This Sunday, our nation–and our world–will mark a solemn anniversary.
Twenty-one years ago, 19 militants representing a little-known group of extremist Muslims attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon using jetliners bound for the West Coast. Nearly 3,000 people died as a result and the world we thought we knew was changed forever.
In 2002, on the one-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, I spent several hours looking through web articles and archives devoted to America’s Darkest Day, as the Detroit News headlines called it in the Sept. 12, 2002 edition. I know this because 20 years ago this week, I was writing a piece for The Saline Reporter about this same topic.
At that time, a Google search gave me more than one million “hits” on Sept. 11. Twenty years later, that number has grown to 531 billion matchesin less than a second. This is testimony not only to the speed of what we used to call “the Information Superhighway,” but also the technology that we couldn’t not have imagined in 2002.
People will mark this anniversary in public and private ways, if my search is accurate. The 9/11 Memorial and Museum in New York City will again conduct its recitation of names of the victims of both the Sept. 11 attacks and those who died in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. There will be some local and regional and national observances, moments of silence, prayers, and, I hope, reflection on what the last two-plus decades have delivered in terms of freedom, sacrifice, and democracy.
According to Encyclopedia Britannica, the attacks on our country had a “profound and lasting impact” on U.S. foreign and domestic policies. The U.S.A. Patriot Act expanded powers of the FBI and CIA. Homeland Security became a cabinet post and the TSA began scrutinizing travelers at airports. The global War on Terrorism started and dragged on for years, in Afghanistan and Iraq, killing nearly 7,000 U.S. military. Others died, too, including more than 30,000 who committed suicide in the years since they returned from active duty.
In those days following the attacks, we seemed to unite as a nation. Who can forget the senators and congressmen singing “God Bless America” on the steps of the Capitol or the millions of flags that were manufactured to keep up with the demand of our fellow Americans who wanted to show support for our country? I remember people lining up at hospitals and the Red Cross to give blood because the disaster in New York City was such that everyone wanted to do something to help. That’s what we do, right? Give blood, bake a casserole, volunteer for a good cause, write a check.
The attacks kind of unified the planet, too. Our allies around the globe rallied to support us. The French newspaper La Monde, “The World,” sported a headline, “We are all Americans now.” Thousands in Iran gathered in Tehran for a candlelight vigil.
But, a year later, that sense of patriotism and national unity had pretty much gone up in smoke. Whether it was the 24/7 bombardment of news that included imbedded journalists, death and destruction, or something else, our national sense of unity was fading.
In times of crisis, people tend to set aside political differences and work together to achieve a common goal. We see this still in hurricanes, floods, forest fires, and other natural disasters. In the days immediately following 9/11, 15 people were pulled alive from the wreckage of the towers and the remains of hundreds of others were carefully and respectfully removed–many of these the actions of volunteers from all over the country who banded together to help.
But, Sept. 11 was a long time ago and as the years are swallowed up in the embrace of passing time, we get further from that sense of unity we glimpsed and our memories of it fade.
Abe Lincoln gave a speech Nov. 19, 1863 in a battlefield cemetery in Pennsylvania, just about 100 miles east of Shanksville, where Flight 93 crashed on Sept. 11, 2001. In that speech, Lincoln said, “It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us–that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion–that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”
Civilians and soldiers from many countries died in the attacks and on both sides of the 20-year war on terrorism that followed, perhaps as many as 500,000. In that time, we have become a divided nation–perhaps even more now than when Lincoln mourned the losses of Americans who died at Gettysburg. Somehow, we need to find our way back to that sense of unity and charity. We need to resolve ourselves to stand together as a nation, to find common ground, to compromise, to meet each other at the center and work for everyone’s good. It doesn’t matter what your politics or beliefs are–it’s our responsibility as true patriots–if we truly are patriots–to work together and help each other. It is what is asked of all of us.
I think a true democracy demands this kind of togetherness–choosing not only what we do for financial survival but what we can give in terms of human capital to the world around us. We have choices because we have freedoms, the freedoms that so many before us have died for–whether they expected to or not–and so we must not fail.
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