20 years on – and we are still living in fear
HERE we are 20 years after the terrible mass murder in New York City in 2001. And do we ever consider who won? Terrorism goes by that name because it paralyses and maddens its victims with fear. It makes them do things they otherwise wouldn’t and shouldn’t.
And look at us, long after we took sensible precautions to make a similar attack on Manhattan or anywhere else much less likely, such as keeping a closer eye on students at flying schools and never, ever unlocking the door to the flight deck of an airborne passenger jet.
Even before the Covid panic shut down the world, we were still shuffling like convicts through irrational ‘security’ procedures, just to fly away on holiday; dismantling laws that keep us free and engaging in wild hunts for ‘extremists’, most of whom turn out to be lunatics who have fried their brains with drugs.
Perhaps, most bananas of all, our various ‘wars on terror’ and ‘wars for democracy’ (all failed) have brought about an alliance between the West, Saudi Arabia and an Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria. Yes, our allies in our inexplicable, horrible, failed Syrian intervention were for a considerable time the Nusra Front, itself an Al Qaeda franchise.
We are still pretty thoroughly terrorised. It makes me laugh when I hear politicians congratulating themselves for ‘standing up to terror’ when it is normal human beings – firefighters, soldiers and police – who do the standing up. Because the politicians are so keen to do what the terrorists want, they have made our societies less free and open and made us live in an irreversible constant state of fear.
I have no doubt there will be more terror outrages. By their nature they are surprise attacks and we cannot foresee them all, let alone stop them. But we can stop wrecking our own society in response to such murders. And we can also stop lashing out by starting foolish wars and invasions, often with dubious allies.
These conflicts cause the great waves of migration which are now transforming Europe, and to which we have no civilised response.