As the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attack approached, I was disappointed to see the negative media coverage. The overall report is defeatist, focusing almost exclusively on how the United States made countless mistakes and achieved little or nothing, perhaps even worsening global problems.
An article by Garrett Graff a The Atlantic it was typical of the tone. Entitled “After 9/11, the United States Wronged Almost Everything,” he concluded, each conclusion is shown as a caption: (1) “As a society, we succumbed to fear.” (2) “We chose the wrong way to seek justice.” (3) “At home, we have reorganized the government in the wrong way.” (4) “Abroad, we squandered the good will of the world.” (5) “We chose the wrong enemies.”
For reasons of argument, we assume that everything in this article is exactly correct. While there are many lessons to be learned from the many foreign (mis) adventures in the United States before and after 9/11, we must also remember: the retrospective is 20/20, especially when you’ve had 20 years to think about what happened.
So let’s rewind the tape for two decades. I can tell you exactly where he was, what he was doing, and what he was thinking on September 11, 2001. Each of us can.
*****
The phone rang around 7:50 a.m., Central Time. My father was on the other side. He told me that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center.
I wasn’t interested. Surely it was an accident. Also, I had a sophomore year in college and had a lot more important things to worry about: Tuesdays were my busy days. From 10 a.m. to noon, he had a microbiology lab. Then, from 1pm to 5pm, I had an organic chemistry lab. Wrong, I hung up the phone and went back to sleep.
About 15 minutes later, the phone rings again. He is my father. “The second tower has been hit. We need to wake up. We are under attack.” This time I got up. I went upstairs and turned on the TV. My mouth dropped in disbelief. I called a friend and told her to wake up too.
My college classes weren’t canceled, so I got in the car and headed to school. I turned on the radio and listened to reporters describe how the first tower of the World Trade Center had just collapsed. Since I had never been to New York City, I clearly remember thinking, “At least there will be a tower if I ever get to visit it.” Then the other tower collapsed.
When I got to the microbiology lab, one of the teachers had thrown a TV in the hallway so I could hear the latest news. The assistant teacher reminded us that even though none of us wanted to work, we still had tasks that needed to be done. We all worked sitting in silence. At the top right of the lab notebook, where I always wrote down the date, I added the following line: “WTC Disaster.”
After the lab, I headed to the student center for lunch. People crowded around the TVs. In the hallway, I remember a student saying, “That’s what we get for choosing George Bush,” a rather strange feeling given that, until that time in his presidency, Bush focused on education policy.
Naturally, students began to discuss ideas about who might have done it. Iraq? Iran? Palestinians? No one knew. What we do believe is this: we will be attacked again. It was not a matter of Yes But When i on.
*****
My experience was not unique. Almost anyone who is old enough to remember 9/11 can remember the exact details of that day. How many other days are etched in your memory like that? Very few, if any. The question is this: we experienced a collective trauma that day. And the effects of this trauma lasted a long time.
The truth is, we were scared. People in Bush’s inner circle were frightened as they believed the president could be assassinated with a missile aboard Air Force One. This fact is manifested very clearly in a new Apple TV + documentary called 9/11: Inside the president’s war room. Former National Security Minister Condoleezza Rice also notes that nearly 3,000 people were killed in her place. Naturally, they felt a responsibility to never allow anything like 9/11 to happen.
That’s why the US reacted the same way it did. More than three years after 9/11, we were still so concerned about terrorism that Bush ran on a platform to defeat him and win re-election. It was not until 2006, more than five years after the attack, that Americans began to realize that things were not going as planned, especially in Iraq. As a result, the American people handed over Congress to Democrats and, in 2008, the presidency to Barack Obama.
But even then, the war on terror did not end. Obama made sure to hunt down Osama bin Laden, which happened successfully on May 2, 2011. (I remember exactly where I was when I heard that news, too). Following the notification of his death, thousands of Americans were applauding in New York and in front of the White House.
That it is the emotional toll he suffered on September 11 in America. It is worth remembering when we examine the last twenty years of foreign policy and war. We certainly made many terrible mistakes. But let’s also have a little humility and empathy as we analyze these mistakes, remembering why we made them.
As Rice asks in the aforementioned documentary, “What would you have done?”