The American Tragedy: a UK perspective
by Stuart Kelly

We already know that it will become an epochal question: where were you when? I was in a village of about 200 people in the Scottish Borders, having lunch with my father, who was recovering from an angiogram. It was the day after my youngest brother's birthday. We were watching the 24 hour news when the bulletin was interrupted with reports of "a small fire" in the World Trade Centre. That was my point of intersection.

But there were moments more pivotal, as we spent the afternoon, and subsequent days, listening to the cumulative events. The moment when an analogy to Pearl Harbor was drawn. The first person to mention "war." The first occurrence of the phrase "world war." Hearing the word "crusade." These are frightening words, words that cause as much they describe; statements of intent rather than analyses of situations. Already, even here, we can see and hear the ramifications. Returning from Edinburgh we passed troop movements. This village, incidentally, lies in the path of low-flight testing. And the planes are flying lower than I have ever heard them.

Much media commentary on this side of the Atlantic has concerned itself with the UK's own experience of mass tragedy and the effects of terrorism. The last time that Parliament had been recalled, indeed, was after the bombing in Enniskillen. Parallels are drawn with the Blitz, and many writers have empathised over the "special relationship." The truth is, no country has had an experience comparable with what happened on the 11th of September. So there are no precedents, and no tried and tested formulae for solution. This in itself means we have entered a dangerous age.

Support in the UK for a coalition against terrorism outstrips the support for the campaign in the Gulf: in The Scotsman, a poll indicates that 67 percent of Scots support retaliatory action (18 percent opposing, 15 percent uncertain) and that 40 percent support retaliatory action even if this led to civilian deaths. Tony Blair's popularity soars, with 87 percent believing he has "handled the crisis well." Voices are, though, urging restraint: the idea of a coalition is correct; the actions that coalition takes are yet to be judged. The UK, like the USA, has experienced concomitant problems that, even if we understand the rage of the perpetrators, do little to help the situation: knee—jerk racist attacks, belligerent tub-thumping, crack downs on immigration. Almost as if to prove their small—mindedness, thugs attacked a Sikh thinking they were a Muslim.

The journalism surrounding the event has, as one would expect, relied on cliche. But those cliches in themselves reveal some of the larger anxieties surrounding the "new politics." Words normally reserved for the review pages — "Independence Day," blockbuster, Hollywood — have been bandied about. There is an unpleasant sense that the "civilized world" scripted its own tragedy. As a friend said to me: "if you can imagine it some other bastard'll do it." Compare this to the descriptions of Osama bin Laden: living in caves, escaping on horseback, medieval.

Even the whole "civilization" versus "barbarism" rhetoric needs to be reigned in. These terrorists can use the Internet just as easily as you or I. It appears that they may even have profited from the event through share-dealing in Germany, Holland and the UK prior to the attack. They have Swiss accounts. The "mediafication" of the event is part of the terror — the terrorists understand media enough to realise that these pictures will be played again and again and again. That they have enacted an event that will be looped, and drain a little from us each time it is played. The only difference between the terrorist mentality and our own is that we would die to defend and they would die to impose.

The suicide bombers last week killed over 25 times the population of this village. More UK nationals died then, than live here now. Geopolitics has been reshaped in such a fashion that even here, we can feel the changes. The days ahead will require calmness more than anything else. Rash actions will only harden and confirm the enemies' sense of moral superiority.

E-mail Stuart Kelly at stuart_b_kelly at hotmail dot com.