September Eleven: All else pales by comparison
The horrendous act of terrorism that we have witnessed in New York City on
Tuesday September 11th [2001] and the graphic video clips shown worldwide on
TV will be forever imprinted on the minds of today's generation. The sheer enormity
of the act and the unfolding horror in real time demonstrated the frailty of
human life. For all those touched by this monumental disaster, not just US citizens
but citizens from around the world, we extend our deepest sympathy and heartfelt
condolences. It could have been any one of us.
Of course there must be a proper period of mourning and the natural reaction
tends to be one of frustration and hence of indiscriminate revenge. However,
we earnestly hope that saner thoughts will prevail. To misquote Einstein "We
cannot solve the problem at the same level as that in which we allowed it to
happen". What is required is a superior strategy, carefully constructed and assiduously
asserted — not in terms of blanket forgiveness, but in terms of focused
democratic justice. We might easily divert here and ask what does our collective
idea of democratic justice constitute, but that's hardly appropriate to this
web site.
No amount of post-trauma hand wringing will eradicate our evident lack of vigilance
and determined protection of our particular way of life. Our whole approach to
North American national security and the meaning of national borders, both ours
and theirs whoever "they" maybe, must be re-thought. We certainly don't support
discrimination and racism (whatever that means) but perhaps a strong dose of
the right sort of political correctness at home would not come amiss. But that
is another political issue hardly appropriate here.
Having said all of that, one cannot help but wonder at the audacity of the
perpetrators and marvel at their technical and logistical proficiency. The real
lesson of this incident is that someone devised a masterly strategy and recruited
a dedicated team. Those who carried out this mission were each individually very
well trained, very well coordinated, very well disciplined, exceptionally goal
focused and with a tremendous willingness for personal self-sacrifice towards
that goal. In this case, difficult to understand maybe, but until we show the
same resolve to defend our (respective) countries we shall see yet more of the
same.
In our line of business, we call it project management, or rather, program
management. In the hands of the wrong people, we have just witnessed an awful
demonstration of its power. A very scary thought. First we had the melt-down
of the dot.com industry, now we have the literal meltdown of very tangible real
assets. This is not a case of natural disaster but a calculated and vicious attack
on the central symbol of our western civilization. In all humility we cannot
help but question the wisdom of stuffing large numbers of people into vertical
steel and concrete boxes and calling them prime real estate.
After all the pontification is over we must ask ourselves the serious question
of what to do? Another project of similar dimensions to rebuild what we've just
lost? In this case, we rather think not — that would hardly be learning
from experience. Perhaps a tranquil open area would be more fitting, a park-like
space dedicated to all those who lost their lives — and as a stark reminder
of the folly of man and its 20th century technology.
|
