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Like all great societies, America is a mix of many moods. This diversity, if that be the word, is reflected in the reaction to the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. America is angry, America is apprehensive. Citizen America is patriotic, Corporate Citizen America is panicky. If the overriding question of week one was “Why us?”, the question on the eve of week three was “What next?”
It may sound naive and clichéd but at the most basic level September 11 has made Americans interested in their country and the world once again. The injury done to the Manhattan skyline and to the Pentagon scarred every heart. Take for example Macon, Georgia, a city of some 120,000 people 85 miles south of Atlanta. Macon is America’s Timbuktu, as interior and insular a town as can be. Its local newspaper, The Telegraph, sells 70,000 copies a day, packing its columns with reports on the performance of the teachers in the town’s schools and colleges.
On September 12, The Telegraph deviated from form. It devoted its edition to New York and Washington, Osama bin Laden and jihad — names, places, concepts that seemed so remote and far away. The paper doubled its print run and sold 140,000 copies, more than one per town resident. Macon had rediscovered America. So had the rest of the United States.
Everywhere across the country, Americans were waving the flag, flying it outside their homes, on their cars, wearing scarves depicting the Stars and Stripes. The biggest store chains, whether WalMart or K Mart, reported selling every flag they could provide to teeming customers. About the only comparable fast-moving commodities were maps and books on Afghanistan. In Washington, D.C., home to more security analysts per square inch than the India International Centre in Delhi, one store owner said, “Everything has gone on Afghanistan. There’s absolutely nothing left.”
Quoting a phrase Franklin Delano Roosevelt used during World War II, President George W. Bush spoke of the “warm current of national unity.” For a man who only two weeks earlier was seen as a struggling leader, Bush seemed a new man. A USA Today-CNN-Gallup poll conducted on September 10 showed 51% approving of his performance as president. By September 17, the figure had climbed to 86%. Rarely had so much been achieved for doing so little.
Only nine per cent blamed the Bush administration for the terrorist attacks. In contrast, 16% blamed the Clinton administration and 49% airport security. An astounding 88% wanted retaliation against the terrorists. You didn’t have to wait for the polls to figure that out. You could see it as you drove down the highways, passing dusty trucks with only one word painted on them: “Revenge.” To think the 90% approval ratings in India after the Pokhran nuclear tests in 1998 were called irrational.
It has been a time of new biases for old. Joe Spaulding, a fast-talking taxi driver in Chicago, was a little befuddled when his south Asian and west Asian colleagues chose to quit work on September 11, fearing trouble or, at the very least, rude customers. They were back on the road the next day but not before Spaulding had had an experience that, despite the tragedy in New York, left him chuckling.
“I’m a black man,” Spaulding explained, “and in my time white folks have done some pretty unfair things to my people. So it struck me as funny when a white woman climbed into my cab on September 11 and exclaimed, ‘Thank God it’s you and not one of those foreigners.’”
The reappraisal was infectious. A whole slew of foreign policy analysts was unearthed after a virtually jobless 1990s and asked to redraw the lists of America’s friends and enemies. Out from the Reagan and Bush (senior) closet of 20 years ago emerged Alexander Haig and Lawrence Eagleburger, both former secretaries of state. Eagleburger, incidentally, spoke of “new ties” with India, which has had “its own problems with terrorism.”
A book on the predictions of Nostradamus — the medieval astrologer who is ritually rediscovered after every disaster --now tops the bestsellers’ list. In more literate circles, such as the editorial pages of the New York Times, Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilisations has currency again.
You’d think America is all gung ho and ready to go war — until you went to the airport. For a people focused on a “crusade” (President Bush’s expression, though his supporters insist he didn’t realize the historical connotation) against Islamic jihadis, there appeared to be a remarkable fear of flying.
On September 15, the day after air traffic resumed, Chicago’s O’Hare airport experienced the biggest queues in its history. People started coming at 5:00 a.m. for an 11:00 a.m. flight and, even then, barely made it past the check-in and security counters. Grounded passengers were eager to go home, even as companies like American Airlines — two of its planes were hijacked on September 11 — found it hard to convince cabin crew to go back to duty.
By September 18, a week after the “Day of Infamy,” airports were deserted. At La Guardia, in the heart of New York, taxi drivers twiddled their thumbs as near empty planes released few passengers. The Air Transport Association admitted only 40% of seats were being filled. Others thought even that figure was an exaggeration. In the aviation industry, stretching from the major airlines to aircraft maker Boeing, there was talk of sacking a total of 100,000 people. In the mecca of private enterprise, the government was approached for a $24 billion bailout.
Hotels were doing no better. In midtown Manhattan, a budget hotel’s manager simply couldn’t believe it. Occupancy had fallen to zero per cent. The week before September 11, it had been 98%.
On September 17, Wall Street opened to a 685 point fall on the Dow Jones index, the biggest absolute decline on a single day. Even though the markets were more restrained the next day, life on the bourses was turning nasty and brutish. About the only companies doing well were insurance and train firms, as anxieties about life in general and flying in particular took their toll. Amtrak, the biggest train company in America and a laggard at the best of times, posted prosperous results. So did Greyhound, the interstate bus company. Stock exchange analysts were suddenly bullish about defence equipment companies.
Like its stock indices, America’s heartbeat is forever linked to sentiment. In 1918, as World War I drew to a close, a Russian migrant called Irving Berlin wrote a stirring song called God Bless America. Virtually forgotten for 20 years, it came back to Uncle Sam’s lips 20 years later, when the Nazi danger beckoned. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan used the phrase to end his speeches.
In recent months, President Bush borrowed the Reagan practice and reintroduced the phrase to public life. Few paid attention, until the president’s speech on the evening of September 11. Suddenly the song was reborn. From East to West, Midwest to South, Americans sang God Bless America at operas, baseball games, on the steps of the Capitol, at the recommencement of trading on Wall Street.
There were two ways of interpreting the renewal of America’s contract with God. One, America was ready once again for a war it believed was just. Two, America, symbol of the ultimate in human ingenuity, was suddenly unsure. In a sense, both were true. America had been stirred — but it also had been shaken.
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Notebook
By Ashok Malik