The terrible pain of science fiction made reality
01/10/2001 . Source: Stephen Hunt 

It is a sign of our time, that when something beyond imagination happens, the only way we can reconcile it is to compare it against the output of the cinema industry - and the fantasy and SF of our movies.

When you're wounded and left,
On Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out,
To cut up your remains,
Just roll on your rifle,
And blow out your brains,
And go to your Gawd,
Like a soldier.
- Rudyard Kipling

"This is like ... science fiction."
- Head of NATO, speaking on the day of horror

It is a sign of our time, that when something beyond imagination happens, the only way we can reconcile it is to compare it against the output of the cinema industry - and the fantasy and SF of our movies.

From the office where I work, watching the pictures of the Trade Towers collapse over the internet, to clips of the fortunate few survivors, to the interviews with the great and the good, the words kept on stumbling out.

This can't be happening.

It's got to be a spoof.

It's got to be a movie.

It's like science fiction.

Two minutes after the building collapsed, I actually took a call at work from someone in the US wanting to check reality; to make sure it wasn't just a hacked news channel or some sick web prank. They literally couldn't believe their eyes.

How many times have we watched New York destroyed in the movies? From the monochrome death of 'When World's Collide', to the Hollywood devastation of 'Deep Impact' & 'Independence Day', from monster apes to monster asteroids, who could have guessed hat it was the monsters within humanity's own ranks that could wreak such devastation.

Armed just with wire clippers, a $200 plane ticket & a blind suicidal hatred, the terrorists changed our world in a moment.

The question the civilized world has been asking itself since then is what can we do about this wicked deed, and how can we stop it happening again?

Well, it's seems the consensus is that firstly, a suicide bombing on this scale demands a military response. But it has to be an effective military response. And therein lies the rub.

Afghanistan is littered with the wrecks of armies who tried to subdue it and failed, including both the British and Soviet empires. It's due to the latter invasion that there is nothing left to bomb even if that was the course being set.

As the quote by Kipling above - written in Victorian times - shows, the place hasn't changed much in two centuries. But change it we must, and all the places like it, if we are really to eliminate terrorism.

Thankfully Bush looks like he's only well aware of these facts, as his comment that what he wouldn't be doing, is dropping a million dollar cruise missile on a $10 tent just so it could fly up a camel's butt, indicates.

This is going to be a long war. It's going to be a cold war, Fought as much by money laundering legislation, boosted internal security, bribed enemies and third world aid packages, as it will be by SAS troops kicking in what few doors are left standing in the Afghan mountains. It's not a TV war. It's a boring, behind the scenes war of shadows and persistence.

On a practical note, most the non-drug money that supports Osama Bin Laden and his network comes out of Saudi, the UAE and similar nations. In other words, it's oil money. Maybe now - for the sake of our safety and our environment - we will start a serious drive to harness solar, wave, wind, geothermal and other clean energy sources.

We must also remember that terrorism comes in all shapes, sizes and creeds.

The people who carried out the New York atrocity are different only in scale from those blowing up families on the streets of Northern Ireland and the UK - Catholic and Protestant alike - Basque political slayings in Spain, or the US militiamen leaving car bombs outside US federal buildings.

They are little different in substance from the cartels running poison powders, tablets and capsules to the school playground of the world. Indeed, 85% of the Taliban's currency comes from Heroin.

They are not Muslim terrorists. Or Christian terrorists. Or US patriot terrorists. Or narco terrorists. They are just terrorists.

When a person loves ideologies more than they love people; when they can point at a difference in language, culture, religion, belief or skin color and mouth the words enemy; when they believe all answers flow from the fist and sugared tongue of one person, rather than the care of the many friends and neighbors they live with; it is then, my friend, then that the gates to the road to Belsen or the Siberian Gulag swing open.

Or the road to a fascist theocracy. Where women are denied medical treatment for the fact of their sex; where widows and their children starve because no woman can be allowed to work; where religious antiquities are dynamited; and aid workers jailed for the kindness they show.

The evil dystopian vision we saw unfold before our eyes in New York wasn't science fiction.

Science fiction is Star Trek. A world where all the races of Earth (and many off it) have learnt to get along with each other, where disease and poverty has been eliminated, where tolerance of diversity reigns supreme, where evil is always opposed - not for oil or political interest, but because it the right thing to do. Because sooner or later, an evil ignored will come knocking on your door.

If the world of our future is to become science fiction, this is the science fiction that we must work for it to become.

Perhaps the most pertinent quote to remember is left to the author of a classic Chinese text called 'The Art of War'.

The best way to destroy your enemy is to make him your friend.

(c) Stephen Hunt 2001