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September 11, 2007

Why We Remember

Sleep did not come easily to me last night, nor in great abundance. As the reality sank into my head that the calendar had turned, and we were at the dawn of the anniversary of the darkest day in American history, a kind of depression overtook me.

This is unlike me. I do not normally think of myself as one who is negative, or who dwells in pessimism. At the same time, I found myself struggling to contend with the odd mixture of sadness, rage and resolve I felt at the thought of where we are today, only six years removed from September 11.

It was on that day that we learned to feel firsthand what we had been trying to process for decades through our various nightly news shows. Throughout the seventies, eighties and nineties, we continually witnessed other countries across the various oceans suffer civilian casualties at the hands of terrorists. The filter of viewing the short clips of these attacks through our television screens was now gone, and we now understood all too well the realities of terrorism.

We had known about Muslim extremists. We had even suffered at their hands before. In one case, we watched an elderly man in a wheelchair - a US citizen on vacation in the Mediterranean - get thrown off of a cruise ship hijacked by Muslim extremists, and plummet into the ocean to his death. In another case, our Marines had been bombed in their barracks in Beirut, killing almost 300 troops.

Under Bill Clinton, the attacks grew more intense. In 1992, we had the first attack on the World Trade Center. Although there were casualties, as a nation, we had the sense that the attack had failed. We learned that the objective had been the destruction of the Twin Towers, which seemed to soften the reality of the damage actually inflicted in the attack. Following that, our troops were attacked again by Muslim extremists in foreign waters. A small boat filled with explosives had been driven into the hull of the USS Cole.

There was a growing sense of frustration that we were not doing enough. However, we maintained a sense that we were safe from harm being visited upon us on our own soil.

All that changed on 9-11.

We are all too familiar with the scenes of fire, smoke, falling and burning bodies, and the ashes and dust of the Pentagon and the Trade Center Towers, and dark smoke rising from a crater in a field in Pennsylvania. Yet that is not what defined 9-11. It was what came through in the aftermath that revealed the America we all knew existed,

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