Every generation of Americans has an “I remember where I
was when….” story. Each individual person’s memory is unique, but collectively,
we all seem to remember the same event as a once in a lifetime memory maker. My
parents’ generation has the assassination of JFK as their terror, and their
parents remember Pearl Harbor.
Mine has 9-11.
I have a pretty bad memory. Things I remember I remember
pretty accurately, but there are a lot of things I forget. September 11, 2001
plays back like a movie in my head whenever I want, yet I really have no story
of interest.
I lived in Charlotte, NC and was at work. I worked for a
brokerage house so we all had MSNBC on our computers at the beginning of the
day. My family was split between Washington DC and New York, my brother-in-law
being on his way to a job interview in one of the Twin Towers that morning.
I was on the phone with my sister, who also had the TV
on, when the first plane hit. Being typical sheltered Americans, it never
dawned on us that this was an attack; we both automatically assumed it was an
accident. At this point my memory is blank until the next plane hit. This
missing time was probably not memorable, just chit chat with my sister or some
boring paperwork to finish for work.
Here is the interesting part for me; when that second
plane hit, we both STILL assumed it was an accident. The idea that American
soil could be defiled was so far removed from our minds that in the back of our
heads we thought two identical accidents was more likely than an attack. It
really did not occur to us and I remember both of us saying something like
“Jesus, where the hell did they get these pilots”. We laugh at our naivety now.
As the first tower fell, just before I lost my phone connection
to my sister (who was in Long Island) she said she felt the reverberation and
her lights browned out. Then she was disconnected.
The rest of the morning was sheer panic to me. I didn’t
know if my brother-in-law was in one of those buildings (eerily, he changed his
mind about the job before he hit New York City and went home) and my father
lived as close as you can to the Pentagon.
There were no usable phone lines and no planes in the
skies over the US.
I ran into my boss’s office and explained to him that I
had to go; everyone I loved was being attacked. He said no, I could not leave.
I was in my car within 2 minutes. As I drove I didn’t really know where I would
go or what I would do. I certainly couldn’t save them. Shaking violently, I
drove home and calmed myself, keeping the TV on for days after that. Everyone I
cared about was just fine and have their own stories now.
Every anniversary people swap stories and talk about the
terrible loss of life on that day, but that is not how it affected me. Of
course I cared about the ones in my life and like everyone else who just will
not admit it, in only an abstract way I cared about the victims. I actually
cared more about the first responders, the people still alive, who had to risk
their lives trying to save others from that hell, and who now are literally
dying from their heroism on that day.
In the subsequent days and months the media went wild
with the story. It was like the news Santa had arrived. Movies were hastily
made and America was soon America again…making a buck however possible. As I
watched all this: the sadness, the fear of what this all meant, the national self
pity, I began to get irritated.
We the people are lucky to have been born here, a nation
so powerful, so influential, that we all sleep soundly at night, knowing that a
burglar is probably our biggest thing to fear.
Well America, I have news for us. While we cry in our
coffee once again about this event, countries like Ireland and Nigeria and
Israel have terrorism as a way of life while we had a brief dance with tragedy.
We are so self-centered that it took me a 10 minute google search to find
anything on pre-9/11 terrorism outside of the US. We lost approximately 3,200
people that day, many more when you count the firefighters and other first
responders who are still sick and dying from that day.
Even 15 years later we still have practically made it
National Self Pity Day. I have had loved ones die and I do not revisit their
death day like it is a wedding anniversary. By annually commemorating this
tragedy, by not rebuilding buildings on that spot with a big “fuck you” sign on
it, by making it a shrine, we give our power away. We let them have an
emotional victory. We set ourselves up for more acts of terror when we cry
while we let this school yard bully take our lunch money.
This martyrdom is a great disappointment to me. I am
speaking collectively here. If you lost a loved one on that day then of course
you and your family need to do whatever you need to do to cope and heal. What I
am talking about is the ambulance-chasing aspect of it by people who had no
connections to 9/11, and that is what this is. If you lost no one and you sit
in front of your TV and watch footage, you are an electronic peeping tom.
By this time I suspect there are people on their way to
my home with torches and pitchforks, coming to kill me, the monster. It gets
worse folks.
Has anyone ever sat down and considered WHY this
happened? Conspiracy theories aside, I would think that if men were angry
enough to create an organization, train for, plan and carry this out, we must
have done something incredibly offensive…yet during that time I only once
discussed with someone the treasonous idea that we should sit down and think
“Wow, we really made these people mad. What did we do and was it our mistake?
Can we fix it if it is?” All I hear are battle cries.
Indeed, take a look at the wiki entry on reasons for the
9/11 attacks for many different theories, along with actual facts, as to why we
were attacked…it boils down to our occupation of lands where we were not
wanted, and sanctions which included food and medications, of which Bin Laden
said, “the greatest mass slaughter
of children mankind has ever known”.
In 1996, Bin Laden issued
a fatwa calling for American troops to get out of Saudi
Arabia. In the 1998 fatwa,
Al-Qaeda wrote: "for over seven years the United States has been occupying
the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering
its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its
neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through
which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples." And there is a lot more.
I certainly am not saying
there is ANY justification for killing or terrorizing people, I am simply
saying that if we had smoothed down out hackles and checked our ego that day,
we might have at least been able to see their point of view, no matter how
twisted. This would have been the first step in communication and perhaps, 15
years later, we would no longer have a growing threat of terrorism. I am not am
optimist about our future with radical Islam. I think for both of us the time
for communication, understanding and negotiations is long past. We missed the
opportunity to be the “bigger person” and as a consequence we have become
little, petty people, afraid of anyone who is not from a Judeo-Christian
background. We have gone backwards in time as far as race relations goes, both
for the brown skinned and, in a spill-over, the black skinned.
So what can we do? I do
not have any answers for that question anymore. I think things could be different
now if handled better 15 years ago, but there is too much water under the
bridge and too much hate created and nurtured on both sides now.
However, we could begin by
not commemorating the anniversary of 9/11 each year. I think it is probably a
painful reminder to those directly affected by it and another reason for our
enemies to see us as malleable, spoiled, ignorant Westerners (You will read why
below).
The one subject we should
remember has been all but forgotten. The men and women who spent countless
hours saving lives, moving bodies and cleaning up after the attacks, who are
now suffering and dying from exposure to toxins while they were busy being
heroes. (and do not forget, the Americans that died that day were victims,
tragic victims, but they were not heroes. The First Responders and the injured
who reached out to help others, those were the heroes.)We need to demand our government
give these people the care they deserve, provide for their families, thank them
in a meaningful way for what they did for us.
Firefighters who worked at Ground Zero are 20 times more likely to die
from cancer as those that did not work there. The World Trade Center Health Program stated last year that
“over 21,000 people are getting treatment for conditions caused by the toxic
and hazardous air following the terrorist attack, according to the program’s
administrators.”
In September of 2014, three of the Ground Zero firefighters
died of cancer on the same day.
Jon Stewart, formerly host of The Daily Show, has dedicated
himself to helping these national treasures, and is responsible for The Zadroga
Act, which extended the time limit on healthcare for 9/11 first responders. I
believe it is shameful that a television satirist has to push congress to take
care of our heroes.
Looking back 15 years ago, our world was a much different
place. With every generations’ “I remember where I was when…” story comes the
feeling some measure of innocence is lost. This feeling collectively compounds
with every subsequent tragic event until it morphs into distrust and
disillusionment.
9/11 stands alone because it solidified what were mere
feelings before. My step daughter does not remember a time before 9/11. To her, being frisked and probed and x-rayed
at the airport is normal. Being constantly asked for identification for no
apparent reason is routine to her generation, while my generation is outraged
at the intrusion. We are supposed to be a free nation, one where its citizens
are innocent unless proven otherwise, where a certain measure of privacy is expected.
Because of 9/11 and the fear we have allowed to take over us, we have gone from
government surveillance to marketers who know what you buy so they can
customize their ads to your likes and buying habits. What is normal to the
younger generation is an outrage to those of us who have memories prior to
2001. That subject alone could be an entire book so I will stop there.
I was raised in a world where there was privacy and
freedom. 9/11 changed all that. To me, the most frightening thing about this
event is that, where I say, “you may not have that info, that number, search
that place or this person even though I have nothing to hide” the current
gaggle of 20-30-somethings say “search anything and anywhere you want, I have
nothing to hide”. The very idea that freedom and privacy are becoming a thing
of the past because people will do anything if they are told it will make them
safe, this is an abomination to me and proves we no longer are the land of the
free and the home of the brave.
