9/11: 23 Years Later

23 Years Later

I cannot fathom it has been 23 years since 9/11. It feels like yesterday. It also feels like a different world. I was supposed to be at a leadership training event on the morning of 9/11, but one of my members was facing surgery. So, I decided to swing by the hospital for a visit. Pulling into the hospital parking lot in my grey Honda, I turned on the radio to listen to the news. The report was that a twin-engine plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. Not being in front of a TV, I thought they were talking about a Cessna or some other small private aircraft.

By the time I walked into the hospital lobby, the second plane had crashed. I knew something was wrong, terribly wrong. I had no idea just how wrong things were. It is hard to describe just how disorienting the events were. After the first crash, most people thought it was just a terrible accident. When the second crash occurred, it took a few moments for reality to set in. Could it be a coincidence? No, that was impossible. What was this horror?

Watching on TV

We watched on live TV as our countrymen jumped head-first out of the windows of the World Trade Center, finding a more peaceful death than being consumed by the flames. Firemen ran up the towers to aid those who were fleeing. Many of those firemen never came home. Then we watched live as the towers collapsed in a suffocating grey cloud of toxic grey asbestos. In horror, we watched the towers collapse on replay until our revulsion overcame our transfixed shock.

Very few of us had heard the name Al Qaeda, bin Laden was a phantom whose name had not been spoken outside foreign affairs and intelligence sources, at least, not often. Terrorism was the bane of medieval Middle Eastern fiefdoms. Terror attacks were small, never something to worry about. We never thought terrorism would hit like this. It was unimaginable.

The reports kept coming. There were false reports of a bomb at the State Department and reports of another crash at the Pentagon. We were under attack. I remember staring at the TV as I sat with my church member and her family watching the events unfold. “I feel the need to pray,” I said feebly. It was a horror, that I shall never forget.

At the Office

Going back to my office, I sat in front of my computer hitting the refresh button on my news sites over, and over, and over, and over. It never occurred to me to go home and turn on the TV. I was too dumbstruck. I tried to call loved ones, but the cell networks were jammed. From early morning until the afternoon, I sat there praying and hoping. Mostly I was in disbelief.

I remember my sense of outrage. “Where is the CIA,” I fumed. “Billions of dollars in defense spending and this happened?” I remember my sense of needing to do something. I thought about joining the Armed Services, but I was a recent seminary graduate and believed the Lord had called me to serve in the way I was serving. What I did not know was that the asthma that cropped up in college would have prevented me from serving anyway. That sense of needing to do something was common. Millions lined up to give blood. Others gave generously to organizations like the Red Cross. We wanted, needed to respond.

As the sun set on 9/11, the still smoldering debris of the towers, the Pentagon, and the field became the tombs of our fellow citizens. With tears in our eyes and outrage in our veins we learned the world we had loved no longer existed or perhaps never existed.

Another World, A World of Dreams

The terrorists not only murdered our fellow citizens. They murdered the world in which we lived. For those too young to remember the world before 9/11 was very different. As a child, I remember nuclear war drills in school. We would get under our desks and cover our heads with our chubby little grade school hands. What that was supposed to do in the event of a nuclear attack was anyone’s guess. We did it though. We lived in the shadow of a nuclear apocalypse.

Two great events changed all of that. In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. The Wall, the symbol of maniacal, totalitarian Marxism fell and with it the sense of Marxist ascendency. Suddenly the West no longer had a realistic fear that the USSR would control the world. Just two years later, the hammer and sickle flew over the Kremlin for the last time. The world was at peace, or so we thought.

1991 to 2001 was a hiatus from history for most Americans. A wonderful dream of peace and prosperity across the world comforted Americans as we slept on the news around us. There were inconvenient facts we ignored: the first World Trade Center Bombing, the bombing of the USS Cole, the bombing of the US Embassy in Nairobi, and numerous other attacks were not enough to wake Americans from our dream. Instead of learning about terrorism, we learned about Monica Lewinski. Instead of summoning national will against a shadowy enemy who had declared war against us, we focused on education reform and stem cell research. The murder of Chandra Levy occupied our TVs.

Unaware

Few of us knew that men had vowed to destroy our country. Fewer still knew the names of the men who had sworn to kill us all. We did not know or care that much about their reasons. We slept. They plotted. We dreamed. They planned. On 9/11 two planes crashed into the World Trade Center and ended our sleep. Our dream vanished like a morning mist. When we awakened from our slumber, we saw a mangled mess of smoldering metal and smelled the nauseating stench of burning flesh and plastic. War was on us, there was no more time for dreaming.

Successes

From Oct 7, 2001, until now, US forces and intelligence services have been at war with Al Qaeda and the organizations that followed it. I suspect that will remain the case until the sun ceases to set. There have been many successes. On September 12, 2001, none of us would have believed that 9/11 would have been the peak of terrorist success. There was the Boston Marathon attack, the Orlando nightclub shooting, and other despicable attacks. Nothing, however, on the scale of 9/11 has happened. We are very fortunate.

The success of the intelligence and military has been so complete that we tend to view precautions taken in the aftermath of 9/11 as annoyances. Airline security measures seem tedious, and information gathering seems intrusive. No one would have said such a thing on 9/12.

Mistakes

9/11 was a terrible miscalculation by bin Laden. He imagined the US populace would rise in anger against US involvement in the Middle East. He thought there would be Viet Nam-style protests against US policy. What happened was the opposite. US citizens rose in anger against terrorism. The US decimated his organization and eventually killed him to the cheers of crowds in the streets.

Believing that terrorism is gone would be a horrendous mistake, however. Hamas’ disgusting barbarity on 10/7 is a reminder that there are those who will rape, maim, and murder for a political end. Hamas’ gleeful ghouls committed the most barbaric atrocities imaginable, even shooting up nurseries, and recorded them for prosperity. Never forget that Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, the Islamic Jihad, and others would do the exact same thing here that Hamas did in Israel if they could. No doubt they dream of such an opportunity.

Together

23 years later, I remember something else. In the weeks following 9/11, we were a united people. We looked after each other and prayed for each other. I still remember the members of Congress standing on the steps and singing the single worst version of “God Bless America,” I had ever heard. For that moment, though, party did not matter, vocal talent was irrelevant: only country mattered. All of that is gone. We now live in a sick communion of mutual loathing.[1] Progressives hate the “deplorable” conservatives. Conservatives hate the “swamp creatures.” Elites hate the common citizen with a contempt born of class. Ordinary citizens despise elites with the passion of Leonidas at Thermopylae. We lost something in the last 23 years that is more valuable than all the bonds of Christendom. We lost each other. In the days after 9/11, that was unfathomable.

Remember

For many of our fellow citizens, 9/11 is not just a day of national remembrance. It is a day of loss. They remember a loved one who never came home, a body pulled from the rubble, or children’s clothes pulled from a suitcase. It is a day of what if, a day of profound sadness. Remember them today.

[1] Volf, Exclusion and Embrace, 99.