"And so there it is: this country [the US], and in particular the capital, remain locked in a curious mix of sombreness, anger and a certainty that the outrages will be satisfactorily avenged. I have two friends who watched people jump out of the World Trade Center, and one of them working in an adjoining financial skyscraper saw a giant airliner pass literally feet from her 54th-floor window before tearing into one of the 110-storey towers. Both are tough and each happens to have been a veteran of Belfast: but I suspect the impact of such traumas will live with them for ever, as it will for thousands of others. Heaven knows what effect their non-stop work will have on the rescue workers in New York and the Pentagon, too. The television channels, meanwhile, continue with their relentlessly hyped-up, often hysterical and frequently inaccurate coverage ('America United' is the mantra of Rupert Murdoch's Fox news channel). I'm sure it would help the nation calm down if only such channels voluntarily shut down for a week and let us all mourn in peace.
"The flags, the flags, those ever-proliferating flags. By now, they have become a symbol not so much of grief over what has happened, but of bellicosity over what their wielders hope will soon happen - revenge and war. They have thus become symbols of aggression rather than of half-mast, tranquil sadness.
"It remains all so poignant here in [Washington, DC] the eye of the storm, because the rage can only grow and yet cannot adequately ever be assuaged. America has embarked on a course it cannot win and which will bring it only yet more grief, at a time in its history when it can least bear it. It is a combustible combination of circumstances, and it will give all of us uncertain futures for years to come."
Carl
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