An American Tragedy

Submitted by Peter hanbury (Australia), Dec 23, 2005 at 17:50

The real tragedy of 9/11 is not that several hundred people died as the result of the planes hitting the World Trade Center. I say several hundred because the remaining 2000 or more died as a result of the faulty design of the buildings. If the terrorists had struck a building like the Empire State, with its steel egg-crate structure and its well-placed stairwells, it would still be standing, and most of the occupants would still be alive.

The real tragedy is that the USA administration, and perhaps much of the USA electorate, has adopted the notion of a centralised global terrorist network, and launched the so-called "War on terror".

Wherever you live, dear reader, please ask yourself this; if a superpower had invaded your country, failed to unseat the ruling dictator but polluted a section of the country with depleted uranium ammunition that causes cancer, then helped to impose a decade of sanctions that caused the said dictator no inconvenience but brought about a shortage of medical assistance to the sick and dying, and then invaded again, bombing to death thousands of innocent men, women and children and shrugging off their suffering as "collateral damage", would you be angry?

This is what the misguided United States admisistrations have done to a Muslim country. There is no need for an arch-villain likle Usama bin Laden. There are thousands, perhaps millions of muslims throughout the world who are justifiably angry about the slaughter of innocent people.

This anger, and the hatred resulting from it, is the real tragedy. The United States is a great nation. And perhaps in time, with wiser leadership, it will work to repair its damaged image, to quell the hatred and regain the respect it once enjoyed. But it may take a generation of good works to achieve that.

Peter Hanbury

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