I guess that if I'd had a relative involved in 9/11 I'd be feeling a little different now. I wouldn't have that sense of unease at the triumphalism and I might not be wondering what happens next. But there is something that has become clear today and that is: that this was all about revenge. Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo, torture, the rise of the intelligence community: Its all been about revenge for an act, allegedly and very probably instigated but not planned by Osama Bin Ladin the man who became the symbol of Islamic Terror.
And in the course of that revenge, and in the heat of its rage, the USA and its allies have brought about the deaths of a great number of people; people who were not involved in the atrocity of 9/11; people who have never carried a Kalashnikov and who probably would have preferred to have lived in the West, rather than been bombed by it. This is not a day for anything other than quiet reflection for all the victims of 9/11, those who died on the day and the ones who came after and whose blood was shed in the name of its revenge.
And as for what happens next - I'm really not sure that you can ever kill a symbol.
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