Dialogue: Life's landmarks took a battering

By JOHN ROUGHAN

Right after the twin towers were destroyed I hoped fervently that they would be rebuilt. Then, after a while, I didn't. I just wanted a picture of the Manhattan skyline as it was from the Staten Island ferry. But I don't even need that now.

Then George died and it should have meant more than it did somehow. The Beatles, after all, had been bigger than the twin towers in the landscape of our life.

And last weekend when the family of Sir Peter Blake said he would not to be buried here, I think we had a right to be disappointed. But we're past that already.

The landmarks of life have taken a battering lately. It is probably too soon to cast events into any sort of coherence but the end of a year invites an attempt and this is my last chance. It is a different landscape now but, when you look at it, not a bad one.

The people who want to put up a monument to Peter Blake should take another walk around the Viaduct, sit on a seat and look across the Lighter Basin for a while. Over there the syndicates have set up their bases again. The black barn looks modest beside the palace that Russell Coutts' Swiss operation has established.

Out on the gulf these mornings the yachts are sailing trials. Within the harbour tourist craft putter about. The Viaduct berths already seem full of spectator vessels, a year before the event.

Somebody behind me, contemplating the scene, said to his companion, "What happens when they lose it?"

Well, some of the syndicate bases are marked for more permanent development. If that side of the marina reflects the style and scale of the township the Viaduct has become, it will thrive.

Blake's inspiration makes anything possible and something probable. I hope they don't try to rename the basin, and it would be superfluous to build anything in bronze. The place already hums with his energy. A pavilion would do, designed to his style - big, busy and sunny, right on the end of the central pier with the yachts all around. A shrine.

Leadership can outlast a life. Leadership can shine even when landmarks are falling. The defining act of this year may yet turn out to be not just the carnage of September 11 but a gesture a month later by New York's mayor, Rudy Giuliani, the Man of the Year for me.

In those frightful early hours of September 12, our time, when planes were flying into buildings and heaven knew what more would happen, Mayor Giuliani was magnificent.

He had been near the World Trade Center when the first tower came down. He quickly came on television, projecting something familiar and calm to the city even as he made no attempt to conceal his shock and foreboding.

Over the next few days he was, as reports put it, cheerleader, grief counsellor, consoler and, above all, crisis manager.

If it were not for America's crazy two-term limits on executive positions New Yorkers would have re-elected him a few weeks ago, just as the country would have re-elected Bill Clinton a year earlier and, dare we speculate, none of this might have happened.

But it was a single act by the mayor on October 11, a month after the horror, that might resound loudest for a long time. That day a Saudi prince came to express his condolences and gave the city a cheque for $US10 million.

While the prince was expressing unalloyed sympathy for Americans and disowning the prime suspect, Osama bin Laden, his publicist handed out a statement suggesting the US "re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stance toward the Palestinian cause".

As as soon as he heard about that, Mr Giuliani sent back the cheque.

"There is no moral equivalent for this attack," he said. "The people who did it lost any right to ask for justification when they slaughtered 5000, 6000 innocent people." Statements of justification were not only wrong, he added, "they are part of the problem".

One way or another, that message seemed to penetrate all but the most jaundiced views of the US this time.

There were those like Noam Chomsky and John Pilger who continued to argue that the US had brought the outrage upon itself - because it had once armed bin Laden against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, because it supports Israel, because it is wealthy.

None of those is a moral equivalent to the fanatical cowardice that sets out to kill random non-combatants in any cause.

When the twin towers fell we wondered whether we were witnessing the beginning of the end of the American century. As the dust clears, everyone is wiser.

The threats to well-governed and wealthy societies will be more readily agreed in the new landscape. The US may even begin to act like an empire at last, and use its power to maintain the security of free and open societies everywhere.

* John Roughan will return in the New Year.