Global Reactions to 9/11

                I was recently discussing this course (“After 9/11”) with a friend.  The conversation focused on how we were only 11 years old when the acts happened so we knew that the attacks were a significant event in U.S. history, but couldn’t fully understand the details.  At that age, you are still fairly innocent and lack certain knowledge about politics, the world, etc.  Now that we are older, we can think more analytically about 9/11 and try to understand that day, as well as the events leading up to it, more deeply.  This friend recently traveled to Europe over winter break, and she mentioned that she was shocked by the opinions of 9/11 that some people seemed to have.  She told me that there were stickers in various places, making fun of the attacks because, they argued, 9/11 doesn’t come close to the numerous attacks that other nations have experienced.  This view reminds me of Arhundati Roy’s—although she never mocks the attacks—because she has noted, “For a country involved in so much warfare and conflict, the American people have been extremely fortunate. The strikes on September 11 were only the second on American soil in over a century.”  Moreover, Roy gave a list of nations who have experienced attacks in fairly recent global history:

The millions killed in Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia, the 17,500 killed when Israel – backed by the US – invaded Lebanon in 1982, the 200,000 Iraqis killed in Operation Desert Storm, the thousands of Palestinians who have died fighting Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. And the millions who died, in Yugoslavia, Somalia, Haiti, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Panama, at the hands of all the terrorists, dictators and genocidists whom the American government supported, trained, bankrolled and supplied with arms. And this is far from being a comprehensive list.

Although 9/11 is rightfully a horrifying day in history for Americans, it seems that, globally, the attacks haven’t necessarily  been viewed as tragically as the U.S. sees them.  That is not to say that people of other nations don’t sympathize with the U.S., but it is shocking nonetheless to hear that it can be taken lightly enough to have stickers around mocking the U.S. and its reaction to 9/11.  At least for me, the information my friend shared was shocking because I guess I never really thought about global perceptions of the attacks; thus, to hear that some people held that view was surprising and really made me think about how different people in various parts of the world might react to both attacks on the U.S. other nations beyond the intellectual perceptions of people such as Roy.