As the afternoon unfolded my little office gradually became crowded as colleagues gathered to watch the unfolding drama. As we were an acute hospital I went down to the A&E department to warn them that something terrible was happening in America and wondered if a co-ordinated attack could be launched on London which would have knock on effects for emergency services throughout the country. Our turn was to come a few years later.
Immediately there was a massive outpouring of sympathy for the Americans. At the time I was writing my book about Francis Asbury and was in daily contact with libraries and academics in the US. I just wanted them to know how upset we were. That evening I joined my friend Ian, often a contributor to the comments box on here, at the Old Comrades Jazz Club. The mood was sombre and the music chosen to reflect the occasion. We were is a state of shock and I know that younger people will recall this as their "Where were you when you heard Kennedy was shot?" moment. It will be remembered for many years.
There were several things that discomforted me in the ensuing hours and weeks. I didn't feel that the US President George Bush was up to the occasion. His first reaction was to tell the world that the US would find "the folks" responsible. The disappearance of Vice President Dick Cheney is the stuff of legends. In times of crisis leaders take responsibility and risks. This did not seem to be the way the Bush White House were handling things.
Many Americans will say that they are a "Christian country". Some believe it to be the most Christian country on earth. So this attack became a case study in how Christian people would respond to aggression.
Within days America - aided and abetted by some of our own politicians - began an orgy of hate speech that matched anything the jihadists were saying. Americans seem to live in a perpetual Superman movie with a belief that there is always someone wanting to take over the world. Once it was communists, then it was new agers, on September 11 it became Islam. The discourse of American public life seems to have been set by Hollywood drama rather than by the Christ many Americans claim as Lord and Saviour.
Bringing the perpetrators to book would take careful police and intelligence work. This was discarded into a lust for revenge and collective punishment. The wars on Iraq and Afghanistan did little to bring Osama Bin Laden to justice. The same outcome could have been achieved in other more surgical ways. In different circumstances the regime of Saddam Hussein could now be meeting the same end as that of Ghaddafii and Mubarak, with America seen as a model rather than an ogre. But then, well, Saddam would have held on to the oil for a few years longer. 9/11 seems to have been the excuse to go into Iraq to protect business interests rather than keep New York safe.
This was all made worse by the US government's appalling treatment of suspects. The bizarre legal status of detainees at Guantanamo and the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib made a mockery of any idea that the US was a bastion of the rule of law. These wars and abuses did little to promote the US as a role model for countries and peoples seeking democracy, freedom and civil rights.
The tragedy was that much of this was seen to be done in the name of Christianity. Bush in one unguarded moment even referred to the wars as a "crusade", the equivalent of a holy war.
After 9/11 the Americans had the entire world on their side. The warped logic of Osama Bin Laden was there for all to see and he was isolated. Within months that sympathy was blown apart and lost.
The Christian response would have been to pray carefully for the perpetrators and then seek justice. This may have been a little slower but it may have actually saved many lives, both US, British, Iraqis and Afghans. It would have been free of the hate that characterised US public life. It certainly would have celebrated the rule of law by demonstrating that Western Judeo-Christian values can triumph when under great pressure.
History will view these last ten years as a decade of wasted opportunity and a time when Christianity demonstrated its powerlessness in the United States. Just where were the Christians in the aftermath of 9/11?
* with apologies to Fr Daniel Berrigan SJ.
