and the need for revenge; not against the perpetrators but against their faith and beliefs. I stayed after the service to argue that what he was preaching was wrong. He thought I was a sad pacifist and sympathiser.

He understood that fear demanded reprisals. But he, like most of the world refused to see that 9/11 was a crime, albeit on a massive and audacious scale. It was not an act of war.

But 9/11 played to the neocons in the white house. Bush linked al-Qaida to Iraq. He insisted Iraq had WMD. The US and its western allies made the mistake of creating a cause for extremists; giving them the justification for radicalism.

America's idealism was lost. Xenophobia wiped out those ideals. And the world has been a poorer place since.

I remember only too well where I was as the attacks on America took place. I was at 1,000 feet turning right to start a circuit at Kissimmee Airport in Florida on my first and as it turned out only flying lesson.

I have always wanted to learn how to fly. I had the time. And I had enrolled in a Flying School in Florida. There were no backgrounds checks, not in those days. I provided my credit card details. The school booked accommodation and lessons.

The trip was fated from the start. Climbing out of Hong Kong on Continental's non stop flight to Newark the plane had a cabin depressurisation at about 28,000 feet. It was eerie. It was quiet. It was not an explosive decompression. There was just a silence. The plane dived to a lower altitude. People (too slowly) put on their oxygen masks. But everything was working; there were no holes in the plane. The engines were still turning. We leveled off.

The pilot (who had presumably changed his trousers and negotiated with ATC in Hong Kong and Guangzhou advised that a valve had failed, that we would dump fuel for at least 75 minutes (we were meant to be flying over 16 hours non stop) and that we would return to HKG.

So United flew me to Orlando the following day.

Kissimmee was foggy on the Monday. The only flying was IFR. No use to me. My first lesson was booked for 9.00am on Tuesday 11 September. I walked out to the plane with my Norwegian instructor. We checked the plane. My mobile rang. I did not pick it up; I switched it off. Did not want the distraction. It turned out to be a friend calling form New York to warn me what was happening.

We taxi-ed to the end of Runway 15. Took off. Climbed and turned. And ATC tells all planes to land immediately as US airspace was now closed. He explains to another pilot on an open frequency that a plane has hit the world trade center.

We landed. Tied the little Cessna down. And went to watch TV in the lounge at the FBO. The room was full with instructors and want to be pilots; people taking multi-engine and commercial licenses. Everyone knew that the industry they loved would never be the same again.

The school was closed all week. All the Florida flying schools know each other and by the end of the week all were helping with records of past students.

That weekend a hurricane blew through Orlando. It was time to go home. The dream is postponed. Indeed the dream may even be cancelled. The magic of flying became a nightmare that day.

As I flew back through Newark on another stunning Autumn day this was the view from the aiport - six days after the attack the fires were still burning and the smoke still hung over the city.

Let us hope that on tomorrow's anniversary we can all mourn or reflect in peace.