So here we are again. It’s been 19 years since that fateful day in September of 2001. I remember exactly where I was that day. I had been out and about and had just returned to the BOQ where I was living then. The S.O. called me and told me the World Trade Center had been attacked. I thought there was a mistake in translation somewhere. I flipped on NHK and then saw the truth-right about the time the first tower collapsed. I know people who were working in the Pentagon that day. That was equally horrific, as was the tragic loss of Flight 93 that day.
There will be fitting memorials and remembrances today, and there will be appropriate memorials and remembrances in the years to come, of that I am sure. I have to be honest; however, what I feel today is only mildly touched by sorrow. Of course, I feel for the victims – and I know their pain can never be erased. But more of what I feel is a wave of deep, slow-burning anger at what the nation lost in the aftermath.
In 2011, I wrote the following:
I will always remember and will never forget. But in doing so, it also means that I will never forget what came in its aftermath, much of which was-to put it bluntly-misdirected effort, in response to a unique event, the likes of which most of us had never seen before.
It’s important, therefore, to look at 9-11 for what it is, a deliberate act of cold-blooded murder. The fact that is so, does not, however, provide a blanket absolution for the myriad of flawed events that followed in its wake. We have exacted our vengeance for that horrible day a 100 times over. The cost of doing so has been huge-and we will debate the wisdom of those subsequent decisions for years.
Guys like Dick Cheney, and George Bush and others-believe the horror of 9-11 gives them a pass on responsibility for flawed decision making subsequent to the event. I say no. The rat holes of the wars that have been pursued in the years following, and the very avoidable -and equally tragic-costs, cannot be just wiped away just because we were the victims on a particular day.
We can though, remember that day with honor – and vow to move forward into a better future than what those murderers tried to inflict upon us. All of our worlds changed that day-and I for one wish that day could be undone. I want my world of September 10, 2011 back. But its never coming back.
9-11 will always be with us. But we can work hard to restore the world that once was before.
Since September of 2011 the country has continued to suffer immense and needless tragedy, both at home and overseas. The last 3.5 years have truly been an abomination – nothing less than the possible death knell for American Democracy.
And let us not forget the almost 200,000 Americans who have died of COVID in less than 8 months. Dead not through and act of terrorism, but rather due the cowardly and criminal negligence of the American President – as well as the soulless ghouls who work daily in his service. We experience the equivalent of 9-11 every three days now, where are the bagpipes and memorials for them?
And while we are withdrawing all but 3000 troops from Iraq, we have done so in a manner that essentially cedes success to Iran. And we knew that well over ten years ago. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, Russia places bounties on the heads of American soldiers – and the President of the United States says nothing at all about.
I firmly believe that most of the current problems of the world and the United States can be directly traced to March 19th, 2003. And March 19th, 2003, can be directly traced to September 11th, 2001. I am of the rock-solid belief that had there been no Iraq War; there would have been no Donald J. Trump slurring his words on television today, forgetting the words to the Pledge of Allegiance.
The very least we owed to the innocent people who died on September 11th, 2001, was to make the country they lived in a better land for their children and wives and husbands. The least we owed to the world that supported us unreservedly that day was to work together to bring peace and stability to a world desperately in need of it.
We did neither. We dishonored their memory by sliding down into a hellish aftermath – squandering the first 20 years of the 21st century and threatening the very nation they lived in and loved with a dark and unnecessary existence of suffering.
We owed them – and ourselves- far better.
There will be some torrid souls who will yell at me – berating me, thinking, “How can you bring up politics on a day like this?”
Allow me to retort. I’m not.
One has to look at 9-11-2001 in the context of both the events of that day and the events that followed it. We deserved – and the sacrifice of innocents demanded – that we do better as a nation. Otherwise, Orwell will have been proven right: “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”
I remain haunted by the memories of that year before, and what could have occurred had 9-11 never happened. How so very different the past and future of the United States and the rest of the world would have been.
We failed every one of the 2977 victims of the attack, just as we have failed almost 200,000 people in the United States because of COVID. Over a million people are dead who should not have been in the intervening years.
We….and they deserved better. I will continue to want that world back. And I will fight to get it back.
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