Retaliation

Retaliation.

It's not really a word I ever use.

Retaliate. intransitive senses : to return like for like; especially : to get revenge
synonym: see RECIPROCATE

No.

I feel horror. I feel anger. I feel disbelief that a mind could conceive of using a passenger jet as a weapon. I was hypnotised by the news channels on Tuesday, heard the desperation in the voices of people on the ground after they saw the second plane hit, people jumping out of windows, emergency services dying in the collapse of the building they were trying to rescue people from. I do not feel a need to put other cities, other people, anywhere in the world, through the same thing.

The news shows Palestinians rejoicing. It turns my stomach that anyone would rejoice over bloodshed but of course, people do. If you lived with terror every day and saw people who you believed were a cause, who did not have bombs and deaths and war on a daily basis and did not appear to care that you did, you might feel pleasure too, a most focused form of Schadenfreude.

Bin Laden says he did not do this but has stated his support for the attacks. He is clearly in awe of such "daring acts" against a super power, praised the courage of those who lost their lives bringing the plot into fruition. Assuming he was not involved in the organisation (and there appears to be evidence that he was), I hear his words and hope that that is a state of mind which will always fill me with revulsion. I concede that violence and terrorism and the death of innocent people happens, on a massive scale, every day. I hope that I will never accept it nor come to the belief that it is unimportant.

Yes, I understand the need for a strong message that people (whoever they are) will not be controlled by terror, will not retreat in fear from what is effectively bullying on a massive scale. But I still believe that this does not mean the message must be filled with terror, must use terror as a weapon. I struggle between wanting to understand people's reaction and wanting to condemn. I'm not quite sure who it is I believe deserves condemnation, only that someone or something to blame would help to relieve the shock.

Bush describes the attack as an act of war; normal civilised rules fall to the wayside. But it isn't — war has not been declared. Retaliation, retribution, reciprocation are truly not an option because we do not know who. And even when we do, there will be no marked battle grounds, no fronts, no us vs. them in nice clear uniforms - not some particularly gruesome match where we know where the goals are and who we are cheering for. And a small part of me is relieved that we are all waiting to work out who it is we can safely condemn. It means there will be time to consider the reaction, for the anger and horror to give way to logic. Even then there is fear of what a cold, purely logical response would have to be.

And god, I don't want to be logical about death. I don't want to accept it as trivial, whether it was someone I knew (and thankfully, the two people I knew who could well have been one of the thousands and thousands of casualties both reported in safe yesterday) or a random stranger.

I sat in front of the television on Tuesday from the time that the second plane hit the World Trade Center to just before the President's address. I watched the footage over and over again: the smoothness and competence with which a jet airliner was aimed at the second tower, the billowing smoke and dust rushing through the streets with people running to try to escape the collapsing buildings, the smouldering hole in the side of the Pentagon. I considered whether the plane that crashed outside of Pittsburgh was shot down and reluctantly admit to myself that it well could have been the only way of saving more lives, that it would be a logical response. Death of innocent people, trying to get to work, to friends, to their home. I shudder to even consider having to kill them in an attempt to keep the death-count down.

My personal connections are not particularly strong. I am watching this from thousands of miles away in Southern Spain. I don't particularly think of myself as "American," having grown up with a German mother, split between Los Angeles and Mannheim; I haven't lived in US territory for over 10 years. The tendency towards extreme patriotism I saw in my Californian friends was diffused by the fear of patriotism in post-war Germany, memories of the Third Reich still echoing through our household.

Still, I share in American shock, a nation who has not had a full-scale war within its own borders since the civil war in 1865. There is a feeling of security, the damage happens elsewhere, but not in those famous US cities we see in films and news footage every day. It is, I fear, easy for Europeans to ignore the impact of this, the betrayal felt that this could happen with no warning, with no chance of defence. I could feel superior that this false sense of security was never a part of my upbringing but in reality a part of me believed that the United States, all the places I know and love there, were safe, should I ever wish to return.

My mother phoned me after the second plane hit the World Trade Center. I wasn't actually particularly concerned about her yet, she spends time in Manhattan, even in the towers, but chances were she'd be someplace else, most likely DC. She phoned from the airport to say her flight had just been cancelled and she just wanted me to know that she wasn't in New York. As the scale of the attack became clear, that DC was also under attack, that the flights were full of people travelling to California, I breathed a sigh of relief that she had called, that I didn't have to worry about where she was, which flight she was on. They'd missed her.

Don't think about the thousands they didn't miss who died yesterday, trapped, still trying desperately to escape. Those in the planes and closest to the crashes were the lucky ones, who never had a moment to realise what was happening and they were really, truly going to die for showing up to work that day.

Don't think about the panic of Air Traffic Control as they try to work out what to do as the planes go off course and the resulting cold feeling as it becomes clear why.

Don't keep watching the second jet hit the South tower over and over from various perspectives. Don't think about piloting that plane, banking towards the tower, struggling to keep it steady so I can cause as much destruction as I can as my final act. I curse my own imagination as the bile rises in my throat.

Don't give way to the rage building up at the unfairness of it all. Life isn't fair. These deaths were not fair. Don't give in to believing that random violence cures random violence.

Two days later, I continue to watch CNN, chain-refresh www.bbc.co.uk, not sure what it is I'm looking for.

Why am I doing this to myself? I struggle to stumble to some sort of conclusion. Perhaps it's too early to be writing at all, to even consider making any sense of this, let alone any sense of closure. I grew up being told that the world was not a good place, that people were killed in the names of various causes and there was no cure, or even a clear right and wrong. Perhaps continuing to try to write it down is fighting the reluctance to face reality head on, I heard but I did not accept.

Neither emotion nor logic dares rule in my saddened pacifist soul. And perhaps that is why I am watching the news so obsessively - in the hopes that a mind better than mine can find answers that I can live with.