Nineteen Years

Nineteen years ago, Arab terrorists used aircraft to destroy the World Trade Center's two biggest towers, flew another into the Pentagon, and tried to hit the Capitol with a fourth plane. What happened that day, and in the subsequent nineteen years? 2,977 people died that day- 19 hijakcers, 246 passengers on the aircraft, 414 firefighters and police officers,2,192 civilians in the World Trade Center, and 125 more in the Pentagon. It is the biggest attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor, and the largest loss of life in a single attack since Pearl Harbor. It is the most damaging and deadly terrorist attack in history. In the years since, we have rebuilt the damaged buildings as well as put up several memorials. We attacked Afghanistan and Iraq chasing terrorists and weapons of mass destruction respectively. We killed or captured much of the leadership of Al Qaeda, but have also been mired in a victorless war for 19 years. There are plenty of memorial services today. These services have often included a reading of the names of all the dead. We continue to grieve as a nation over the attacks. There are marked differences between the Pearl Harbor and 9/11 attacks. Pearl Harbor was a military operation. Outrage resulted from it being a sneak attack while we were at peace. All the casualties were military. 9/11 was a terrorist attack, with all casualties being civilian, and was executed by a group without national affiliation. Pearl Harbor prompted a powerful speech that is quoted to this day, and a military response the likes of which has never been seen before or since. 9/11 prompted a military hunt for terrorists, then a pair of invasions, but no buildup or increase in overall military strength. In fact, our military has gotten appreciably smaller in the intervening nineteen years. There have been all kinds of recriminations over our response- too much, inappropriate, too little, inappropriate imprisonment of terrorists, complaints about torture, civilian casualties. On and on and on. Please see the new page on the 9/11 response for further discussion of what we have done. Most fundamentally, after Pearl Harbor we had a defined enemy with a nation and a military which we could attack and against which we could feel righteous anger and outrage. After 9/11 we have chased ghosts, small groups of men in caves and isolated homes, living within states that are nominally our allies, and in places where our ponderous, heavy military cannot readily go. We have no major target to strike. We are like a strong man swatting at flies, exhausted, frustrated, and wondering how such tiny opponents can tire us out. We are markedly and damagingly divided since 9/11. There has been no savor of victory to assuage loss. Instead, we argue among ourselves what approach is best. We wring our hands over civilian casualties, a remarkably effete reaction considering the one million civilian deaths in Japan and the 500,000 in Germany in WW2. And we mourn, having had no outlet for our anger. We are stuck in the grief phase of mourning, unable to act or move on. Our responses are a measure of our national ethos. We are weak, self-indulgent, even cowardly. We want nothing so much as to return to our prior lives, where there is no TSA, no sense of national vulnerability, to a time where being American felt special, privileged. Many of us don't feel that way any more, and this is reflected in our marked social divides over immigration, military policy and funding, language, and security. We hide in vacuous 'reality TV', in vapid amusement parks and innumerable 'super-hero' movies, where some masked and caped person does what we long to do and cannot- respond with the rage and force the attack merited. We are just too delicata for words, worrying about international reaction, sobbing over civilian casualties, 'triggered' and 'traumatized' by the sound of tanks and guns. And now it is really too late to change course. Nineteen years on we look weak because we ARE weak, and that impression, both internally and abroad, can't be changed by a delayed violent response. We even decry violence as the reponse of an irrational State. And so, having missed our chance to do what had to be done, and unable to summon the will to act, we grieve our dead, an acceptable social act that is mainly displacement for grief over what we have really lost- national defintion, pride, determination, willingness to sacrifice for a greater goal. We know we are debased, and we mourn for what we were, apparently unable to rise up and define ourselves and our nation again. Yes, we rebuilt, we killed Osama bin Laden, we laid waste much of Iraq, but in our souls we know we lost. And even though the buildings' fires are out, what we lost still burns inside, nineteen years on..... Ted