9/11

One thing I like about doing this blog is that it helps me recall what I was thinking about a particular issue over the years. I went back and took a look at my 9/11 posts. None of them is too inspiring:

The 2005 one is the best of the lot. I described how I felt back in 2001. It’s easy to forget the emotion surrounding that period of time – the sorrow, the unity.

I recall the day of the attacks, getting started on work when one of the people who works in my office said what she’d seen on television before heading out. Immediately I was on the Internet, details were sketchy. As the day progressed, rumors were rampant — I recall stories about a car bomb outside the Supreme Court, for example. The local gas station jacked up prices. I remember crying just a little bit on the way home that night. Americans were united. In fact, most of the world was united in condemning the acts. The most touching example, for me, was some African tribe sending us a herd of cattle or somesuch. Clearly, they needed the herd more than we ever could. But, it was a very gracious gesture from those who have very little to America, which has so very much.

But, even by 2005, 9/11 had been so overused that I felt like reaching to make sure I still had my wallet whenever someone invoked the day as a reason for anything.

In 2006, I was apparently on vacation and didn’t write anything. In 2007, I examined the metaphor of “War on Terror.”

A War on al-Qaeda could be won. A War on the nation-states from whence the terrorists came (Saudi Arabia & Egypt, primarily) could be won. A War on those who finance al-Qaeda could be won. But, to purport to have a “war” on terror or terrorism is as foolish as having a “war” on poverty.

And,
2008 was simply a suggestion to commemorate the dead and condemn the religious zealots.

From here on out, it should be interesting to see how commemoration of the day evolves. The Bush administration – in office at the time of the attacks and most shameless in exploiting the tragedy – is gone. Supporters of the Bush administration are much less likely, now that the Obama administration is in place, to use the tragedy as an excuse to blunt criticism of the government and encourage unity under the government despite political differences. For its part, the Obama administration has, so far anyway, left in place more of the legacy of post-9/11 politics than I’m happy with – the Patriot Act is still largely intact; Iraq is still costing lives and money; Guantanamo is still open. (But, it’s moving in a direction I’m more happy with than the Bush administration or a hypothetical McCain administration.)

In four or eight years when the Obama administration leaves, and the day is 12 or 16 years in the past, I suspect the power of the day – regardless of who is in office then – will have lost much of its power.

Whatever it turns into, it won’t be what I’d hoped for shortly after the event. At the time, I had vague notions that the day would unite us as a people and set us on a project that was big and noble and hard. We’d look back upon the moment and know that was when we had been called upon to be great. We would be sad and proud at the same time. I don’t know what that project would have been. Obviously our leaders at the time didn’t have that scope of imagination either.