Never forget 9/11, but start remembering our response
We’ll never forget the events of Sept. 11, 2001, but we’ve clearly forgotten our response.
I was sitting in the living room of the Phi Gamma Delta House at Washington and Lee University when the first plane hit. One of my fraternity brothers tuned the television to the unfolding coverage. Most of us just assumed it was a tragic accident.
Then the second plane hit the other tower.
I remember hearing the screams as the plane exploded through the structure. The sickening feeling that we were under attack was like nothing I’d ever felt. In my mind, America was untouchable. We literally couldn’t be attacked on our own soil.
But we were.
As the towers fell, so did my illusions of American invulnerability. Possibly the toughest mental blow was watching the Pentagon burn. The headquarters for the most powerful military in the history of the world couldn’t even avoid attack.
In the years since, I’ve never forgotten the images from that day. Most of us haven’t. Some of us can’t.
Fifteen years later, I’m writing this column on a plane headed from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York to Reagan National Airport outside Washington on the anniversary of 9/11. I’d love to write something profound, something patriotic, but I simply have a broken heart flying over a nation I love. We could rebuild the buildings, we could change our laws, but we can’t seem to shake the fear.
Only a decade and a half ago, we were all patriots; we were one nation. We wanted to fight, cry and scream all at once. We couldn’t do much, so we just held on. And for a little while, we wouldn’t let go of each other. I remember it. You likely do, as well.
And then it vanished.
Time certainly has the effect of weakening the ties that bind us together, but it is more than that. After we cleaned up the mess and overcame the initial shock, fear took root in the cracks left behind. We weren’t just suspicious of people in foreign lands looking to attack us; we became distrustful of everyone. The other political party, the other religion, the other way of exercising freedom became the enemy.
Fear is a powerful thing, and it’s become a political tool and even more of a media driver.
Since that terrible day, our fear has matured and its gnarly roots have widened the cracks of its origin into massive social fissures.
We’re becoming more like those who attacked us than the Americans we should aspire to be. Our common interest has and will always be liberty. We simply don’t agree on much else. The rights to speak freely, defend ourselves, question our political authority, worship as we like and even move about our homeland are all manifestations of liberty itself.
But we can’t protect that central value if we don’t trust each other in even the most basic sense. If I assume you’re going to actually hurt my family or me, I’m not likely to champion your liberty when we disagree. That’s simply human nature. When we succumb to fear and suspicion our 9/11 attackers succeed. Period.
Our news cycle has fertilized our fears by telling us that we can get exactly what we want if only we secure the right combination of elected officials and political power. In response, so many of us have become little authoritarians whose only obstacle to an America in our own image is having enough time after work to amass our political army one social media post at a time.
It’s ironic that two New Yorkers running for president wax poetic about remembering the 9/11 attacks while launching their own. They’ve been appealing to our worst fears about each other for months, rather than reminding us that we’re stronger together.
There isn’t any magic that holds America together. Uprooting a decade and a half of fear isn’t easy, but we’ve proven our resiliency time and again. We will never forget 9/11, but we must honor our fallen and our highest ideals by refusing to give up on America’s beautiful dream and each other.
