Americans mark the fourth anniversary of the September 11 2001 terror attacks on Sunday nagged by new burning questions about their readiness to confront a major disaster after the debacle of Hurricane Katrina.
Scenes of anarchy and neglect in the flooded southern city of New Orleans, where survivors spent hellish days waiting for troops and relief supplies, have revived a sense of vulnerability not felt here since 9/11.
Both critics and supporters of US President George Bush are wondering what happened to the billions of dollars spent on civil defence since al-Qaeda flew hijacked airliners into the World Trade Centre and Pentagon.
”If our system did such a poor job when there was no enemy, how would the federal, state and local governments have coped with a terrorist attack that provided no advance warning?” asked Republican Senator Susan Collins.
Four years after the assaults that left nearly 3 000 people dead and the world’s superpower reeling, September 11 remains the defining moment for the US in the new millennium.
It triggered wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, saddled US politicians with new criteria of toughness and fostered a ”with-me-or-against-me” mentality that reshaped the diplomatic landscape and strained alliances worldwide.
New York will observe the now-familiar rituals on Sunday: the minute of silence at 8.46am (12.46 GMT) when the first plane struck the trade centre’s North Tower, and the solemn reading of the names of the dead.
The only new wrinkle will be a Pentagon-sponsored ”Freedom Walk” in Washington to honour US troops in Iraq in what critics called a blatant piece of political propaganda by the Bush administration.
A different country
But the country commemorating September 11 this year will not be the same.
Its celebrated war on terror is officially billed as more of an ideological struggle with Islamic extremists; its drive for security is now cloaked as part of a global campaign for democracy.
Thirty months of war in Iraq have left it eager to withdraw troops, not send them into battle. Diplomacy has become the byword of a government scrambling to mend fences and cover itself with multilateral consensus.
It’s no accident that Karen Hughes, a close Bush confidante now charged with burnishing Washington’s image abroad, is seeking to use Sunday’s anniversary also to memorialise terrorist attacks elsewhere across the globe.
State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack confirmed that Hughes was seeking ideas from US embassies abroad.
”What this is meant to show is that we are all in this fight against terrorism together,” McCormack said.
Hurricane Katrina, which left thousands feared dead and hundreds of thousands homeless in the country’s worst natural disaster, has also spotlighted changes in the US since the September 11 attacks.
Whereas the Bush administration acted decisively with al-Qaeda, it faltered in its response to Katrina. If 9/11 produced displays of world solidarity, the post-storm relief fiasco prompted expressions of disbelief and even ridicule.
Perhaps, more fundamentally, Katrina provided the Republican White House with the first real test of its elaborate civil defence programme. By all accounts, it failed miserably.
Experts such as James Carafano of the conservative Heritage Foundation looked at the response to Katrina and shuddered at the thought of a nuclear, chemical or biological attack that would leave tens or hundreds of thousands dead.
”We should learn from this tragedy whether we have the right kinds of resources and programmes in place to provide an adequate national response to catastrophic disaster — either natural or man-made,” Carafano said.
Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, under intense fire for the federal response to the hurricane, acknowledged on Sunday the measures adopted after September 11 were yet to be fully implemented.
”I’ll tell you something I said a month ago before this [Katrina] happened,” Chertoff said. ”I said that I thought we need to build a preparedness capacity going forward that we have not yet succeeded in doing.”
Zero progress at Ground Zero
Meanwhile, reports Giles Hewitt, the reconstruction of Ground Zero where the World Trade Centre once stood — envisaged as a demonstration of New York’s unity and resilience — has become a byword for discord and disorder.
Four years after the attacks reduced the twin towers to rubble, the site remains little more than a giant hole in the ground — a gaping rebuke to planners and politicians alike.
”The death of a dream” was how the Wall Street Journal summed up the situation in a recent editorial.
From its very conception in the traumatic and emotional aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the reconstruction effort has been dogged by false starts, competing interests and empty political rhetoric.
On July 4 last year, Independence Day, in a ceremony laden with patriotic symbolism, New York Governor George Pataki laid the cornerstone for the ”Freedom Tower” — the soaring centrepiece at the heart of the master redesign plan.
”Let this great Freedom Tower show the world that what our enemies sought to destroy — our democracy, our freedom, our way of life — stands taller than ever before,” Pataki said.
Since then, not only has work not started but the tower has had to be completely redesigned after the New York police pointed out in May that the building would be vulnerable to a truck-bomb attack.
That such a fundamental fault was not addressed earlier was testament to the large number of agencies, groups and individuals who have a large stake in the redevelopment project but often diametrically opposed agendas.
The main players include the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the Department of Transportation, the New York Police Department, site leaseholder Larry Silverstein, Pataki and the families of the 2 749 people who died at the World Trade Centre.
From humility to humiliation
Somewhere in the middle of this bureaucratic jungle stands architect Daniel Libeskind, whose master plan for reconstructing Ground Zero was chosen after an international competition in February 2003.
At the time, Libeskind said he was humbled by the responsibility. But humility swiftly became humiliation, as he found himself increasingly marginalised and his original design changed almost beyond recognition.
The call to rebuild, which had resounded before the smoke cleared from the smouldering rubble of the twin towers, was always couched in debate over what to build, with some seeing a site of remembrance, others a future place of work, and still more a symbol of rebirth.
Libeskind’s first blueprint met with public approval but was nixed by Silverstein because of its lack of leasable office space.
Silverstein brought in his own architect, David Childs, and a new plan was unveiled in December 2003 after much bickering between the two designers, which required Pataki’s personal intervention.
The police warning in May forced a third trip to the drawing board and a transformed Freedom Tower model with a bomb-resistant 61m-high base, draped in a reinforced mixture of stainless steel and titanium.
Construction is now slated to begin early next year.
”I think of the whole process as an elaborate forward tumble,” said Philip Nobel, author of Sixteen Acres: Architecture and the Outrageous Struggle for the Future of Ground Zero.
”There never was a moment of sobriety where wise men and women sat in well-lit rooms and decided what should be there in a kind of responsible way. I mean, it was always clean-up,” Nobel said. ”And it started from the very first moment the site began to be actively designed; it was always cleaning up from the last mistake.”
Earlier this year, brash New York property tycoon Donald Trump entered the fray by unveiling his own Ground Zero design and dismissing the existing plans as the ”worst pile of crap architecture I’ve ever seen”.
Trump’s offer found few takers, but his scoffing appraisal of the way the project was being managed struck a populist chord.
Mirroring the debate over the form of the Freedom Tower has been an equally acrimonious dispute over a proposed cultural complex that will house a permanent memorial to the September 11 dead and a museum.
Some families are particularly unhappy with what they see as plans to shift the focus away from the victims by incorporating exhibits on slavery, the Holocaust and global human rights issues.
”Nobody is coming to this place to learn about Ukraine democracy or to be inspired by the courage of Tibetan monks,” said Michael Burke, whose older brother, a firefighter, was killed when the twin towers collapsed.
”They’re coming for September 11.” — Sapa-AFP