Just Like Yesterday …Attack That Defined War On Terror

Yesterday, exactly ten years ago, the world recorded the worst yet of terror-based attacks on American soil and reduced to a combination of human and concrete rubbles what existed as the Twin Towers that once housed the world’s most famous Trade Centre. Nearly 3,000 persons; from virtually all nations on the face of the earth perished in that singular act of cowardice.

The world still remembers the dead. The horror of watching loved ones perish in an infamous act of moral depravity, of social degeneration and of the most shameful of disrespect for human life. We still remember what that day meant to international diplomacy, to all religions especially Islam and indeed the threat it signalled to world peace.

It happened Sept 11, 2011, and became known as ‘9/11’, a day that would never go away, each time acts of its kind happens on any soil across the globe. More than anything else, it redefined global perception of the danger we daily face as humans, the dangerous level, bad cowards can get in inflicting pain on others , for no rational reason, explains the global need for an outright war on terrorists.

As in previous years, the United States of America (USA) and Britain, among many other nations that lost loved ones will attempt to relive the measure of horror that day represented, the unity of purpose it fostered, the nature of political miscalculations that nearly diminished that unity and of course, the eventual killing , more than nine years after in May, this year, of the main mastermind of that dastardly act-Osama bin Laden, whose al-Qaeda terror group took responsibility for the mass destruction of human and material resources.

Today, as in other years, the question is still asked whether or not after the wars waged in reprisals for 9/11, in  Iraq and Afghanistan, and elsewhere the world is safer or not.

In 2008, seven years after, both Republicans and Democrats in days leading to that year’s election made varying conclusion on the subject. Republicans, under whose presidency, America went to war, held that the attack on Iraq and eventual killing of Saddam Hussein was a strong message to anyone or nation-state that would ever again contemplate harbouring terrorists or  sponsor same.

The Republican position then was that the war on Iraq was rational because Iraqi strongman, Saddam Hussein had attacked his neighbours earlier, and also threatened to use chemical weapons against various Western targets. Those weapons turned out to be products of the imagination of Western intelligence. They actually did not exist.

Democrats on their part held that the war on Iraq, at huge cost to America was a distraction to the move to track down, in good time, the actual brains behind the 9/11 attacks. Infact, they insisted at the time of waging the Iraqi war, US forces had already cornered Osama bin Laden in the caves of Tora Bora in Afghanistan and rather than finish the job, redirected all efforts into attacking Saddam Hussein before unseating the Taliban, which provided Bin Laden the time leverage to relocate and escape.

Democratic flag-bearer, in that election, President Barack Obama in his acceptance speech at his party’s National Convention, at Denver in 2008 even mocked his Republican opponent, when he said, “ for while, Senator John McCain was turning his sights to Iraq, just days after 9/11, I stood up and opposed this war, knowing that it would distract us from the real threats we face. When, John McCain said we could just “muddle through” in Afghanistan, I argued for resources and more troops to finish the fight against the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11, and made clear that we must take out Osama Bin Laden and his lieutenants if we have them in our sights. John McCain likes to say that he ’ll follow Bin Laden to the gates of hell-but he wont even go to the cave, where, he lives”.

But in a recent interview which former US President, under whose watch the terror attacks happened, George Walker Bush granted National Geographic Channel,  a satellite TV station, a sober Bush relived the horrors of that day, the sacrifices of life made by rescuers, the piles off human flesh that caked within the rubbles and calls for immediate action by volunteers and first responders and said, none could ever imagine how he felt, as President, the urgency to having things done fast and the burning emotions that informed his decision to order a full-scale war on terror.

A visibly downcast, yet unapologetic Bush said with a familiar touch of finality “ as Commander-in-Chief, I needed to make a decision, and in the face of the challenges which evil posed to good, the decision  to wage a war, was the best at the time”.

Along with the war, followed many other defining elements, invasion of Afghanistan, the Patriot Act, the Department of Homelead Security, Guantanamo Bay, the elusive search for weapons of mass destruction  and eventual invasion of Iraq, and CIA-sponsored torture of terror suspects, all intended, from Bush’s perspective, to find answers and prevent a repeat and more importantly, beef security, find and gun-down master-minds of the 9/11 horror and above all else, send a warning signal to all other terrorist organisations that may again contemplate a repeat of such attacks.

Ten years after yesterday, the debate is no longer whether or not America and  indeed the world is safer. What is key to President Barack Obama and indeed Americans is to celebrate, amplify and sustain the unity of purpose that day evoked among Americans and show family and friends who lost loved ones to that terror attack that they are , indeed, not alone. That, the world indeed remembers and shares their loss. The day should also send, in even stronger terms, warning that terrorists would never ever make Americans and all other countries live in fear but sustain the level of vigilance required to make terrorism most unfanciful.

In that spirit and in keeping not just his promise to Americans but also to help ensure a safer world, President Obama has ordered a communications campaign against terrorists groups outside the US, especially, in countries like Nigeria, where terrorist activities are increasingly feared and elsewhere, where they have found roots.

The US government also announced that its Terrorist Finance Tracking Programme (TFTP) has been made available to Nigeria among other countries, which have suffered one terror attack or the other, in recent  times.

A statement from the US Treasury Department at the weekend, said the  programme which was initiated in 2001 “to identify, track and pursue terrorists and their networks, is indeed useful”.

It said, “the TFTP has since provided thousands of valuable leads to US agencies and other governments that have aided in the prevention, or investigation of many of the most visible and violent terrorist and attempted attacks of the past decade”.

The US Treasury Department statement cited Nigeria as a recent beneficiary of the programme and said, “ for example, TFTP-derived information has played an important role in the investigation of the October 2010 Nigerian Independence Day car bombings in Abuja, Nigeria. It has also provided crucial information that has been used to identify persons linked to these attacks”.

This year’s remembrance of the horror which the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the World Trade Centre, in which nearly 3,000 persons of various nationalities perished, truly represented, will be meaningless unless, well-meaning countries of the world key into the new security consciousness, the US has engineered, the sense of unity it evoked and indeed the endless war against evil by good, which the times truly demand.

The fourth Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Rt. Rev. Msgr. Matthew Hassan Kukah captured the theme aptly when in response to the recent United Nations (UN) House Abuja bombing said, these acts of terrorism are not carried out by true Moslems or Christians but by evil men, who should be seen as mutual enemies and fought as such.

Rather than capitalise on the unfortunate occurrences to attempt to diminish the Nigerian presidency, as several have tried to do for cheap political reasons, as a  people and citizens of same destiny, all well-meaning Nigerians should take a clue from the American example and allow our misfortunes of a terrorist kind, to unite us, not divide us.

My Agony is that there are still pockets of influential people who see the UN Office attacks as product of lapses in security or the ineptitude of President Goodluck Jonathan. That cannot be true, in any sense.

For were it to be so, what is today globally known as 9/11 would not have happened in New York City, in the United States of America, debatably, the most secure nation on the face of the earth.

Like the Americans are today united by memories of 9/11, let our unfortunate taste of the acts of cowardice by terrorists rather than divide us, strengthen our resolve to stand for hope not fear,  love not hate, unity not division and mutual respect for every religion that teaches men to be good.