Indeed how difficult to believe that an entire decade has passed since those events in New York, now summed up in an all-too-easy catchphrase: 9/11.
It was evening here in Manila, as we watched the smoldering towers of the World Trade Center and then ogled in disbelief as they crumbled in a cloud of dust, fire, smoke and debris. “It’s like watching a movie,” my husband and I commented as we stared at the sight, thousands of miles away and as yet disconnected from the very human dimensions of the tragedy. As it turns out, we would know one or two of the folk who perished that day, and others who should have been there but for some stroke of luck. A niece of mine worked at the time in a building in the area, but was late for work because she got up late. “Thank you for late nights,” muttered her relieved parents.
It’s hard to believe 10 years have passed, mainly because the legacy of 9/11, as commentators have pointed out time and again, is still very much with us. “The Day that Changed the World,” National Geographic describes it, and indeed it changed life as it was for New Yorkers, for Americans, for Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis, Indians and for everyone, including Filipinos, caught in the ensuing web of international terrorism and the heightened tensions it created.
Every time you take off your shoes in an airport line, each time you board a bus or a ferry or a plane and peer into the faces of your fellow passengers searching for tell-tale signs of evil intent, each time you hear of yet another bombing or bomb threat – each of these times is a reminder of that moment when two planes smashed into the World Trade Center and erased the towers from the Manhattan skyline.
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Of course terrorism did not begin on Sept. 11, 2001. Long before then, there had been plane hijackings, airport bombings, hostage-takings and low-intensity conflict carried out in the name of ideology, religion, ethnicity, injustice or a combination of these.
But 9/11 heightened the horror, tore off the masks of innocence and arrogance that Americans had on, and showed the world that no nation was safe from terrorists with fervid imaginations and powerful motivations. We have had our own homegrown brushes with terrorist cells, from bombs on the LRT, a ferry and even commuter buses. We have witnessed just how armed conflict can destroy families and communities, as the people of Central Mindanao, Basilan and Sulu can testify; and as rural folk in countless nameless barangays subjected to armed incursions and a new version of “hamletting” can attest.
We are all heirs to the tensions created by 9/11 and the wars that the event unleashed, wars that were exported in proxy sites like our country. But do we simply accept the legacy and do the best we can to live with it?
On a day like this, it is difficult to talk of peace and imagine an alternative state of things as they are. And yet, it is precisely in remembering 9/11 that we are called upon to devise altered states of living: cooperation instead of conflict, understanding in lieu of grandstanding, compromise instead of hard-line positions. To do otherwise would be to deny the victims of 9/11, including the hijackers, a meaningful death.
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Impunity is exercised not just by “state actors” like police and military, but also by private citizens, at least citizens who are more moneyed and who bear arms, both of which seem to give them a sense of entitlement.
This is what happened to MMDA traffic enforcer Larry Fiala who was shot at least five times by businessman Edward John Gonzalez. Fiala had given chase to Gonzalez after the businessman hit him in the course of an altercation over Gonzalez’s alleged violation of the number-coding scheme. When he finally caught up with Gonzalez, Fiala says, the businessman left his car in a rage and drew his gun, shooting repeatedly at the traffic enforcer.
Fiala is now in a hospital, and his fellow traffic aides have staged a sympathy rally, demanding that authorities not let Gonzalez off the hook, especially since the businessman has been released from detention after posting bail.
Given the weaknesses of our criminal justice system, Fiala and his colleagues have good reason to suspect that in the end Gonzalez will simply walk away. But the measures they and their superiors suggest, especially that of arming traffic enforcers, only promises to create more trouble and lead to more incidents like that which befell Fiala.
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Issuing guns to traffic enforcers, it was said, would serve to “protect” the traffic aides from hot-headed motorists while ensuring greater compliance with traffic rules among motorists, who would presumably be too cowed to fight back.
But if road rage has been endemic in our chaotic streets before this, adding guns to the mix could only add fuel to the fire.
Or as Gunless Society advocate Nandy Pacheco puts it: “The way to fight fire is not with fire, but with water.” Pacheco, who called from his hospital bed, unable to resist the urge to react to developments, bemoaned that in the wake of such incidents like Fiala’s shooting, the knee-jerk reaction of many is to retaliate, by making guns available to unarmed traffic aides.
True, traffic aides are vulnerable to the temper and arrogance of the wealthy and powerful (as are security guards, but that’s another matter). But giving them guns to fire back when they are fired upon will not ensure their safety, it may in fact put them in greater danger, if not kill them.
The antidote to hotheads like Gonzalez is to take guns away from them, ensure that they are not able to buy guns, register them or get permits to carry them in public. Arming traffic aides only puts the rest of us in more danger.