Remembering 9/11

It’s difficult to believe that three whole years have passed since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the downing of a plane full of people in rural Pennsylvania. I clearly remember my French host mother picking me up from school around 3:00 pm (EST + 6) and gravely telling me that something bad was happing back home. When you hear something like that, you immediately think of your family and those close to you, but upon arriving home, I watched the surreal events of that New York morning unfold on live television from the other side of the Atlantic. I was in shock as I watched the two towers crumble and mortified by the shear confusion in the media about how many planes were hijacked, their targets and the estimated dead. Being so far away, though, I felt disconnected from the situation, only hearing about the disruption to air traffic and other commerce around the USA that week. Scary stuff.

Le Monde 2, a French monthly news magazine, put out a special edition the following week that included pictures from Ground Zero. It was different, I’m sure, watching the events unfold in other country (France, no less)—the news media and government responses to this attack on America clearly showing solidarity. But as with all things, they changed. By the spring of 2002, Bush had given his infamous ‘Axis of Evil’ State of the Union address, after which the French and other Europeans had a field day picking it apart morsel by morsel. Clearly, I witnessed the initial falling out between the US and France, as relations became more and more sour, and the situation has only worsened with Iraq. Oh well, what can you do? The French will be French: righteous about their place in the world and their need to demonstrate this non-existent authority. The modern world really has given France a case of insecurity, as they attempt to assert their will without much success.

Still, 9/11 really did rally the French and the rest of the world for a time. We should not forget that solidarité, nor should we forget those who perished on that fateful day that fundamentally changed our world.