9/11 down the arches of the years. Are we any further forward, 13 years on?

RASHMEE ROSHAN LALL September 11, 2014
People tour the National September 11 Memorial Museum in New York City earlier this year. The  museum opened to the public on May 21 after a six-day dedication period for 9/11 families, survivors, first responders ,workers, and localsThe exhibitions and displays seek to pay tribute to the 2,983 victims of the 9/11 attacks and the 1993 bombing while also educating the public on the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania. Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

People tour the National September 11 Memorial Museum in New York City earlier this year. The museum opened to the public on May 21 after a six-day dedication period for 9/11 families, survivors, first responders ,workers, and localsThe exhibitions and displays seek to pay tribute to the 2,983 victims of the 9/11 attacks and the 1993 bombing while also educating the public on the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania. Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Are we any further forward? Not really as President Obama recently admitted in a roundabout way. Why else would the American commander-in-chief tell The New Yorker that he hasn’t got a joystick with which to control the world. Why else would he confess he really had no particular strategy for dealing with Islamic State (IS)?

But his honesty should be commended. As Major-General Jonathan Shaw, former director of the British Special Forces and head of counter-terrorism at Defence Ministry, wrote in The Evening Standard last week, “President Obama suffers for being what we all clamour for — an honest politician. (This) honesty has led him to recognize that this is a wicked problem that threatens far more than the lives of western hostages or Iraqi territorial integrity.”

He goes on to say that the US President has fortunately kept “his distance from the Pentagon’s inflamed rhetoric”, which shows that “he is loath to repeat the mistake since 9/11 of an over-militarised response to (IS) what is fundamentally an ideological-political threat.”

The right response to IS has to be a Muslim plan backed by the West, says Major-General Shaw, “Obama’s inaction may cause less harm than action. That at least buys time …”

Difficult to admit but that’s probably the best that can be said 13 years on from that terrible day in September when those 19 men boarded planes in the US with box cutters.

Jack Kerouac

“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life”
– Jack Kerouac