September 11, 2006

I wrote the following post on September 11, 2006. How has the world changed since then?

September 11, 2006

On September 11, 2001 at 9:00 EST I was on an airplane over the South China Sea. We landed in Singapore knowing nothing of what had happened in New York, Pennsylvania and at the Pentagon. I happened to be first off the plane and walked down a long corridor with soldiers in black uniforms standing shoulder to shoulder on both sides holding stubby machine guns. Having flown into Singapore many times, I knew something was up, but not what. it was until I turned on CNN in my hotel room. The replay of the towers falling went on and on.

The next day I was scheduled to head home to Java so went to the departure area and discovered that only one flight would leave Singapore that day, my flight to Jakarta. At every point in my journey everyone I encountered expressed sympathy. Leaving Jakarta for my home in Yogyakarta even the guards at the metal detector went out of their way to say how sorry they were. A month later, on Canadian Thanksgiving, the U.S. began bombing Afghanistan. The local authorities took over the house next door to give us 24 hour police protection.

Tomorrow is the fifth anniversary of the 9-11 events. As luck would have it, I will be on an airplane again, this time headed from California to Texas for a meeting with legislators on restorative justice. The feelings this trip engenders surprise me. The fact that causing an event on the 5^th anniversary is a terrorist dream is inescapable, but what it means to me is that I probably can’t take anything on the plane, and that is foremost in my mind. I’m thinking of wearing a t-shirt, gym shorts and flip-flops, carrying my medications in a Ziploc bag.

Airport passenger security as a safety measure is a joke, since all the low-paid workers on the ramp can easily bring in anything a terrorist wants and most checked cargo and baggage is not screened. I know I will be subjected to search in an effort to make me think the government can keep me safe. That is ridiculous. I can’t take my Swiss Army keychain knife with its 1 ½ inch blade onto the plane, but I can take my five inch stainless steel Parker pen, which is a real weapon and can do a tracheotomy in an emergency. I am no safer flying on 9-11-06 than I was on 9-11-01, but I am much inconvenienced as a political ploy. That Americans put up with this is depressing.

I have walked through the Khyber Pass gate from Pakistan into Afghanistan where no checking of cargo is done as people and trucks flow both ways. The free movement of dangerous things is part of life these days. Anyone who suggests differently is either uninformed or a liar. When I flew to California from Indonesia in December 2001 I was met at LAX by National Guardsmen toting automatic weapons. I’m sure that was a real deterrent to terrorists willing to die to wreak havoc, and that I was much less safe because of their presence.