Don't miss it. I was especially moved by his description at the end of feeling enraged that he wasn't actually IN Madrid, on that day in March. Friends of mine who happened to be out of town on September 11 described to me the same sense of helpless rage at not being in the city on that day. This was not a ghoulish desire, a desire to be close to the action - They were devastated to not be there but because it is their HOME - and it didn't seem right to my friends that they were not there in its time of need.
Excerpt:
It has been this free spirit and this unblinkered mentality of an open city, hospitable and democratic, the emblem city of a remarkable transformation of Spain in the last quarter-century, that the fanatics sought to destroy, on the morning of March 11, when they placed in Atocha the bombs that have left more than 200 dead and 1,500 wounded - 12 nationalities, typically enough, being represented among the victims - in the most ferocious terrorist massacre suffered in Western Europe in modern history.Posted by sheilaThe killers were not mistaken in their target: today's Madrid represents precisely the negation of the radical inhumanity of the obtuse, exclusive tribal spirit of fundamentalism, religious or political, which hates mixture, diversity and tolerance and, above all, liberty. This is the first European battle in a savage war that began exactly two years ago with the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York, and whose inroads will probably fill with blood and horror a good part of this new century. It is a war to the death, of course, and owing to the present fantastic development of the technology of destruction and the fanatic, suicidal zeal that inspires the international movement of terror, it is perhaps a trial even more difficult than those represented by fascism and communism for the culture of liberty.
Compared to September 11 in the United States, the March 11 attack in Madrid has an added factor in terrorist strategy: apart from causing the largest possible number of deaths, the intention to influence the political life of the victim country. It achieved this: thanks to the savage massacre, a considerable number of Spanish voters, hurt and infuriated, voted for the opposition and overthrew the governing party, for which the surveys had assured an easy victory.
That was a nice piece. Thanks for pointing it out, especuially since I usually avoid the Guardian like the plague.
Posted by: Dan at April 2, 2004 5:07 PMMe too.
Posted by: red at April 2, 2004 5:08 PMThat sense from some New Yorkers who were away that day almost sounds like something akin to survivor's guilt. Makes me think of my grandfather, who was at Pearl Harbor (actually at Hickam Field on teh other side of Oahu) and then flew in the raid on the German oil fields at Ploesti, Romania, the engagement with the highest percentage of losses in the history of the Air Force. He NEVER talks about it, but he lost all his friends in the war.
This is, BTW, when I have to make my obligatory reference to the fact that 9/11 didn't just hit New York. I was in DC that day; I saw the smoke from the Pentagon as clearly as you did from the WTC. It's hard to say this in a nice way, but sometimes it feels like that's almost been forgotten.
Posted by: Dave J at April 2, 2004 6:53 PMSheila, I am spending waaaay too much time online...but for now have become addicted to your site...and now have discovered Norman Geras site too. You have such interesting articles throughout your site - all, so far, are my style of reading. I am delighted I discovered your site while researching your cousin Kerry. Awesome.
To "must read" - I was living in mid MO on 9/11 and my first impulse was to get in my car and drive to NY to help in any way possible. I have never lived in NY but any time I have visited there I have always felt a sense of "big village" rather than metropolis about the city. It is a city I would love to get to really know.
Instead I find myself here in Little Rock, AR - but I am with family and that's more valuable to me than anything else.
Posted by: Dermot at April 3, 2004 11:57 AMDave J:
9/11 was a blow to all of America. Obviously. My friends in Chicago who sat and watched in horror on TV - (or my friends everywhere else) were no less affected.
I only mention New York constantly because I was here that day, I saw the whole thing, my sister was missing for 6 hours, and everything had a palpable reality. Wearing surgical masks, running down the middle of 6th Avenue, etc.
This is a completely trivial example - but when the huge nightclub fire happened last year in Rhode Island - I wished that I had been home. I didn't know anyone in the fire, but the entire state was demolished, emotionally, by the event - and I wanted to be there. It's my home.
Your grandfather sounds like a very courageous gentleman. Hard to comprehend the losses that people can (and do) endure.
Posted by: red at April 3, 2004 2:05 PMOh, and Dermot - New York is definitely a big village. Interesting.
I've lived in a lot of cities and in a way - NYC is very provincial. And by that I mean: if you live in Manhattan, taking a train out to Brooklyn is akin to traveling to Outer Mongolia. I live in Jersey and my commute into Manhattan is sometimes less than 10 minutes - yet people in Manhattan act as though I am commuting in from the wilds of North Dakota.
It's funny, kind of a quirk of the place. It's endearing.
Posted by: red at April 3, 2004 2:29 PMSheila,
Endearing is a great word to describe NY. On my first visit in '77 I was overwhelmed by the size of the place (I had come from Cork) and also by how extraordinarily helpful and nice EVERYONE was. The international image, via the media, movies etc, of NY is so much worse than the reality. My family were sure I would be murdered in NY.
I had the daunting task of being the first member of my family to come look for my paternal grandfather's gravesite in Hawthorne/Mt Pleasant and I was amazed at so many people's generosity with their time etc, directing me to trains out of Union Station and to locate the grave. Grandad has been dead since '38 and is buried near Jimmy Cagney, Sal Mineo and Babe Ruth.
Posted by: Dermot at April 3, 2004 2:59 PMI knew that wasn't going to come off right. If it sounded like I was belittling what you and all of NYC went through on 9/11, I absolutely didn't mean to, and I'm sorry.
Posted by: Dave J at April 4, 2004 2:25 PMOh God, Dave, it didn't at all! There is a myopia to those of us who were here - it feels, at times, like it only happened to us. Because we walk around Ground Zero every day. But that's not the case, obviously!
The grafitti along Ground Zero attests to that - people leaving notes from all over the country and, indeed, all over the world. It's amazing!
I am not sure why, media-wise, the Twin Towers appeared to dominate the news more. Why, do you think? Because it happened first? Or because ... the images were so much worse than those that came out of DC?
Not sure why...
Posted by: red at April 4, 2004 4:57 PMBoth of those reasons, and more. Certainly, it's in part because more people died in New York. And some of it is coverage in retrospect, since where the WTC was is still a gaping hole (in so many ways, both literally and figuratively), and its future is still being argued over, while the Army Corps of Engineers and their contractors patched up the Pentagon better than new in, what, six months or or something.
I remember being so certain something else was going to happen next. Indeed, the rumors flew like crazy: there was a bomb at the State Department, at Union Station, at the Supreme Court. The rumor that wasn't false was that there were still planes in the air, despite the FAA ground-stop. If the passengers on UA Flight 93 hadn't brought it down, the Air Force had enough warning by then that they would have, but we all know it was heading for the Capitol or the White House. And while I know they would have, especially aware of what had already happnened, I simply can't begin to imagine being the fighter pilot ordered to shoot down a civlian airliner.
Posted by: Dave J at April 4, 2004 7:46 PM