Six years on

I never imagined writing about the happenings of September 11, 2001, but six years on, it's still on everybody's mind - it was the topic of discussion at lunch, exactly the time of the attacks.

It was the last day of my 2001 summer holidays that for some reason ended on a Tuesday. I took the kids to school, played 18 holes of golf, drove home, grabbed a beer and collapsed exhausted on a kitchen chair in front of the TV. To my amazement, the first tower was burning, and shortly I saw the second plane hit the south tower, live on CNN. I stayed glued to the TV for the next two hours.

Six years later, I have personally only been affected by the travel restrictions, mostly when travelling from the UK. I never had great interest in travelling to the US anyway. I can sympathise with the Islamic fundamentalists' view of US foreign policy and particularly of the Bush administration and the great leader himself. But obviously, their tactics have to be condemned.

So where does that leave us? There's no way of stopping the terrorist psychopaths - there are just too many potential targets to defend. The US and particularly its troops will continue to pay for meddling where they should have stayed away. And people on both sides will gradually forget both the events and the arguments, just as they did with Vietnam, until some future leader, probably in pre-school right now, thinks that war is a good solution for some other imagined threat.