A JFK moment for the 21st century

Twenty-five years ago today, the world had another JFK moment.

If you were old enough to remember it, then you definitely do.

Actually, I’m old enough that my initial JFK moment happened in Dealey Plaza.

It was a Friday night when our wee black-and-white telly had a newsflash.

In those days, that meant something seriously important.

The news that the 35^th President of the United States was dead was read out on BBC TV by John Robertson, a New Zealander on a short-term contract at the corporation.

His broadcast didn’t survive because it wasn’t recorded.

Still, it burned into the memories of millions who saw it on their screens.

It is my first memory of seeing an adult man cry.

Mr Maguire, my grandmother’s brother-in-law, started to weep quietly in the corner.

Five-year-old me was confused, as this was a new event.

In my wee world, men didn’t cry.

For the global Irish diaspora, JFK was a special person.

It was proof that those who wanted to keep us Irish down would not always win.

In my childhood, every household seemed to have a plate on the wall of JFK in profile.

He was usually paired with a similar ceramic depiction of Pope John XXIII.

In 1963, the community that reared me was very clear where we were positioned on the societal bus in Fair Caledonia, and it, of course, coloured our political stance.

Back and to the left.

Back and to the left.

On Tuesday, September 11th 2001, I was in a seriously good place.

Donegal.

Here are my recollections of that day on the 10^th anniversary of that awful day.

What had not come to pass in 2011 was what I had predicted a week after 911:

That the USA would be defeated in an “Islamic Vietnam”.

I wrote that in Magill magazine for the October 2001 edition, and you can read it here:

MAGILL ISLAMIC VIETNAM OCTOBER 2001.

Two decades after 911 and an ocean of blood and a mountain of treasure, the men who had sheltered Bin Laden and his guys were back in control of Afghanistan.

The scenes of terror and panic at Kabul airport were appalling and tragic.

USA’s compliant junior partner also left Afghanistan with another 21st-century counter-insurgency defeat to add to Iraq.

Frank Ledwidge became a military whistleblower with this brave book.

Like those fatal moments in Dallas that day in 1963 911 has produced an industry of conspiracies as to what REALLY happened.

We cannot accept that a tragic loser like Oswald could remove someone so globally consequential as John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

Modern digital analysis explains there was no magic bullet, and the President’s head whipping back, as seen on the Zapruder film, is consistent with a shot from above and behind.

After the towers came down, various nutters and charlatans wanted to know the REAL reason for the apocalyptic demolition in Manhattan that day.

The conspiracy theory cultists argued that flying two Boeing 767 planes full of fuel for a transatlantic flight slamming into the towers couldn’t be enough to bring them down.

It was yet another example of myth prevailing over evidence when the latter is emotionally unsatisfactory.

The awful truth was that a jihadist in control of an airliner, determined to ascend to paradise as a martyr, was the ultimate smart bomb, and the 19 hijackers were armed with nothing more sophisticated than box cutters.

Memories of traumatic events often spring up on you when you think they’re gone, done and dealt with.

I’m blessed to live in this place, and if I can get it right, sometimes I have a spot like this to myself.

Writers need solitude.

It was on this beach a quarter of a century ago when I had lunch with a group of happy Americans.

We were all oblivious to the horror unfolding across the Atlantic.

As we say here, “the next parish is America. “

My thoughts today are with the innocents on 911, the selflessly brave first responders, and the millions who died in the angry aftermath.