In Morocco of all places. A few Moroccans approached me, asked if I was American, and told me that no arab could have done this. It was all a bit surreal. Other Westerners wondered if we could get home as this would result in war. Strange what fear and shock can do.
All these years later I find the whole rememberance thing strange and more than a bit distasteful. We are bombarded with images of 9/11 and with remembering the 3500 dead, but no similar acknowledgement of the hundreds of thousands, maybe millions who died or had their lives destroyed by the American response to 9/11. There is no equality, even in death. Western lives are clearly more valuable.
Al Queda won in many respects. Our lives have been changed utterly. Security is all-pervasive in the Western world. The body bags continue to return to devastated families from endless wars in the muslim world. Troops return psychologically and often physically maimed. The economic cost of 9/11 has undermined Western dominance of the world, and left us impoverished and debt-ridden. When we remember 9/11 we should remember the folly of it and the true cost of it, not just those who died then, but also all that followed from it.