[jammies]

I remember I was at work and my boss came out of his office, told us to come into the break room, and turned the TV on to CNN. My first thought after seeing the 2nd plane come crashing in live was something like "That's horrible and brilliant all at the same time; somebody out there is an evil motherf'ing genius who has just declared war on America."

I fully expected the world to go after Bin Laden and bring him to account; that this still hasn't happened is almost impossible to believe. All the fighter planes and tanks and satellites and comms systems and other military gizmos ended up being almost useless in finding one crazy fanatic holed up in the mountains of Central Asia, and soon it was clear that those toys needed to get used somewhere else or people would start wondering what the point of all that hardware was - and so we had an ill-advised and near-criminal invasion of Iraq.

Is the world a safer place with the flight regulations, the increased domestic surveillance, the no-fly lists, the passport requirements, and all the other "security" measures implemented since 9/11? Did the expenditure of hundreds of thousands of lives in Iraq and Afghanistan do anything to destroy radical Islam as an attractive philosophy for the millions of poor, angry young men living in the Middle East? Did the US show moral leadership by ending support for the Saudi regime of Wahabist fascists who are no better than Saddam, if not worse? Did anyone ever find any WMDs? Are we any closer to the end of terrorism?

No. The world is a worse place than it was, and instead of the sacrifice of 3000 lives meaning something positive, so far all it has been is the excuse by which freedoms have been curtailed and American military power vigorously exercised to little positive purpose. An opportunity to get the world to work together was squandered in favour of "doing something", no matter how counter-productive those somethings were and are. That's what is truly tragic about 9/11.