The dramatic photographs of passenger planes hitting the World Trade Center towers now spark different feelings from those they evoked at the end of 2001.
The immediate reaction of Americans was to join together against a faceless enemy that killed 3,000 innocent civilians without formally declaring war -- an enemy that provoked a sense of vulnerability never before felt in a country spared by its location and power from such attacks through most of its history.
ILLUSTRATION MOUNTAIN PEOPLE
The country rose to the challenge. In an outburst of support for the victims, hundreds of Americans lined up to give blood for the wounded, even as the sad realization sunk in that there were few survivors. The Red Cross and other organizations helping families of victims were flooded with donations of food and other items.
Democrats, Republicans and independents, conservatives and progressives, southerners and northerners, city residents and midwesterners -- all felt moved. And they felt justified in defending their lives after the attacks.
American flags were hoisted over gardens, homes, buildings, shops, cars, motorcycles and vans as had not been seen in recent memory.
Support for President George W. Bush, who faced severe problems in the 10 months after his highly controversial 2000 election win, rose to unprecedented levels, despite the near 50-50 division in the country between Bush supporters and opponents.
Bush rallied an international coalition to go to war in Afghanistan and push out the Taliban regime that had harbored al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden with support from not only the US public, but also from ordinary citizens abroad.
But any unity started to dissipate as the Bush administration pushed through an agenda that prodded great unease.
The Patriot Act drafted by Attorney General John Ashcroft introduced unthinkable violations of the civil rights deeply imbedded in US history: detention of suspects without charge, arresting suspects without allowing them to speak to lawyers, and spying on telephone and e-mail communications without a judge's order. Even librarians were supposed to submit to secret searches of their lending records without informing borrowers.
Protests from civil-rights groups were barely heard amid the Bush administration's arguments for the war on Iraq.
Bush chose to state the case against Iraq at the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks, noting the UN demand that Iraq give up its supposed weapons of mass destruction or face force. He pushed the issue to a divided UN Security Council, causing huge splits in the transatlantic alliance, with Germany and Russia and France refusing to wage war in Iraq.
The unity Americans boasted after the attacks has, three years later, turned into deep division. The US led a "coalition of the willing" against former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, and continues to supply most of the financial and military resources in the ever-escalating conflict. The purported weapons of mass destruction, administration officials had to admit, were never found.
The near 50-50 division has split open again, with only a small margin of undecideds expected to tip the November elections.
Half of the country thinks Bush has ensured that the US averted other attacks. The other half thinks Bush has put in place noxious measures that undermine civil liberties, and has followed a foreign policy that has alienated and provoked the international community.
Some, like Hashima Johnson, who just finished a master's degree in Brazil studies, have decided to leave the US and go elsewhere, in her case to Brazil.
"Bush is going to win, I'm sure of it, and he's going to appoint one or two Supreme Court judges, and the country I love will cease to exist," she said.
Many who oppose Bush will
of course stay in their country.
Protests against Bush have increased. More than 1,700 arrests during the Republican Convention in New York last month broke the previous record of 600 arrests during the raucous Chicago Democratic Convention in 1968 at the height of the anti-Vietnam War movement.
American unity went up in smoke after bombs were dropped on Iraq. The fallout has been an acrimonious election campaign filled with mutually personal attacks by Bush and Democratic challenger John Kerry.
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under