SEPTEMBER ELEVENTH

SEPTEMBER ELEVEN





Against imposing towers,
The landscape changed
With duple explosions
Without warning
Unexpectedly ;
Crash! Boom!
Discordant to ear,
Horrendous to sight,
Those fatal fliers of night.


Amidst crumbled concreted steel and glass,
Fire and smoke,
We search for human pieces!
Cries will soon be exhausted,
But memories remain
Of those we lost, the savagery,
Pain not forgotten ,
The stench of terror ;
Violent Death clouds the world.






READER'S COMMENT

History
Enshrouds awesome prophecies,
Man attempts his relentless course ,
Never to avert the rumbles.............
Warmings of his inevitable tragedy ;
Man works to manufacture a future of peace,
Shouts revenge and war,
As if blood may cleanse
The fateful cataclysm of Time.


The Apocalypse is thick
With ink
Laden with forebodings and probabilities,
Yet there is hope;
Man must first suck milk
At Virtue’s breast,
Till solid food becomes his flesh.


This poem was published in The Sunday Gleaner, Jamaica, under the title “HISTORY”,
October 12, 2002.

When will we forget this atrocious act !


The first tower of the World Trade Center constructed in 1972 is 417 metres tall and contains 110 floors. The second tower completed in 1973 was 415 metres high and also contained 110 floors. Considered the tallest building in the world it could accommodate 10,000 workers. The New York World Trade Center was demolished on September 11, 2001, and nearly five thousand occupants killed when terrorists hijacked two planes with passengers and crashed them into the towers in Manhattan. American Airlines Flight 11, Boeing 767 from Boston to Los Angeles , with 92 people on board, crashed into the north tower at 1345 GMT, and American Airlines Flight 77, Boeing 757, with 64 passengers on board, crashed into the south tower at 1403 GMT.
The entire world was shocked , excepting a few anti- American groups who were gratified with the success of the attack. Nations felt it was a declaration of war against the United States. It was determined that Osama bin Ladin, the head of the al- Qaida organization, was the genius of this attack on the United States of America. The sequel was retaliatory action against Afghanistan which had refused to hand bin Ladin over to the United States. On December 7, 2001, the United States launched air strikes and missile assaults on key positions and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The United States was supported by Britain, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, and the Northern Alliance which had been fighting against the Taliban forces for years. From London, Tony Blair, Prime Minister of Britain, declared that : “ We have set the objectives to eradicate Osama bin Ladin’s network of terror, and to take action against the Taliban regime for harbouring him.”
Donald H. Rumfield , Defence Secretary, said that the strikes were designed to eliminate the Taliban’s air defences and to destroy their military aircraft. Afghanistan came under massive air-strikes with the aim to flush out bin Ladin from hiding and to overthrow the Taliban. Along with the air strikes, there was radio telemetry search from sophisticated electronic aircraft. The USA also notified the United Nations Organi-zation that it would take the war against terrorism to states, other than Afghanistan , which harbour terrorists.
President Bush announced the assault on Afghanistan in a televised appearance from the White House less than an hour after the first bombs hit Kabul . He declared that the military strike would be followed by the dropping of food , medicine and other supplies needed by the Afghanistan people.
Two hours after the first strike, bib Ladin announced in a taped message aired on an Arab television station that Americans “will never dream of security and see it before we live and see it in Palestine , and not before the infidel’s armies leave the land of Muhammad.”---an apparent reference to US troops in Saudi Arabia , home to Islam and the tomb of the prophet, Muhammad. Zaher Shah 86. the ousted king of Afghanistan , (ousted in 1973 and living in exile in Rome) appealed to the United States to contain the attack in such a way as to avoid inflicting undue pain, destruction and grief on the people.
Despite the extreme winter conditions, US forces were sent in to conduct hit-and-run operations , to pin-point Taliban installations and to flush out terrorists. The Taliban regime was overthrown, but Osama bin Ladin has not been found.