My Top 50 Films of the 00s

So, after criticising various top 50 lists for films in the 00's I was challenged (I think, I may have ended up challenging myself, the details are somewhat unclear) to make my own list. There's only one rule which is that I must have actually watched the film so there are a few obvious omissions but the rest is all just my opinion, man.

For a straight list without explanations please go here.

50 Black Snake Moan

A real oddity, a film about the southern United States that doesn't mock or belittle them. Powerful, different and interesting.

49 The Prestige

Its the sheer inventiveness of Nolan's fourth film that elevates it into this list. Hugh Jackman unleashing his showman side is a joy to behold and the various twists are outstanding.

48 Stardust

Fairy tales seem to have made a comeback in the noughties and this is a very good example with all the magic, horror, and fun you'd expect.

47 Nine Queens

The 00s saw a huge revival in South and Latin American film making and this Argentinian heist film is one of my favourites. A complex multi handed tale revolving around a set of highly collectable stamps. Received the obligatory American remake in 2004's Criminal starring John C. Reilly.

46 High Fidelity

One of my favourite romantic comedies, a clever adaptation, and a career best performance from John Cusack. Witty, guy centric, with a distinct charm.

45 A Scanner Darkly

Elevated by the use of rotoscope into a bewildering, trippy insight into a dystopian world riddled with drug abuse and government surveillance.

44 School of Rock

When Linklater isn't blowing your mind in A Scanner Darkly he's directing the best 'comedian with a bunch of child actors' film you've ever seen. One of my most watched films of the decade.

43 District 9

Sci Fi didn't have a great decade but body horror and allegories for apartheid combine to brilliant effect in a consistently surprising début film.

42 Ping Pong

The best sports film ever made.

41 Almost Famous

One of the most personal and heartfelt films to come out of Hollywood in the 00s. Its hard not to be swept along by its relentlessly optimistic tone.

40 Stranger Than Fiction

Will Ferrell is actually watchable in this very post modern take on the rom com. The narration device works really well but there is enough of a plot elsewhere to stop it becoming a one joke comedy.

39 My Summer of Love

Paddy Considine has starred in a string of critically adored British films this decade, most of which I can barely stomach. For my money this is the best as he portrays an increasingly obsessive preacher, in a one of the few British films to escape this decade's obsession with the This Is England style social realism aesthetic.

38 Thank You for Smoking

Before he was Harvey Dent, Aaron Eckhart was the smooth, likeable moral vacuum at the heart of Jason Reitman's film about the tobacco industry. It works by taking its shot at everyone, defending the indefensible just like its main character.

37 The Fog of War

A man talking for an hour and a half. It'd have to be an interesting man to make this list and it turns out former US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara is just such a man. One of the simplest and best documentaries I've ever seen.

36 American Splendour

Paul Giamatti does downtrodden better than anyone on film and Harvey Pekar does downtrodden better than anyone in comics. It was always going to work.

35 Lost in Translation

It may not be everyone's cup of tea but I adore the storytelling through body language in this film.

34 Persepolis

Animated politics, it was bound to be on the list. I was fascinated with the sections in Iran which inventively portray a child's take on the revolution.

33 Big Fish

Its sheer warmth is infectious. Ewan McGregor brings all his considerable charm to the table and delivers a fantastic tale of a life well lived.

32 A Single Man

Colin Firth cements his place as one of the great underrated actors as he portrays a gay university professor in 1962 struggling to cope with the death of his lover. Its an understated performance dripping in a subtle melancholy that doesn't so much tug at the heartstrings as attach them to a pack of wildhorses.

31 Little Miss Sunshine

Indie road trip movies starring dysfunctional familes are a dime a dozen but Little Miss Sunshine is one of the very best. Paul Dano and Steve Carrell are particularly superb in an astounding strong cast delivering a funny and touching script.

30 Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl

One of the best summer blockbusters to ever be made. Retroactively destructive sequels have tarnished its reputation but it remains a witty, entertaining film with sparkling action sequences. At least in the first film its sprawling, convoluted plot is an asset.

29 Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

Robert Downey Jr had the decade of his career in many ways and this film is just one reason why. Probably too self referential for many but I like its digs at formula film making and the sparky interplay between the two leads is exemplary.

28 Baader Meinhof Complex

The story of the Baader Meinhof group is so interesting that this German film has to do little other than present the facts to be flat out brilliant.

27 Dodgeball

The Frat Pack dominated American comedy throughout the 00's and Dodgeball captures them at their best. The characters are familiar and the jokes are mostly incredibly stupid but there's enough charm and belly laughs to make those facts virtues.

26 Juno

Uniformly outstanding performances, two future stars on the cusp of greatness and an indie look that would come to be standard; its easy to see why Juno was such a success and why there was an inevitable but unwarranted backlash.

25 Cloverfield

Not as influential as I had expected it to be but Cloverfield's visual style is breathtaking. Not only a tightly paced reinvention of the monster movie but a rollercoaster of thrills and danger. Its real strength is capturing the aesthetic of the 00's, the decade where user generated content became king is the perfect time for an action movie filmed by its participants.

24 Slumdog Millionaire

The story is enough for me to love Slumdog Millionaire, the fact the film is also finely directed and well acted only seals the deal.

23 The Lives of Others

Subtle, slow, deeply affecting and poignant. The Lives of Others is the kind of film that makes you want to sit on your own and think for a few hours afterwards.

22 In Bruges

Colin Farrell resurrects his career in a film about a hundred times funnier and sadder than I was expecting. At times silly, offensive or redemptive, In Bruges is predictably divisive but is clearly the work of a true original.

21 Spider-Man 2

For my money, the only really good comic book film that manages to combine real drama and solid action with the essential silliness of the original comic book. Dr. Octopus is both a complex human being and a swaggering super villain, Spider-man is a wisecracking kid with absurd powers and a teenager struggling to become a man. A film of great scope that doesn't forget to be fun.

20 Moulin Rouge

Pretty much single handedly resurrected the live action musical which is enough of a feat by itself. Built for the big screen it has suffered slightly since but for sheer vision and humour, it slips into the top 20.

19 Donnie Darko

The teen movie to end all teen movies, but that doesn't mean its not insightful, complex and rewarding. Made a star out of Jake Gyllenhaal for good reason, and even if Richard Kelly never manages to follow it up, it remains a work to be immensely proud of.

18 Lilo and Stitch

While Disney's hand drawn animations have struggled throughout the 00's but Lilo and Stitch is an underrated gem. Impossibly cute but also genuinely funny and touching, Lilo and Stitch is the gold standard to which all children's films should aspire.

17 The Reader

I have rarely cried in cinemas but The Reader broke me with a few red dots on the side of a cassette tape. For that reason alone it goes into my top 20.

16 Mystic River

I've not always been the biggest fan of Clint Eastwood's directorial career but to me Mystic River is a staggering high. It may be depressing, dark and dripping with violent intent but that doesn't mean it can't be watchable, gripping entertainment too. I don't like Sean Penn often, but when he's good, as in Mystic River, he's really very good indeed. Also, has my favourite trailer of the decade.

15 Memento

Christopher Nolan is a huge talent and now one of my favourite film makers, but this is the film where he came to my, and most people's, attention. Taking the 90's obsession with disjointed chronology and taking it to its logical conclusion he creates a crime drama interesting enough to hold the audience even without the stunning storytelling device. Unique, and brilliant, you can ask little else of a film.

14 Motorcycle Diaries

One of the best of the South American bubble follows a youthful Che Guevara as his political views are formed on a round trip of the continent. Its fascinating to watch a burgeoning young mind getting its first experience of the world and it demonstrates the quality of South American film that this biopic needs no gimmicks to tell a good story.

13 Gosford Park

Robert Altman resurrected the careers of half the British acting community in this outstanding ensemble drama. As usual it takes an American director to really show the truth of the British class system and he does so beautifully. Would have been higher without Stephen Fry's misjudged late cameo.

12 Children of Men

The beautiful, impeccably detailed and quintessentially British set design are reason enough for me to love this film but Clive Owen acting his full range from angry stoic to defiant stoic to sad stoic pushes this film up to 12. Few films can match the imagination of the action set pieces and the final sequence in Bexhill remains one of my favourite ever filmed.

11 Requiem for a Dream

A fast tracked descent into madness with all the visual tricks that a young and still ragged Darren Aronofsky could muster. Its ultra fast drug taking montages and innovative camera work have become standard because of their sheer brilliance. Its exhilarating visual kinetics emphasises the depressing spiral of the characters in the most powerful assault on the senses to come out of the 00s.

10 Dark Knight

A very grown up comic book film that has more in common with a Michael Mann crime epic than Spider-man or X Men. Its complex themes, dark tones, and charismatic villains make it endlessly rewatchable, while the three leads are exceptional. Its flabby final third keeps it at number 10 but I expect it will always be regarded as the pinnacle of the 00 comic book revival.

9 (500) Days of Summer

Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. Its not a rom com, its a film about love, what it is, what it means and what it isn't. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is, as usual, astoundingly good as a frustrated architect and hopeless sop learning the hard way about emotions.

8 Brick

An idea so simple it must be genius. Take the conceits, characters and plot of a Film Noir and set it in an American High School. The result is funny, clever, and brilliant. Joseph Gordon-Levitt pitches his shambling but smooth talking performance perfectly to capture the mood of both the schoolyard and the PI's office.

7 No Country for Old Men

There are so many brilliant elements to this film that its impossible to list them in this space. Just a fantastic film about great characters caught up in a perfect plot.

6 Waltz with Bashir

I've never seen an animated film quite like this. Here the animation is used to demonstrate and amplify the insanity of war and the unreliability of memories. Manages to take the documentary in staggering new directions and retain the horrendous nature of events without driving the audience away or overwhelming them with a monotony of horror. Has more insight and artistry etched into every frame than some film makers manage in their careers.

5 Zodiac

The Director's Cut shows this tale of obsession as it should be. One of the few films about serial killers to completely avoid romanticising the murderer or generating cheap thrills out of real deaths. The film's sprawling length and timespan capture all the frustration and anger suffered by those hunting a serial killer who taunts his opponents. A film that demands a lot of its audience but is worthy of the effort.

4 Downfall

Perhaps the only film to have attempted to capture why Hitler inspired such fanatical loyalty from so many people and, in doing so, portrays the horror of WW2 and Hitler's lunacy better than has ever been achieved. Bruno Ganz produces a staggering portrayal of the angry, increasingly impotent and violent leader struggling to cling to any tenuous hope he can find. A brilliant film, aided by its rigid structure and lack of visual flair.

3 The Incredibles

Perhaps my favourite animated film of all time. It takes the conventions and set ups of a million comic book tales and takes them into uncharted territories with brazen confidence and flat out quality writing. A kids films where the main focus is on the strains middle age puts on a marriage, and where the supervillain feeds on the frustration of an emasculated male; this is a constantly surprising animation that stands easily alongside any of the live action films of the decade. The incredible amount of thought put into every sequence just shines off the screen and feeds into every aspect of the film.

2 City of God

A sprawling epic that contains some of my favourite scenes of any decade. The cast of semi-professional actors manage to deliver natural, heartfelt performances that draw you into an unfamiliar world. The film functions as tragic study of socio-economic cycles of violence and retribution, and as a thrill ride through favela culture unmatched by any other film.

1 There Will be Blood

There can be few more intense films ever produced. Daniel Day-Lewis dominates the screen from first minute to last; his luxuriant, coldly threatening, and deeply charming voice adding to a stalking, almost awkward physicality to produce one of the great screen characters. On first viewing it is almost impossible to look past Day-Lewis but on second viewing you begin to notice the trends of capitalism versus religion, the brilliance of Paul Dano as a charismatic preacher who stands in Day-Lewis' path, the powerful score, and the perfect evocation of an era and particularly American time period. Then there is the ending, possibly one of the greatest endings of any film and the perfect cap to an intensely satisfying, rewarding and intelligent film that deserves to be hailed alongside the greatest of all time.

Top 50 Films of the 00s - Simple List

50 Black Snake Moan
49 The Prestige
48 Stardust
47 Nine Queens
46 High Fidelity
45 A Scanner Darkly
44 School of Rock
43 District 9
42 Ping Pong
41 Almost Famous
40 Stranger Than Fiction
39 My Summer of Love
38 Thank You for Smoking
37 The Fog of War
36 American Splendour
35 Lost in Translation
34 Persepolis
33 Big Fish
32 A Single Man
31 Little Miss Sunshine
30 Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl
29 Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
28 Baader Meinhof Complex
27 Dodgeball
26 Juno
25 Cloverfield
24 Slumdog Millionaire
23 The Lives of Others
22 In Bruges
21 Spider-Man 2
20 Moulin Rouge
19 Donnie Darko
18 Lilo and Stitch
17 The Reader
16 Mystic River
15 Memento
14 Motorcycle Diaries
13 Gosford Park
12 Children of Men
11 Requiem for a Dream
10 Dark Knight
9 (500) Days of Summer
8 Brick
7 No Country for Old Men
6 Waltz with Bashir
5 Zodiac
4 Downfall
3 The Incredibles
2 City of God
1 There Will be Blood

A Decade On

I felt sick for weeks after 9/11. A creeping sickness, as if something was rotting inside me. It may have been fear or revulsion, maybe a confused bodily reaction to the sudden and brutal restructuring of the world. I can still recall the uneasiness which permeated from my mind into my physical state. A decade later, I am not sure if the sickness ever left me.

That day is etched into my mind, I carry the snapshot memories in me and can recall them at a moment’s notice. Being told by a friend as I stood at the school gates, being part of the crowd in Dixons watching something unknown and terrible unfold, the endlessly replayed footage, the monotony of horror and the relief that came from finally turning off the television. The ceaseless rolling coverage of pain and suffering beamed directly into our homes magnified and intensified the event out of all knowable proportions. With every passing minute, every new second of footage, and every stilted, shocked recap America was humiliated. Humiliated at 24 frames per second. Humiliated but not humbled, not broken and not beaten. One thought was immediately obvious even as I stood with strangers and staff in that becalmed Dixons; that someone would have to pay. America would need vengeance and someone would have to be found, blamed, bombed and defeated. What I did not predict was the brutal, reductionist manner by which America would attempt to get its catharsis, and what I could never have foreseen is that a decade later it would still be seeking closure, bestriding the world searching for the one speck of solace that will make everything as it were.

Amongst the shattered concrete and gypsum that lay where the twin towers had stood, America and, by proxy, the world lost something it would not recognise the value of until it had disappeared. America’s identity; torn asunder by a few terrorists and their own airplanes. In its place was an aesthetic of terrorism that was to infiltrate, then dominate America’s culture emperors, Hollywood. Disaster didn’t look like it was meant to, it was filthy and messy, paper floated down from on high, the haunting, ceaseless beeping of emergency distress signals echoed through otherwise silent streets and the dust, the terrible, choking, all consuming dust filled the air. It rushed in clouds down New York’s streets, propelled by the collapsing Towers and plunging what was once vibrant and busy, into a monotonous, grey pall. Firemen emerged as new heroes of a new age. Men used to running into burning buildings had their unwanted Everest, not just a burning building now but a burning symbol, an edifice of America’s creation and someone else’s destruction. Whilst their president hid underground, their fireman marched into the heart of the disaster doing whatever they could, rescuing whoever they could in the forlorn hope that it would somehow be enough to undo what had been done to their city, their country.

A new wave of patriotism swept an already patriotic nation. America’s new heroes, their firemen, raised a flag over ground zero in an abject copy of glories past and America followed suit. Flags emerged everywhere, “United We Stand” they bellowed, affirming to themselves as much as the rest of the world, and their leader emerged from his cave brandishing a new rhetoric dividing the world into those on America’s side, and the terrorists. In the days following the event it was a useful ideal, and prompted small acts of bravery or goodwill that defined America’s reaction. Lines of people queued up to give blood, traders on the stock exchange deliberately bought and bought high to stave off a terrorism induced crash. A nation tried to rebuild is self confidence and shake itself free of its worry and confusion. A new found seriousness led to the cancellation of sporting events and the quiet dropping of celebrity gossip pages but it could not and did not last. Sports returned emblazoned in flags and draped with patriotic figures from the armed forces and emergency services. America questioned itself, Newsweek pondered aloud “Why do they hate us?” But its answers were symptomatic of a country that didn’t know what it stood for anymore; maybe it was America’s freedom, maybe its democracy, maybe its religion. America didn’t know what it stood for so it stood for everything. The situation lent itself to sweeping statements and grand affirmations of a new age from philosophers and reporters alike. Even the most prosaic of tabloid hack became conversant in the Clash of Civilisations theory as the world tried to define a new epoch. The attacks were transmogrified into an assault on the entire history of liberal democracy by a culture ill suited to anything but violence and authoritarianism. Fukuyama was brought to account for proclaiming the End of History, as if his complacency had allowed the new threat to arise. While its people reeled from the assault on its own territory, America’s leaders plotted. This opportunity was not to be missed and a new world order was to be unleashed. A world order built on an incorrigible faith in the converting power of democracy and an absurdist, cowboy lexicon that allowed no linguistic quarter to the nuanced, the fearful or the unconvinced.

America declared war on an abstract noun, a bravura moment for a nation that had lost previous encounters with Crime and Drugs, but the War on Terror would be different, it had an immediate, defined and palpably conquerable enemy, the first of an expected many. On September 11th itself, Bush had promised there would be “no distinction between terrorists and those that harboured them”. He was true to his word and in this black and white world Afghanistan’s Taliban regime was to find itself an enemy not just of America but of the West in the form of NATO. As would become typical of American foreign policy, the War in Afghanistan lacked definition and purpose. The War on Terror was to be a war without end, and as such it could not have goals or ambitions, only targets. Afghanistan became its first target and the War on Terror would consume it whole, deleting its diplomatic history with America and revising its bloody, poisonous past. America would become the War on Terror. What it wanted, what it needed was what America wanted and needed. It became more important that freedom, democracy, religion or any of the other proposed complaints of America’s enemies. Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance were once criminals, warlords, and murderers but became friends and allies as the battle for liberty and democracy took immediate comfort in the arms of some of its fiercest abusers.

Whilst abroad the War on Terror was wrathful and angry, at home it was fearful and scared. America had been attacked by people living within its own borders; its own infrastructure had been turned against itself. America could not understand the reasons for its attack so it could not distinguish between future attackers and true patriots. Everywhere it looked it saw more people plotting, more people waiting for an opportunity to strike. They may have been patriotic times but America could no longer trust itself and the War on Terror wanted to feed on this paranoia. Patriotic times would get their Patriot Act. Not a law, but an attack on its own people. Fear was encouraged, conversations were taped, neighbours referred neighbours to the FBI, and the War on Terror feasted on the rotting bonds of community that had once held a nation together. Suspicion breeds suspicion, paranoia breeds paranoia, new alarms were raised and dismissed, terror levels were heightened, and silence became foreboding. The lack of attacks became proof that it was working, not that it was unnecessary, and the feeding continued. The War on Terror was so hungry, it had fed on Afghanistan, it was feeding on America but now it needed to feed on people.

The War on Terror needed victims. Not just any people, the War on Terror needed victims on which it could enact its retribution, it needed to make people suffer, and it needed its enemies to be worth less than the American citizens that were killed. It needed victims it could humiliate, interrogate, rendition and torture. The combatants who were captured in this new kind of war were not to be termed soldiers and were not granted a soldier’s rights. Instead, a new definition was created, allowing the normal rules of war to be subverted and outright ignored. The War on Terror’s victims became trapped in a quantum superposition, inmates but not prisoners, combatants but not soldiers, held in a jail without a trial or a sentence, they were to be forgotten. Existing but not existing, in America but not in America, humans but without rights, they were Schrödinger’s prisoners trapped in a legalistic maze that had somehow robbed them of their self evident truths. Guantanamo Bay became America’s iron hand in its velvet glove, the images of wire fences, and orange boiler suits were the ever present threat to its enemies. Stories of waterboarding, stress positions and sleep deprivation were the tacit warning to all that America had succumbed to its anger. With policies like these the war could not be about freedom and encouraging democracy anymore, the sheer level of force brought to bear against a country with no ability to retaliate meant it could not be viewed as a simple man hunt, rather this was the first skirmish of a new age of global war. The West bringing the full power of its military might to enforce their long held belief that democracy was the end stage of civilisation, the inevitable product of the evolution of the state. Where once this belief was held on paper and expected to take its course, now it would be forced by arms and conflict. The people would be made to be free, they would be bombed for peace, and democracy was to be enforced. The War on Terror’s latest victim was the humble oxymoron, an innocent victim abused beyond all recognition in the service of other goals.

As America reshaped its world into two defined camps, friends and enemies, the dividing line between the two became murkier and murkier. While the mass murderers and war criminals of Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance had become clearly marked friends, NATO members France and Germany would slide towards the enemies camp as the War on Terror’s attention turned to its next target. America was thirsty for more vengeance and eager to expand its narrative of Western liberal democracy staring down the terrors of the world’s most notorious nations. The rhetoric became ever more bald and divisive. The Axis of Evil was termed, implying a bond of brotherhood existed between three states who had at one time or another fallen under America’s gaze but survived. Suddenly whole parts of the world were embroiled in an imagined international conspiracy to attack America fuelled by a pathological hatred of all that America was and all that it stood for. America’s self confidence had dissolved, where once it had known that it was loved, now it knew it was hated. Worse this new Axis had access to devastating weapons, America imagined these weapons only existed for one purpose, missiles, bombs, and vials primed and aimed at her heart. While America had been hurt by planes, now it feared nuclear bombs and anthrax. The War on Terror knew what it must do, they had to be disarmed. The Weapon of Mass Destruction was added to the new lexicon of war mongering. It may have been a pretence, an excuse or a reason, maybe all three to different actors in the White House theatre but its power to possess the debate was as awesome as its destructive threat. The cowboy and his posse convened at the ranch and cooked up a new meal for the War on Terror. The time for settling old scores had come to pass. Lines were drawn, resolutions requested, gained or denied, speeches were made and protests were marched but there could be no stopping the War on Terror gaining its new front. It was hungry, having only partially digested its last meal it needed the sustenance of another fallen regime, more images of American superiority, and the satisfaction of completing a job half done a decade before. Iraq and the Bushes; the new love that dare not speak its name. While the War on Terror prepared its feast, some convinced themselves that only good could come of it. The suffering of That Day would be turned to hope, it would derive meaning and no longer be simply cold blooded slaughter, troops would be welcomed into Iraq, democracy would flower and the Middle East would recognise what should become its natural state. With hindsight it is hard to know if they were lying or genuinely mistaken but whatever was found in Iraq there were neither WMD, nor any peace. Only the next quagmire in which American military might would lose its lustre.

Saddam’s information minister reminded the world that it was not only the West that could abuse language with his increasingly desperate and hysterical statements lending an element of farce to what was becoming a tragedy. When the statues fell and Baghdad was looted no one was quite sure what would happen next, it seemed not even the War on Terror knew what it wanted anymore. WMDs had been not so quietly dropped, the mission was declared accomplished and Regime Change became the new hip phrase. In the void where a plan was once assuredly place, a new manhunt was rustled up. Men who had tortured, maimed, gassed and killed were reduced to hiding in holes as America’s enforcers roamed the Wild East, lasso in hand. Finally the Ace of Aces was caught, examined, and presented to a whooping audience. Paul Bremer could not resist lowering the moment to the tone of the times. “Ladies and Gentlemen, we got ‘im,” he remarked, verbally dumping the outlaw on the floor of his saloon. They were the words of an America asserting itself once again. They had conquered the West and now they would conquer the Middle East, this was the swaggering arrogance they had missed since That Day. One of America’s longest standing bad guys had been usurped, hounded, captured and humiliated. Now he would be thrown to the Iraqis to do with as they pleased. America; the righter of wrongs, the superman it had come to believe itself to be. But then the turn happened, the conquered refused to accept the facts. They had been defeated, routed, reduced but still they came with new weapons, not the WMD as was so feared but the IED. The bomb that could be anything and anywhere, the bomb that made even the most humble car, and the quietest street untrustworthy. A device that, in its simplicity, destroyed the relationship between occupier and occupied. America was fearful again. It had not meant to be this way. America was to be loved, feared and respected in that order. These new weapons made a mockery of their massive military spending and state of the art equipment, but what really hurt was that again America was bogged down, trapped under the weight of its commitments. This America was no superman; it saw itself reflected in a new Batman. A violent, fearful character determined to use the power of its own fear against its enemies, driven by spite and discontent to try and make a better world but spurned by those it thought would support it.

Stay the Course was the new logic, if America could just hold out long enough, just keep doing what it was doing then the world would recognise, then they’d see. But staying the course was tiring and debilitating, America was stuck, drenched in blood and unable to move forward or back. Stay the Course had been a choice, now it became an inevitability. What was America now? It was no longer the fireman leaping heroically into burning builders because it was too stretched to act, it had failed to be the world’s marshal by letting its biggest fish squirm off the hook, Iraq had rejected its role of as the bringer of peace and democracy and the world had rejected it as the moral torch in a murky world. The War on Terror had consumed all before it, people, countries, ideals and money but it had left nothing in its place. America was a lover spurned. Used, abused and discarded by a War that still wanted to be fed. Everywhere the West’s ideals were in tatters. From the feeble hearted opposition to Iraq, to complicity in extraordinary rendition and torture, the West was disrobed and revealed. It had sold its most precious possessions, its values and freedoms for the tiniest crumbs of comfort and security and was left with nothing to protect. Worse was to come.

Perhaps there should have been an air of inevitability, there was no other box left to tick, but instead the shock was palpable. America’s disastrous decade was to culminate in a home brewed economic collapse almost without equal. No buildings fell but companies came crashing down, hasty mergers were arranged which only served to pass on the mess and soon the debacle spread. Vast swathes of the world were plunged into full scale recession and mass unemployment. This would be how the world would truly end. Not in the fall of buildings and the wave of dust clouds but with repossessions, resignations and stock market boards covered in red. The West tried to stop the bleeding by jamming wounds with money, thrusting more and more in. The printed all they dared, they spent all they could afford but it was not enough, they desperately sought cash from outside. Their joy when it came was tempered by regret at whose kindness they had to appreciate. Communist Dollars dyed red from China, and petrodollars seeping with oil from the Middle East flooded into a market hungry for cash and starved of credit. America and the West were beholden to the nations they had mocked. Democracies went to autocracies with their begging bowls, the evolved state seeking help from those once deemed backward. The Civilisations were no longer clashing, they were banking.

America was lost and needed a new message and it was delivered. The message was Change, its power was awesome and its range was infinite. New dawns were declared and hopes were raised but no rain came. Instead the long desert days continued. America continued to bleed, continued to stagger and teeter toward a new precipice. The Tea Party tried to remodel America again. This time as a nation of winners, struck low by a generation of losers. In the midst of the continuing crisis America’s bête noire was shot twice and killed by a member of Navy Seal Team Six. “For God and Country” he had radioed his superiors as the villain of the piece slumped to the floor. America waited for the inevitable wave of catharsis, and waited and waited. Somehow it didn’t seem to matter as much as they’d hoped. America had long ago cast off its identity as avenger of wrongs, no longer did it desire to dispense globe spanning justice, now it just wanted to pay the bills. As the decade since That Day reached its conclusion America gazed into a financial abyss as its debt ceiling loomed, and while one crisis was averted, barely, it still cost their prized credit rating.

The War on Terror ate America from the inside out. As the 10th anniversary of That Day approaches, Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay stays open, and its detained non-soldiers stay outside the law. Imprisoned by a linguistic twist that shows all America has done to its ideals and values to feed its insatiable desire for vengeance, only to discover that there are greater demons out there. The war in Afghanistan has appeared to finally outlast the war in Iraq in their private contest. The Patriot act remains in law and has been extended by the man who would be Hope. A decade ago, America’s greatness was unquestioned, now even its credit is challenged. America and the West turned the world upside down, they made the worst kind of allies, restricted freedom at home, ran roughshod over basic human rights abroad, and bled themselves dry on wars in the Middle East all because of a single event and a subsequent idea. Maybe the sickness I felt on That Day was a precognition that whatever was to come would be worse than what had happened. The War on Terror has eaten so much, destroyed so much, and used so much. Its left us all sick, and all complicit, in an era that has been defined by Terror but not the terror imposed by others but the terror the West generated in itself.