It’s hard to believe it’s been five years. It’s also odd to think that five years after Pearl Harbour, both the Japanese Empire and Nazi Germany were just acrid memories. Such is the power of correctly identifying your enemy and then being prepared to win.
On the morning of September 11th, 2001 I visited the frighteningly gaudy Cao Dai church in Southern Vietnam. Caodaism is a synthesis of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Catholicism with a bit of Victor Hugo thrown in for a reason I didn’t quite follow. In the afternoon I crawled through the Cu Chi tunnels and was given a tour through an old minefield by an ex-North Vietnamese Army officer-turned-comedian. So the day was quite freaky enough long before any nutters with Stanley knives got involved.
I watched the whole thing unfold live on TV in a bar in Saigon. It was something like ten o’clock at night local time and the bar was thumping to ‘Paint It Black’ and other Tour of Duty favourites. Western TV stations, music and news, were playing silently around the room until one of us realised that something odd was going on on the news channel. Music down, TV up - all in French, but the burning building was unmistakable. There was a lot of chatter about what was going on, no one having paid attention in French classes, and wondering how you get a bomb big enough to make that hole half way up a skyscraper.
The second plane answered that question. I have never, before or since, felt what I felt in that fraction of a second when the whole awful thing became apparent. With one pulse of my heart my blood turned to ice.
Then came the Pentagon and the collapse of the towers and the rush of confused Americans with relatives in Washington and New York running in and out of various bars asking if anyone knew anything, making ruinously expensive phone calls. There were 20,000 dead. A dozen highjacked planes. The pickpockets, hookers, and tat-selling urchins that usually ply the seemingly-rich, well-lubricated crowd did not have a good evening.
