9/11 – the Year that Was: a Scallion Perspective
It started out as an ordinary Tuesday morning in the Washington, D.C. area, unremarkable, just like any other busy weekday morning filled with the usual plethora of minute tasks requisite for getting to work on time. I was in my car listening to classical music on the radio in my daily ritual of trying to numb the aggravation stemming from a hostile commute. As the denouement of a piece of music yielded to the station’s regular news break, I listened, expecting only the usual snippets of news one needs to remain informed. That was not what I got. Rather, the first words out of the announcer’s mouth after he introduced the news was that the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City had been struck by a jet airliner. Horrified, I jacked up the volume and listened with all my ears, but nothing substantial followed. Soon, I was relegated back to more music and left to contemplate the horror in solitude: had it been an accident? Given the size of the building, it seemed to me more likely that it was a deliberate act of destruction, but by whom and why? Eventually, as I listened and thought, the radio station cut to another news break, during which the announcer repeated the tale of the afflicted north tower. Suddenly, during the news break, the announcer stopped mid-sentence, frantically stating that now the south tower of the World Trade Center had been struck by a jet airliner. “Terrorism” was the only possible conclusion I could draw, but, again, I wondered who and why. As I grimly reflected, I looked around at the other cars on the road with me. Had these other drivers heard? What were they thinking right now? How many people will die from these deeds of wanton destruction? When I arrived at work, I was greeted with screaming e-mails clamoring that the Pentagon and a myriad of other local buildings had been bombed or struck by airplanes. My first thought was for my spouse, who works in a local building that could easily constitute such a target. Expecting only to reach the answering machine, I dialed my home number—to my immense relief, my beloved picked up the phone. Hearing of the local attacks while pulling the car out of the driveway, my clever spouse cleverly decided to pull the car back into the driveway, turn it off, and stay home for the day. Thank God! Confident in the safety of my oh-so-significant other, I turned my attention to my parents, who had been visiting New York City—and I wasn’t sure when they were due to return home. It took me all day to track them down and ascertain that they were safe. My day at work was surreal—people were too stunned to accomplish much, and everybody strained to glean bits of news from whatever sources they could. Once I got home from work, I resumed the search for my parents between glimpses of news programs detailing the collapses of both World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon attack, the attack that Todd Beemer and fellow passengers aborted, and the confirmation that no other attacks had materialized. Finally, I phoned my aunt whose daughter works in the city—this cousin felt and heard the impacts of both attacks and witnessed through her office window the collapse of the south tower. Reassuring me that my parents had set out for home Monday, my aunt recounted what she could while waiting for my cousin to call her. My cousin, along with countless other Gothamites, evacuated her building and was told by police to run. Vast hordes of terrified people all over the city were running for their lives—running from, with no idea where to run to. Nowhere seemed safe. Eventually, toward 7:00 p.m., still choking from acrid smoke and fumes and covered with dust and debris, my cousin found herself sitting on a train still parked at the station and was able to reach her parents via cell phone—the first time all day. Trembling from fear, hunger, and exhaustion, she told her parents she had no idea when the train was leaving or where it was going; my aunt told her to get on it and not worry when or where it stopped—just call us and we’ll retrieve you. That was the call my aunt was waiting for, after 8:00 p.m. by then. What a day! I breathed a prayer of relief and gratitude that I and mine were all safe and sound, but my heart wept in the knowledge that so very many people were not so lucky.
Surely, every American remembers where he or she was on that fateful day when the news first came searing across the airwaves, changing our reality forever. Already a New Yorker by birth, I realized that, that day, all Americans had become New Yorkers and that we, hitherto insulated from such egregious terrorism on our own soil, had become citizens of the world. We finally understood how it feels not to be safe from bombs and terrorism in our own homes, in our own country. We finally understood how those in Northern Ireland feel, how Palestinians and Israelis feel, and how Afghanistanians feel. In true American fashion, the outpouring of generosity in support of the victims, emergency workers, and their families was so overwhelming that aid agencies’ infrastructures nearly burst at the seams trying to handle it all. Also in true American fashion, greed reared its ravenous head as aid scams abounded and the American Red Cross tried to reroute its monetary windfall to causes other than 9/11, enraging donors and onlookers all over the world. It didn’t help that the Red Cross also continued happily to collect blood hand over fist, only to burn it later because of overstocking. Thanks to persisting inefficiency, many victims and families are still waiting to receive all or part of the aid that donors intended for them, even though a full year has now elapsed. Yes, 9/11 was the American Red Cross’s time to shine, if only they had risen to the occasion.
Politically, it is possible that 9/11 could have been handled with less aplomb, albeit not much. America would have fared worse in world opinion if Mr. Bush had gone immediately and unilaterally into Afghanistan with all the bombs he could muster. Fortunately, he did delay, and he did consult with his own advisors and other world leaders. Nonetheless, with all his continuing John Wayne warmongering and saber-rattling, Mr. Bush has convinced many at home and abroad that he is nothing more than an angry little bully in a cowboy suit, itching to pull out his toy guns and have at the Indians. Time and again, he has proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that he neither understands nor cares to understand the culture of the Middle East. He neither knows nor cares how deeply his words and actions offend a part of the world from which he so desperately needs allies right now. Rather, Mr. Bush is content to play the blind Cyclops to Osama bin Laden’s Ulysses—the crafty, fast, and wily foe has indeed given a black eye to the sluggish, huge, brutish, once powerful, and now emasculated giant. Not exactly the role I’d have preferred for the country’s first court-appointed president.
But what about bombing Afghanistan in the name of Mr. Bush’s holy war on terrorism? Clearly, no civilized nation would fault the U.S. for retaliating—at least, not to our faces. Certainly, NewYork, the families of those injured and lost at the Pentagon and on those four fatal airline voyages, and many angry Americans would have been outraged at anything less. But that doesn’t make it right. What could be more hypocritical than for Mr. Bush, who claims to be a devout Christian, to eschew the turn-the-other-cheek code of Christ and embrace the eye-for-an-eye code of Hammurabi? (Sadly, he was not the only unchristian Christian in the mix—many leaders in the Catholic Church here and abroad came out in favor of retaliation. Since then, the Church has continued to show its true colors.) Furthermore, one must consider not only the goals of such retaliation but also a realistic assessment of what actually can be gained. Would bombing Afghanistan make Americans feel better? Perhaps some, but at what cost to future diplomatic relations with the Middle East? Would it indeed be possible for American forces to capture or kill bin Laden? No—at least, not without a lot of inside help and a lot of almost impossibly good luck. Why? Because bin Laden and his colleagues spent years planning not only the attacks but also their own escapes. Because their hideouts are on familiar soil among friendly nations. Because America’s history of foreign policy and actions in the Middle East instantly made bin Laden and his fellow terrorists regional heroes—receiving fame and adulation from the adoring masses in similar type and quantity to that received by American rock stars—and a generation of Middle Eastern children is being taught to worship these heroes and disdain the Americans they attacked as being less than human and somehow deserving of their fate. Because, in true American short-attention-span fashion, it would be more likely for leaders of the U.S. forces to declare the war won and call the troops home before actually completing what they set out to do. Many among my friends and family congratulate the American armed forces in taking down the Taliban and a fair chunk or two of al Qaeda. However, I am not convinced. I am not convinced that bombing, violence, and more killing were needed to accomplish these objectives. Even once I see how thoroughly and ethically America helps set up democratic government in Afghanistan, I may never be convinced that these so-called accomplishments were necessary or beneficial to the beleaguered people of Afghanistan, who right now are largely at the mercy of squabbling warlords. Ultimately, retaliation purely for its own sake must fail, and the single greatest reason is that mere retaliation does not address the causes—only by understanding and remedying the causes of 9/11 can America hope to prevent such attacks in the future.
In a dystopic article on World War III recently published in the Scallion, a brief history of America’s interaction with the Middle East was outlined (if you haven’t read that article yet, go read it now … conserve keystrokes [mine]). Of course, it is impossible to condone the mass murder of innocent Americans that was perpetrated on 9/11; however, that does not mean that American leadership are exonerated from blame. Additionally, I and many other patriotic Americans strongly feel that the answer to violence is not more violence. One year ago, I and others like me wrote piles of letters and signed miles of petitions in the hopes that we could prevent the violence and death in Afghanistan that ultimately followed. We were certainly in the minority then, and, given the perceived successes claimed by the administration, we probably still are. Even so, consider the following. America is undoubtedly the most powerful nation on the planet. Undoubtedly, we have enough weapons to bomb whomever to kingdom come. We have assuaged our rage by bombing Afghanistan, but we have not destroyed al Qaeda or bin Laden. To complete either of those objectives, even a year after the terror attacks, we will still be in for a long, difficult campaign in which our determination and focus must not flag for an instant—not the kind of effort in which America historically succeeds. As it stands, America is busily perpetuating and expanding the Middle Eastern foreign relations nightmare it began some forty years ago. At this rate, it will take equally many generations to clean up the mess and make friends again. Pretty sad, considering that the only reason we were ever involved over there in the first place is oil (which is running out anyway). Only the future will show if Mr. Bush’s actions were correct. But suppose that America had not answered violence with violence. Suppose that our leaders had realized that the nation must root out the causes of the attacks and address them. What would this have meant? America’s leadership would have had to own up for diplomatic mistakes of the past; the administration would have had to admit how much of the nation’s policies and actions are motivated by oil interests; and the nation would have had to develop and implement a plan to remedy the problems that America caused or ignored. We would have had to begin working with the leaders of Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern nations first to learn their culture and then to effect modernization and to educate their people, teaching them and their children to focus on the similarities between themselves and their Western counterparts, rather than seeing cowardly murderers as heroes and innocent Americans as weak, decadent, sub-human animals whose lives center on hedonism … incapable of heroics or noble virtues … living in fear of death. Instead of exporting the worst America has to offer, business and media would have had to retool to paint a more positive picture of us abroad. Perhaps, out of awe and respect for our choice not to murder more innocents (especially Islamic innocents), Middle Eastern nations might have reconsidered their opinion of us as the Great Satan—perhaps some nations might have voluntarily rooted out the Taliban, al Qaeda, and bin Laden themselves in a gesture of good faith in thanks for our decision not to invade their soil further. Perhaps, instead of sheltering the terrorists, the Middle East would have expelled them, knowing that Islamic and Western nations have more to gain from cooperating than fighting. Perhaps the entire war on terrorism could have been won by now via nonviolent means. Would this all have been possible? Perhaps, perhaps not. We will never know because we never tried.
Here on the homefront, America has undergone some definite changes, some scarier than others. Most of us patiently submit to the increased security we encounter either in our jobs or on the road; we can only hope that the relatively minor inconveniences are really doing some good to protect us and our loved ones. More frighteningly, many long-established civil rights have fallen prey to Mr. Bush’s war on terror, and many more will fall before the smoke clears: the slippery slope has already been paved to decimate the civil rights of the poor, the disadvantaged, and women. Less scary than disturbing is how the media have handled this news bonanza from the get-go. When I got home from work on 9/11, I saw part of the footage of the collapse of the south tower of the World Trade Center. In days following, once I had seen the full footage twice, and decided that that was enough, I changed the channel each time they began to play that awful footage. I still find it too gruesome to sit through. Yet, one full year later, it is still being shown as part of the continuing media blitz. Never were the media in a stronger position to glorify, romanticize, and blow completely out of proportion a recent human tragedy than after 9/11, and, boy howdy, did they come through for us on this one. The average TV-watching or radio-listening American still can’t tune in for more than a few minutes without being reminded at least once of the tragedies of that fateful day. The airwaves are infested with the stuff. And all the hype that immediately followed the terror attacks is nothing compared to the media circus planned for us before, during, and after the one-year anniversary of the media’s precious, if grisly, holiday. None of this will bring back the dead or heal the maimed. All this makes me wonder: has anyone in the media considered for just one moment how all this hype is affecting the surviving victims and their families? Does anyone care that these people might just want to get on with their lives free from the constant reminders of the tragedy they witnessed? Does anyone in the media have an ounce of respect for these beleaguered survivors, or, indeed, for the viewing and listening public? Not likely.
Nearly one year to the day after 9/11, for the first time since the terror attacks, I found myself driving past the New York City skyline, now denuded of its familiar, spectacular dual reference point of the World Trade Center towers. Once again, as it hasn’t for two generations, the Empire State building stands as the skyline’s zenith. I found the view eerie, surreal. Today, the skyline shines like a gap-toothed smile—for all the beauty that remains, something devastating is missing. I dearly love the Empire State building, which, to me, is far more a symbol of New York City and America than the World Trade Center was. I have gazed many times from its dizzying heights down upon the historic bridges and boroughs of New York. But I can not help but wish with all my heart that the World Trade Center towers will be rebuilt in all their original grandeur, splendor, and glory and restored to their rightful place as the crown jewels of Gotham’s skyline. Will it ever happen? In present-day America, I sincerely doubt it. Perhaps we just aren’t special enough any more to deserve such beautiful, elegant skyscrapers.
One year after 9/11, I continue to analyze and lament the follies of the government, the media, and other powerful movers and shakers in America. Although my letters and petitions have been fruitless, I continue to write because none of us can afford to take the attitude that we have “better things to do” … better things than what, to strive for a better future for ourselves and our children? What could possibly be more important than that? One year after 9/11, I continue to buy and wear America’s red, white, and blue, not because of what this country is but because of what it could be—what we all can be. For everyone’s sake, here and around the globe, I sure hope we can find and step onto the correct path soon.
