9-11 Named ‘Defining Moment’ Of 21st Century’s First Decade
Posted December 28, 2009 1:14 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
It was the decade of a cataclysmic act of terrorism and its violent aftermath.
And the world-altering terrorist attacks on New York and Washington are together the defining moment of the 21st century so far, according to a new poll.
The Canadian Press-Harris Decima poll found a plurality of 43 per cent – twice the second-best response – naming 9-11 as the most important and profound event of the last 10 years.
The co-ordinated attack was the top choice among both women and men, and for both young and old, topping the election of U.S. President Barack Obama.
“It’s no surprise,” said pollster Doug Anderson. “It is almost certainly an event for which most Canadians can tell you exactly where they were at the time they first heard of it.
“I think 9-11 has become something you say … like the ‘post 9-11 world,’ and it refers to a real change to our approach to the world.”
The 2001 suicide attacks remain vivid in most imaginations in large part because the sight of a plane crashing into one of the World Trade Centre towers, while the other burned, was captured on live television. Millions then saw in disbelief as the towers crumbled to the ground.
The immediate tally was about 3,000 deaths, including 24 Canadians.
But the aftershock continues to shape global events.
The attacks shook the confidence of the world’s sole superpower, triggering an immediate economic recession that helped set the stage for the recently concluded 2008-2009 Great Global Recession.
They spawned two wars, including one that still has 2,800 Canadian troops deployed in Afghanistan.
They ignited a debate about the role of religion in the modern world, resulted in the imposition of an overlay of expanded security measures and curtailment of civil liberties, and exposed a new world fault line as deep and fearsome as the Cold War.
Even now, it is not clear how long the so-called post-9-11 era will drive global politics.
Anderson notes that in any other decade, two other events might well have been judged world-altering enough to qualify as defining moments.
The 2008 election America’s first black president, Barack Obama, was favoured by 22 per cent of respondents, and another 17 per cent chose the recent Great Recession as singular events in the decade.
“The Obama election was one of those things that might, over the long term, go down in history as a fairly important moment,” he said, noting that beyond Obama’s African-American origins, his election potentially ushers in a new era in U.S. foreign policy.
The survey also asked respondents to name the TV show and the technical innovation of the decade, and here the responses were more varied.
CSI, the police procedural that gave birth to a half-dozen spinoffs, was chosen by 20 per cent of respondents, followed by American Idol with 11 per cent, while The Sopranos, 24 and Survivor each garnered seven per cent.
For technological development, social networking innovations such as Facebook and Twitter narrowly beat out smart phones and hybrid cars, 26 per cent, 24 per cent and 21 per cent respectively.
“Social networking means a lot of different things to different people,” said Anderson. “But certainly there’s a broad cultural adoption of the idea of getting together with people online now, where you wouldn’t have been able to do effectively 10 years ago.”
The survey of 1,000 people, conducted Dec. 3-6, is considered accurate to within plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
