'Where were you when JFK was shot?’ used to be the question. Now it is 'Where were you on 9/11?’
The tragic circumstances of 9/11 come back to disrupt our lives once again. A decade is a special anniversary, 25 years, 50 years and 100 years will also be special anniversaries.
What did it take to organise the hijacks? No doubt governments have pondered this question looking for answers that will make sure that terrorist attacks of this kind never happen again. Organising the operation is a logistics challenge that many people, not just defence force personnel, could arrange. The plan worked. Was the collapse of the World Trade Centre buildings envisioned as a part of the plan or just a bonus? The plan was bold and daring and they killed thousands of people, including Australians and changed lives forever.
For the terrorists involved - what training did they have? It is one thing to prepare a plan that will cause the deaths of many people and another to put it in motion. Preparing people psychologically and emotionally to commit suicide and kill many innocent people must be difficult and challenging. I remember reading of the hit squad that the Israelis assembled to hunt down the killers of Israeli athletes at the summer Olympic Games in Munich in 1972. A prerequisite was the ability to get close enough to look the person in the face and kill them. This is a questionable attribute and a tribute to humanity that most people cannot do it.
It is clear that people have blamed religion as one cause of 9/11 and why many now fear the power of religion. People believe that religion enabled the hijackers to commit this atrocity. These terrorists were not crazy, they were not pumped with pills, they had to be sane, calm, disciplined and organised to achieve what they did.
Albert Schweitzer, the famous physician in Africa and Noble Peace Prize winner for his philosophy of ‘reverence for life’ wrote, “Whoever is spared personal pain must feel himself called to help in diminishing the pain of others. We must all carry our share of the misery which lies upon the world.”
Millions of people around the world have a sense of fellowship with the people who suffered the loss of a friend or a member of the family in the 9/11 attacks. It is a different sense of solidarity from that experienced by those who suffered from earthquakes and tsunamis because their disasters were from natural causes, not man made causes. I don’t know any victims or members of the families of victims of 9/11 but many of our benefactors in the USA and perhaps elsewhere have been involved in the tragedy that took the country by violence.
Our benefactors around the world have always supported Columban missionaries and been in solidarity with them when Columbans were killed on mission, and more recently, when Fr Michael Sinnott was kidnapped and released unharmed in the Philippines in 2009.
It is now an opportunity for us as Columbans to remember our benefactors, to pray for them and their lost loved ones as they have for ours.
Fr Gary Walker SSC is the editor of The Far East.