Visit to US two weeks after 9/11

Personal experience of the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the US

Janaka PERERA

Eight years ago this month (September 11) occurred one of the most horrifying terrorist attacks in world history. It was the first time American civilians had experienced such a calamity. Even the Japanese air raid on the U.S. Naval Fleet in Pearl Harbour 60 years before (December 7, 1941) had occurred far away from the American mainland and virtually all its victims were military personnel.

9/11 attack, a dreadful example of international terrorism

Until the dawn of the 21st Century the American public thought that they were fairly secure from all global conflicts and international terrorism. Neither the two world wars nor the Korean and Vietnam wars really affected American civilians even though U.S. troops were heavily involved in all four wars. Then on September 11, 2001 all hell broke loose on the U.S. mainland. It compelled Washington to have a fresh look at terrorism worldwide, including that of the LTTE although it had no direct impact on Americans.

The most hilarious response to this monstrous crime was the LTTE sending a condolence message to the American Government expressing sorrow over the loss of civilian life in the attack. However to all those who knew the Tigers’ double games such a tongue-in-cheek response was hardly a surprise. It was an attempt to convince the West they were not terrorists but “civilized, democratic freedom fighters” - unlike the Al Queda and other Islamic zealots.

September 11th morning in Sri Lanka is September 10 evening in the U.S. So the Consular section of the American Embassy, Colombo was open to visa applicants that day. I happened to be one of those interviewed. Having obtained the visa I was hoping to depart in a couple of days time. My brother-in-law and family had already left for the U.S. on September 11.

I was then News Editor, Daily News and as usual was on the late shift the same day. The television was on. Suddenly, we saw on the screen one of the two planes crashing into the WTC, New York. At first it gave the impression that the crash was an accident. Thousands of miles away a nephew of mine Sanje Raddalgoda had watched the same scene live from his office window.

The attacks created widespread confusion across the United States. All international civilian air traffic was banned from landing on US soil for three days; aircraft already in flight were either turned back or redirected to airports in Canada and Mexico.

The plane on which my brother-in-law and family were travelling was diverted to Canada from where they had to travel by land route to the U.S. Thousands of other USA-bound passengers in several international airports were stranded.

It was only on September 28 that I finally arrived in the U.S. after flights were resumed. But the scare caused there by the suicide air attacks was still all too visible and a security blanket restricted our movements. At the airports the US National Guard in camouflage fatigues and M-16 rifles slung over their shoulders had taken charge of the main security while every visitor was subjected to a thorough check by other security personnel.

Americans who until then had been used to freedom of movement found the presence of military personnel at airports rather uncomfortable. Some said it was “scary.” But to a Sri Lankan it was nothing strange having been used to security checkpoints and armed soldiers in Sri Lanka for nearly two decades.

“September 11 changed our world as we knew it. Now everything’s going to be different,” Larry Williams of North Carolina told the New Jersey newspaper The Star Ledger after arriving on flight to Newark, New Jersey on October 5. I first arrived in California to visit an aunt and cousins in Fremont, before travelling to the East Coast. It was then that I really noticed the tension that prevailed.

The fear of another hijacking was such that when I took a domestic flight to Newark Airport, New Jersey from San Francisco, the usually crowded planes were more than half empty. One could sleep on the seats as on a bed.

National Guardsmen were also on duty on board the New York ferry that plies between the city and Staten Island, daily. The ferry can accommodate around 3,000 passengers at a time.

In New York, the site of the collapsed WTC was out of bounds for visitors though we were able to see it from a distance. No photographs were allowed by the New York City police. When we arrived there the place was still being cleared of the rubble. And it was not possible to linger long there since the dust from the debris made breathing difficult. Earlier one lung patient had died of exposure to this dust.

Public transport in New York was hampered following the destruction of an underground subway station when the WTC collapsed. Immediately after the attack the entire city subway system was closed and people had to walk from Manhattan.

It was reopened at the time of my arrival there. During the following weeks thousands of small mementos, including photos and a dinner invitation were discovered intact amidst the landscape of smouldering debris.

In Washington DC, the White House which is normally open to the public was not only closed to visitors but even the road running between the building and the Washington monument was closed to vehicular traffic and barriers were put across it.

Helicopters with security personnel continuously patrolled overhead. Nevertheless there were large crowds both Americans and foreigners sightseeing in the Capital.

During my stay in the U.S. many were the conspiracy theories on the terrorist attack.

A story - which a Lebanese TV station had posted on its website about alleged Israeli involvement in the incident - was cited by an anonymously run U.S.-based Website that called itself the Information Times. It had proclaimed the day after the attack that “4,000 Jews did not go to work at WTC on September 11.”

The Information Times account claimed that Israel had warned Jews to stay away from the site.

This reminded me of similar rumours in Sri Lanka when the LTTE blasted bombs in Colombo - that the Tigers had warned Tamils to stay away from the terrorists’ target area.

In fact many American Jews died in the 9/11 attack as well as four Israeli citizens - two in the WTC and two on the hijacked planes - according to the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

There were a few ugly racially-motivated incidents that targeted Muslims following the attack. One of the unfortunate victims was a Sikh who was mistaken for a Muslim because of his turban and stabbed to death.

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, American pacifists found themselves in a dilemma. Born in the Vietnam War era, the American Peace Movement found it extremely difficult to apply the Vietnam logic to the Al-Queda terrorist attacks - a conflict where the enemy saw all Americans as legitimate targets. (In the Vietnam War neither the Viet Cong nor their agents set off bombs in U.S. cities targeting American civilians).

When I was in California that fateful September even the left-leaning Santa Cruz City Council decided against opposing retaliatory U.S. military action in the then Taliban-rule Afghanistan, which was reportedly an Al-Queda operational base.

As a Time essay writer put it, “A rattle snake loose in the living room tends to end any discussion on animal rights.”