Terrorists can never be allowed to win

THERE is real irony in the fact that as America marks the greatest terrorist outrage of modern times President Obama needs his Congress’s approval for a €325 billion plan to try to reduce his country’s 9.1% unemployment rate.

It is not at all certain that he will get Republican support to see his taxes-and-aid package made real.

His options are very limited because the American economy is stretched almost to breaking point partially by paying for wars initiated by his Republican predecessors in response to 9/11 — ironically the very Republicans he needs to support a plan that will be a deciding factor in his bid for a second White House term.

One estimate suggests that conflicts sparked by 9/11 may eventually cost America more than €3 trillion. So far most of that money has been borrowed rather than raised through taxes and 10 years on there is no end in sight.

Some things are clear though. Neither of the attackers’ cause nor the victims’ country have improved their standing. Both have suffered decline and the prospect of that continuing, if not accelerating, is very real.

The dangerous extremism represented by Osama bin Laden and al-Qa’ida has been sidelined by the comparatively moderate and, hopefully, secular nature of the Arab Spring.

The idea current amongst some Islamic extremists in 2001 that a jihad prosecuted through terrorism might establish a caliphate reaching from Kabul to Killybegs is seen as preposterous.

So too are the justifications offered by President Bush and his Vice President Dick Cheney in defence of Abu Ghraib, rendition — facilitated by the use of Shannon Airport — and the kidnap-and-torture camp at Guantanamo Bay.

Even today moderate America has yet to accept fully how abandoning the ideas that made it great — decency, opportunity, the rule of law and the defence of civilised, democratic principles — by Bush and Cheney damaged its standing as an exemplary and moral democracy. Relatives of the thousands of innocent civilians killed in Afghanistan or Iraq could explain it to them.

If Bush and Cheney — and America’s increasingly looney right — were unperturbed by these collateral casualties thankfully President Obama is not, as is evidenced by his efforts to renew old relationships with allies and principles. These moves should be supported because a world without a responsible and strong America would be a far bleaker place than we could ever imagine.

Everyone of a certain age on this island knows what a terrorist attack on a peace-loving society means so we can all empathise with the great pain and loss felt by Americans this weekend, especially as so many of the victims were Irish or from Irish families. That genuine concern and support is strong enough not to be diminished by the worrying thought that some of the very real benefactors of 9/11 are those trenchant, aggressive, close-minded Americans whose instincts are belligerent, intolerant and isolationist. Their prominence — Palin, Perry and the Tea Party — is in part a legacy of 9/11, so the attacks have done real, lasting damage to America and its allies.

However, this weekend is about remembering all of the victims of 9/11 whether they died in Manhattan or some dusty place thousands of miles from New York. The best way to do that is by working, by having the courage, to ensure that terrorists, no matter how spectacularly violent, never win.