In four hours it will be 20 years ago exactly that the first plane slammed into the North Tower. I was sat in our study at Middle Lane, Discovery Bay, working on some spreadsheets for our growing business, listening to the World Service, when the news came in, at first just that a plane had hit the tower, leaving us to wonder if perhaps it was an accident. I seem to recall that a light plane had crashed into a Manhattan building not long before.
I called to Jing to tell her the news, so we turned on BBC and watched the smoke. Clearly not a small plane. A reporter was on the roof of a building with the tower burning behind him. Talking to camera. When the second plane came in to the South tower. The reporter didn't react, kept talking to camera, as he hadn't seen it. Someone in the crew must have motioned frantically, as he turned, mid sentence, to look, and take in what we were taking in: the second tower was also hit. And with it went the concept, the hope, that it had just been an accident.
I seem to remember saying to Jing: it must be Osama Bin Laden.
ADDED: I just checked and she confirmed that that's what I'd said. So... I was a touch in front of the intelligence services and the cable news in identifying the culprit.
20 years on and the common wisdom is solidifying around the idea that we're worse off than then, in terms of the terrorist threat. Because of pulling out of Afghanistan. And leaving it an actual State, which will welcome Islamic terrorists of whatever stripe. And is massively armed, thanks to the American military leaving behind around $US80 billion in the latest kit.
Tony Walker writes about his time, at the time, in Washington, with the then Australian Prime Minister John Howard, and the opposition Labor Party under Crean, which was to not support the invasion of Iraq. Here.
And my comment on that.
ADDED: a note from 2014 about what drove Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda to attack the WTC.
