AS WITH MANY people who watched the events of September 11 unfold, publisher Steve Forbes was gripped by the audacious assault on the United States .
Unlike most of us, however, the multi-millionaire and driving force behind the family's business magazine witnessed the destruction first-hand.
'I was on the other side of the river. We had a clear view of the towers going into the Holland Tunnel and driving in, there was smoke coming out of the first tower. When we were looking at that, you could see what looked like a dark plane crash into the second one and a ball of fire. My eyes could not quite believe what they were seeing, and I think the next big shock was the buildings collapsing,' he said.
We are sitting in a hotel room on an overcast afternoon in Singapore, more than a week and half a world away from the destruction at the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.
But with the rubble yet to be cleared from Lower Manhattan and threats of awesome US retaliation growing progressively more strident, it is the only place to start.
'They say they may have a cause, just as Stalin and Hitler said they had a cause, but their methods are quite the opposite [from decent people]. These are spiritual descendants of the Khmer Rouge, who were building utopia on the basis of tyranny, murder and bloodshed. So any group that think the way to salvation is to kill as many civilians as possible are the true nihilists. [German philosopher Friedrich] Nietzsche would recognise the group right away.'
Mr Forbes - avuncular, agreeably intellectual and unfailingly polite - has come for a business conference sponsored by his firm. It is an Asian first for the fortnightly publication, a glossy handbook dedicated to printing the kind of material favoured by what the company describes as 'hard-core capitalists'.
