Manhattan 15 Years Later

The Chornobyl nuclear power unit exploded on April 26, 1986. The next couple of days people in Kyiv listened to the radio, watched television, then came May 1 and brainwashed demonstrators shouted patriotic songs on Khreshchatyk. The Soviet leadership assured the country that everything was OK. And all the while winds carried lethal radioactive dust over the city and far beyond.

In the meantime, the authorities secretly put fire brigades, medical personnel, and army units on red alert, sending busloads with dimmed headlights to Chornobyl to save the city and the rest of the country. Those people were sent to their deaths.

It was only ten days later that the people found out what had happened and the city was instantly deserted. Kyiv streets looked dead, the wind pushing heavy low dark silver clouds from Chornobyl, brushing and scorching the tree tops over the Dnipro.

Fifteen years later on September 11, 2001, I was working at my PC at home on Staten Island. It was nine in the morning and I would have to board the ferry to get to my office in Manhattan by twelve. I did it every day. My wife had left only fifteen minutes ago and was obviously late for work. Then she was suddenly back, very excited.

“Turn on the TV. The city is under terrorist attack. WTC is on fire. All Staten Island bridges are closed. Your ferry is moored.”

We watched television. It was 9:20, and we looked at the smoking twins as the anchorman replayed the scene with the second jet liner hijacked in Boston hitting the north tower.

Several minutes later we saw Washington and smoke rising over the Pentagon, just minutes after the third liner with kamikaze terrorists had attacked America. There were 55 minutes between the first and the third attack.

The man on the screen was saying that several other hijacked aircraft were airborne. All of America froze in shock, and then we saw the south tower hit by the second jet liner slowly cave in and vanish from the screen. 29 minutes later the north tower collapsed. We knew that 15-20,000 people worked in each tower rising almost half a kilometer high. Could they have escaped in those several minutes left them? The whole southern part of Manhattan was covered by a huge cloud of smoke rising a thousand meters, it was like a nuclear blast, and it was grayish black with tongues of flame lashing out, gray clouds of ash, pieces of burnt paper flying like snowflakes in the sudden dark.

It was a catastrophe and the whole world was paralyzed by what happened. Everybody knows what happened as the hours and then days passed.

Human nature does not change in different places. Fifteen years ago, it was Kyiv, now New York. Thousands of volunteers rushed to help, offering their hands and blood. Several hours after the attacks, we heard on television that in Manhattan alone there were thousands of people standing in line to donate blood. In fact, the announcer said please, we really appreciate your help, but that will do for now, thank you all.

We got in the car and seven minutes later were by the ferry. Eight miles across Manhattan was burning. Even here our eyes were watering from acrid smoke, and we had to clear our throats now and then. The square before the ferry was packed with fire trucks, ambulances, firefighters, nurses, doctors, policemen, and servicemen. The first wounded were already being carried out on stretchers from ferries arriving from Manhattan and the vessels were instantly reloaded with trucks, firefighters, and medical personnel.

And there were Americans standing all over the embankment with Manhattan in plain view. They had cameras and small stars and stripes. Many were weeping. It was 12 in the afternoon but it looked more like night.

America, the mustang country, protected from the external enemy by its perimeter on all sides from the ocean, land, air, even outer space, suddenly found itself completely exposed to aggression from within by a handful of suicidal zealots.

Much has been written about this phenomenon mushrooming among the Arab fundamentalists exercising influence in almost every Arab country, increasingly often turning the world, common sense, and age-old laws of good and evil topsy- turvy. Much will be written about it. The main thing, however, is that all of us who want to live in peace and see our children alive will have to come to the appropriate conclusions. We must before it is too late. If it is not too late already.

But I want to discuss something else. The whole world responded to the US tragedy with the utmost sympathy, sharing America’s pain and grief. Parliaments and governments addressed words of condolence to the US government and people. Many countries declared days of mourning and the American anthem was played as a sign of solidarity; all festivities and sports competitions were suspended or canceled; thousands of people placed flowers by US embassies and consular offices.

Yet there are many countries where people openly or secretly rejoice in this tragedy. They sing and dance, celebrating what they saw as their victory, drawing women and children into the orgy. It is a fatal pathology to be sure. How do all those outwardly normal countries respond to this tragedy? How does my native Ukraine?

Of course, the bulk of the people are truly sympathetic. But trying to justify this immense suffering, all those people killed not on the battlefield but on city streets, in broad daylight, on an ordinary weekday, is blasphemous. When this justifying is done on a mass scale, it is a symptom of a grave social disease, of pervert concepts concerning universally accepted morals. It is not a symptom of a disease affecting a group of people; it is not personal, it is a general sociopolitical ailment.

Of course, one can love or hate America. One can come to New York to study or have a great time as a tourist, walking up and down Broadway, exploring museums, visiting restaurants, and say goodbye before leaving, I’ll never set foot on this soil again. I have met people acting either way. But this is no big deal. Everything happens.

One can visit America being paid American money, to attend a conference or take a course of on-the-job training at a university, library, or archives, meeting with hospitable Americans and generous immigrants, our compatriots. And then we can return home and write in a newspaper about how ignorant and dull all Americans are, and about former countrymen being all bacilli, making it difficult to breathe beside them.

It is possible and perhaps necessary to reject the globalist trends dominant in the policy of certain giant US companies trying to have their way under any circumstances and bring underdeveloped economies under control.

It is possible and useful to criticize America for the bombardment of Yugoslavia, for helping friends and hurting enemies in the Middle East, for letting business interests prevail over sociopolitical and moral ones, and so on. All this is possible.

But do you tell a man run over by a car that it is his fault? Do you curse the bridge you go over? Do you talk about death by sickbed? Do you bite the hand that feeds you? When leaving a hospitable home, after a hearty meal, will you spit somewhere in the corner, behind the hostess’ back and then tell her to shove it?

Finally, will you admire the bandit who caught a woman in the doorway, raped her, robbed a house while the owner was away, and then got away? Will you say, oh, how clever, resourceful, and courageous he was? If you heard someone say anything like that, would you not regard it as a pathology?

Almost every newspaper in Ukraine, apart from expressing condolences and condemning terrorism in general, points out, in a more or less veiled manner, that America actually provoked that terrorist attack. And to think that Lviv’s Postup turned out on the crest of that wave of hating America! A newspaper embodying the Ukrainian Piedmont! I will not mention all those marginal editions and parties. Postup’s response came the very next day after the New York tragedy.

One V. Derhachov, a Ph.D. in geography, wrote, “The acts of terrorism in the United States were to be expected. They cannot be reduced to the treachery of the fundamentalists, extremists, terrorists, and so on. What happened is a response to the American policy in Eurasia and to Brzezinski’s book The Great Chessboard.”

K. Bondarenko gloats over the acts of terrorism in New York, saying they are evidence that America has “enemies everywhere.” The author identifies the allied air raids on military targets in Iraq with the terrorist attack on New York, adding pathetically that “women and children also died there.”

He does not understand why no one was outraged by what happened in Iraq and why everybody is outraged now. He sees Osama ben Laden as just a “harbinger of the American apocalypse.”

L. Petrenko, in the same issue, openly admires the terrorists, describing them as “unmatched masters of their trade... Attacks that are brilliant by their very simplicity.”

Television journalist Vyacheslav Pikhovshek echoes him, “A brilliantly coordinated combat operation.”

People’s Deputy Filenko interprets the terrorist actions and the US policy as two sides of the same coin, justifying terrorism and saying that “every coin has two sides. The US has not always acted adequately, either.”

Prof. Oleh Soskin, leader of a party, comments on the New York tragedy in the Soviet vein, “But suppose Russia is directly behind that act of terrorism.”

I remember the evacuation period [during World War II]. Everybody was poor and hungry. There was no bread. We children were each given a chunk of iron-hard linseed cake which we would suck and chew on throughout the day. It helped quiet the stomach somewhat. Then suddenly we had ration tickets and started receiving cans of US pork and powdered eggs. This food saved millions from death by starvation.

Ukraine is receiving material aid from the United States, once ranking third after Egypt and Israel. Dozens of US organizations are financing hundreds of Ukrainian political, social, and civil programs, spending hundreds of millions of dollars, and all this money serves Ukraine’s benefit.

Ingratitude, meanness, and malice have never been man’s good travel companions. Ukrainian-Americans in the diaspora love and are dedicated to their new homeland, which saved them from violence. At the same time, they contribute energy and money to help make Ukraine a thriving independent country. Some of them also died in New York.

Fifteen years ago, an explosion at Chornobyl changed Ukraine and its people. Chornobyl was the result of the decaying system and harbinger of the Soviet Union’s collapse. There would have been no perestroika but for that explosion, and is true of Rukh and what happened on August 24, 1991.

The treacherous destruction of WTC has also changed America and its people. Gone is the daring devil-may-care mustang. America’s cowboy naivete and trustfulness died in the debris of its fallen symbol.

Without the Twins, Manhattan looks like a homeless child, a sight shocking to the Americans. Yet there are numerous signs that the stab in the back has transformed the motley crowd coming here from all parts of the world for freedom and finally knit it into a solid family, with all members firmly holding hands.

The catastrophe has opened the America to the eyes of the rest of the world. No, it is not Armageddon or Babel. It is a revelation. America will rise and grow even stronger. It will never collapse. Now is the turn for all the others, among them Ukraine, to look at the world with different eyes. We must if we want to survive and live like human beings.