10 years since 9/11.

We all remember where we were when the first pictures of the hijacked plane hitting the Twin Towers was screened across the world. Paz and I had dropped in to visit my grandma for morning coffee and the three of us
watched in horror at what was unfolding before our eyes. It didn’t seem real. We saw the flames, the panic, people jumping to a certain death, and it seemed the end of the world was nigh.

 
My grandma had witnessed bombings and destruction during the Second World War, lived through and survived night-time Luftwaffe sorties and wondered if the world would ever return to normality and if she and my grandpa might be able to go back to their everyday lives; he as a simple tailor and she as a housewife and soon to be mother-of-two? They did survive, as have the
families of the victims of 9/11, but my grandparents, together with all their generation, never forgot what they had suffered, the same way New Yorkers and many people around the world will never forget 9/11.

 
I remember my grandpa telling me of the Luftwaffe bombing of Exeter in May, 1942. He told me that that particular year the weather was unusually mild and many people were down on the beach, swimming and making sandcastles. He had been stationed only about seven miles away at Chudleigh and was being trained along with his platoon, the 23rd Royal Field Artillery, for action across in France that spring. 

 
When the planes emerged out of the sky everyone looked up and started waving thinking they were RAF fighters, but then the livery of the German air force came into view and people panicked and ran for their lives. Bullets started strafing the beach and a number of people were hit. But they weren’t the target for these ‘angels of death’; the target was the city of Exeter. As my grandpa and others from the armed services tried to comfort the injured and the shocked, and cover up those beyond help, the Luftwaffe sent ‘fire and brimstone’ down onto the cathedral city of Exeter setting the city
ablaze and taking many lives. 

 
Sent along with his platoon to try and help rescue people from the rubble and burning wreckage of the beautiful city, those hours of desperate searching for survivors and the discovery of those who had lost their lives never left my grandpa’s memory. It was the worst thing he ever saw, but life had to go on and there was an enemy to be defeated.

 
Despite the many conspiracy theorists that have attempted to deflect the blame for the atrocities on 9/11 from Islamic fundamentalist terrorists and blame variously the US government itself, MI6, and of course, the Israeli secret services, most clear thinking people know that Al Qaeda was behind what happened in New York and Washington on that darkest of days. But fighting the enemy in the 21st century is in many ways far more difficult than the task faced by the Allied forces against the evil of the Nazis and the Japanese in the 1940’s. There is no army to pin down on a battlefield and defeat blow by blow. The enemy in this second decade of the century is spread around the world, small pockets of dedicated, determined and religiously brainwashed individuals who on their own can cause as much death and destruction as did an entire Luftwaffe squadron in the 1940’s.



This is a very difficult fight to win. Indeed, it might never be won, but it might be contained if intelligence  agencies and governments from around the world pool their resources and knowledge and do everything possible to help each other combat the enemy both  external and within. Since the fall of Mubarak in Egypt it appears that Al Qaeda and associated groups have been handed free passage to Gaza where their ideology is viewed more than sympathetically by the Hamas government, one half of the Palestinian Authority double act that seeks to gain recognition from the UN later this month for an independent state.



Would you want to give these people total control over freedom of movement through their borders, knowing  full well where their sympathies lie? More to the point, if they lived just down the road from you, your family and your friends, would you be happy to see them  recognised by the international community, a community amongst whom many have suffered at the hands of Islamic terrorism and are still fighting a daily intelligence battle to foil more terrorist plots?



As the world remembers the events of 9/11 and wonders if it can ever happen again, the plain and simple answer is ‘Yes’, it can and most likely will happen again if people who support terrorism and seek to wipe another country off the face of the map are handed the gift of international support in the hope it might appease them and make life a little quieter in the short term.



A Palestinian state that recognises Israel, lays down its arms and seeks genuine peace and co-operation is something we should all earnestly strive for. No-one deserves it more than the downtrodden, decent Palestinian majority themselves who have been manipulated time and again by their own leadership and by so-called Arab allies in the region for their own needs. But until those in charge truly set out on a path of peace, recognition by the UN should not be given. Haven’t we learned the lesson of recent history that trying to palm off those seeking to wipe out their neighbours is only staving off the inevitable? Chamberlain’s cowardly declaration on returning from Berlin in 1939 that he had achieved “peace in our time” could well be repeated if the UN endorses recognition of Palestinian statehood at this time.



The fight against fundamentalist terror and violence has already been carried o the streets of New York, London,
Madrid, Mumbai and many other major population centres. It should be made clear to all terror organizations and terrorists regimes that if they truly want to achieve recognition they should hang a ‘No Entry’ sign on their national borders and refuse to harbour, aid and abet those intending to commit terrorist
atrocities in the name of religion, or any other so called
‘cause’.



Heavy stuff I know, but this tenth anniversary really should be a time of serious reflection on what has to be done to secure a safer future for us all in places where our lives could irreparably be damaged if terrorism is not beaten back and defeated.