Gentle with me please.
I'm of that age, whose fathers were in the 1st WW, and personally had an uncle who was severely wounded there. We all know the carnage that war brought. Then( b.1936) in my infant and junior years I became ever more aware of what war meant, albeit not half as much as those in the thick of it. Nonetheless I know that people were grieving and bombs destroyed indiscriminately. And so it goes on: I share all suffering to the extent I can as one remote from the centres of grief.
As to 9/11, where does that rank in the immense awfulness of men on men, race on race, sect on sect atrocities?
How does one set it against systematic exterminations? That I'll leave to others to decide.
In the past much war grief was hidden, private: I suggest it was borne stoically so as not to destroy others' morale, nor give encouragement to the enemy. After peace resumed was the time for reflection and celebration of the fallen.
Now something has changed in our national psyche.Maybe it is because as a nation we have not suffered close personal and national peril for many years.
If that applies to us then may be it applies more to the USA. Yes, loved ones were lost, but how many at home in that vast country were in danger? So 9/11 must have been a terrible shock to them.
We have changed as a nation, are more emotionally open: Wootton Bassett, road-.side flowers at accident spots evidence that. Have our years of peace and prosperity been the source of the change; has the changed weakened us might be a bigger question than 9/11 remembrances.
TBH. the world is in as bad a way as it was in the 30s, with the same dangers. That really worries me, and more for my children and grandchildren, than myself.
Where to put 9/11 in all that?
