The horrors of 9/11 – and why we went to war on terror

FOR my Mum and Dad’s generation the global event by which almost all global events were judged was the assassination of President John F Kennedy in Dallas, Texas in 1963. “Everyone can remember where they were and what they were doing when Kennedy was shot,” my Dad used to tell me.

For my generation 24-hour rolling news and better global communications mean people might have different views of what constitutes their “Kennedy moment”. But it’s a fair bet that a large majority will say it was the attack on New York’s Twin Towers, 20 years ago today.

I was in the office of the Western Daily Press’s sister paper the Western Morning News in Plymouth when the TV showed those first terrifying pictures. Working in a newsroom, you can become inured to horrific stories and horrific scenes. 9/11 was different, not just because of the sheer size, scale and audacity of the attack, but because we genuinely didn’t know what might be coming next.

As the first plane, then the second, slammed into New York’s Twin Towers, followed by a third hijacked airliner that smashed into the Pentagon, we genuinely feared that this could be the start of a worldwide terrorist-led attack on iconic buildings – and the people living and working in them – all across the developed western world.

If the terrorists could hijack at least three passenger jets in what should have been the best protected nation on earth, what else could they do? For several long hours we held our collective breath.

That sense of frightening uncertainty – of a way of life and a political and social system under attack – was brilliantly brought home in a documentary I saw last week.

The documentary, 9/11: Inside the President’s War Room, was clearly timed for the anniversary. But it also aired on BBC One just as the last US military flight out of Kabul took off. That flight out ended a messy and for many unforgivable withdrawal from that country which allied forces invaded shortly after 9/11 in direct response to the Islamist terror attacks on the United States.

That invasion, the 20 years in between and last month’s pull-out by allied troops have been minutely analysed from all sides over two decades. Many commentators have concluded that to go into Afghanistan in the way the US, assisted by Britain, did, was folly.

But almost 3,000 people – mostly Americans – died in those attacks on September 11 2001. The United States felt desperately vulnerable and needed to both avenge those killings and prevent further attacks. As the closest ally of the US Britain had to play its part.

Days after the attack President George W Bush made a moving offthe-cuff address at Ground Zero, around the still smouldering ruins of the Twin Towers. The New Yorkers – firemen, rescue workers and citizens who had come in the vain hope of finding loved ones – chanted “USA, USA” as the president promised “the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.”

They did hear from us. By December of 2001 the Taliban had been ousted from power in Afghanistan and Osama Bin Laden, the architect of 9/11, was on the run. Further large scale attacks had been neutralised. Attack seemed like the best defence against this threat from terrorism.

It’s hard to think of how else we could respond. We all know where we were when the Twin Towers fell. We also need to remember what followed, and why.