When the first plane hit the WTC I was watching West Wing, a fictional TV series about a fictional president governing a fictional population. The show was almost over when a news flash came across the screen. There had been an incident at the World Trade Centre. This reality interruption was annoying but brief and West Wing resumed. Shortly after West Wing ended another news flash lit the screen. This time there were accompanying images. I watched with a sense of unreality as footage showed a plane hitting the WTC. The plane didn�t just hit the building - it seemed to be swallowed by the bulk of the centre. I watched with increasing disbelief as the drama unfolded and TV crews rushed to the scene to give live reports. The WTC was in chaos as fire trucks, police, people, and debris flew across the screen. And this was only the beginning.
Overwhelmed by the visual impact of what I was seeing I rang a friend in Sydney. We both shared our feelings of disbelief and horror at what we where seeing on our TV screens. And we watched the unthinkable: first one, then another building topple to the ground. We shared the same feelings of fear and terror as we discussed the what�s, where�s, and why�s of the situation. The banners at the bottom of our TV screens screamed: �America under attack�. Speculations on the death toll began. And the numbers were terrifying. 50, 000 people alone worked in the WTC. New reports came in of planes crashing into the pentagon. My heart was racing, my eyes where wide and the hair on the back of my neck was standing upright. It felt like the end of the world to us. And we kept saying to each other � this just can�t be real. It must be a movie. But it wasn�t.
This waking nightmare continued until I decided that by 2am there was no point in keeping an all-night vigil - especially when there was only chaos on screen. I slept fitfully. A few hours later I walked into a subdued office. A TV provided continuous coverage of the WTC aftermath. I spent most of the day in a daze, wandering into and out of the office with the blaring TV. I stared at the images that hit my retinas but found it all so hard to take in the endless discussion, description and analysis as commentators attempted to make sense of the horror. The �America under attack� banners continued to appear at the bottom of the screen but who was America at war with? No one really seemed to know what the hell was going on. There were comparisons made to Pearl Harbour but where were the enemy planes, tanks and troops to identify?
For the next few days I felt like I was in a daze. And I felt a cloud of sadness, depression and fear descend on me as I watched the death toll mount. While 50, 000 people didn�t die the numbers were still too high and it would be long after the incident that the final figure came in: over 3, 000. I wasn't the only one experiencing these worrying emotions. A cloud of frightened emotions descended over America as effectively as the dust from a nuclear explosion. The news reports speculated as to wether this was just the beginning of a campaign of terror that would see many of America's main cities hit. In Australia the speculation was fuelled just as hotly. Would Sydney be the next target? What about here in Canberra? I was only a short distance from Parliament House. Would Parliament House be one of the sites targeted by this campaign of terror? The finger began to point to Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden became the most wanted man in the world.
As the smoke continued to rise from Ground Zero attention shifted to getting the villain of the piece, Bin Laden. But there were other important issues to be addressed out of September 11. Commentators began to ask the question, �why do they hate us?� The fictional West Wing attempted to answer this burning and very real question a short time after the event. But the post September 11 episode came across like a lecture, particularly as the main scene involves the main characters �lecturing� a group of students. Not surprisingly, American interference in the affairs of sovereign nations didn�t make it into the script. The writers of West Wing were given one of the most dramatic events they could ever hope to turn into prime time drama but their attempt fizzled. Reality was too hard to tackle for the fictional West Wing.
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