Remembering September 11, 2001 and beyond

 

 

It was a day of heroes...when a group of heroes, including Todd Beamer, fought back with courage and valor to try and take back Flight 93.  Although they did not succeed, they stopped the plane from being used as a fuel-laden missile against other targets.  They were ordinary people, who refused to sit down and see perhaps hundreds more die.  They knew what they had to and did it not with vengeance in mind-but respect for the sanctity of human life and existence.  Todd Beamer, et al were not fighting against a religion.  All they could see were defeating murderous thugs, hellbent on as much carnage as possible.

The image of the brave firefighters, police officers and EMT personnel entering the towers to save human life-with no regards to their own safety-was burned into our collective psyche.  It was the lesser known heroes too, like the man who held open the door of one of the twin towers, and kept it open so thousands of people could escape without being trampled to death.  In the immediate aftermath, humanity stood unified against these terrorists.  We stood globally against them, but blew the opportunity to get their top leadership will an ill-advised invasion against Iraq.  But for the immediate aftermath, people stood shoulder-to-shoulder and bravery and courage was spoken about with pride.  

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 stood as one of history's greatest events.  No event since the sneak attack on Pearl Habor by Japan had so defined the history of a nation and its people.  It also stood as testimony as growth and evolution of humanity.  People of the Islamic faith were not rounded up and put into internment camps, as Japanese civilians had.  Hopeful signs emerged with the toppling of the Taliban by the USA.  But the opportunity was soon lost with a botching of a very good attempt to get Osama Bin Laden, and a huge diversion of US military assets to Iraq. 

With the USA stretched thin on the two fronts, and two bloody insurgent wars now raging, the hopes of decimating the original perpetrators of 9/11 were now lost.  In the years that followed, one terrorist alert after another popped up.  These terrorists, no doubt badly stressed were able to re-organize somewhat and perpetrated a number of horrific attacks abroad.  America did not endure another terror attack-but became a sort of a democratic police state as a result.  Rights were still respected, but government invasiveness into the average person's privacy was everywhere.  Visions of an Orwellian-type of a world were as ripe as the innumerable conspiracy theories that were spoken about.. 

 No doubt some aspects of the horrifying and unforgiveable mass-slaughter just did not add up.  But somehow it just seemed to be another theory or theories spoken about in a war weary and economically bedragged country.  Years of war in Iraq and Afgjhanistan affected the American mindset deeply, leading inexorably to the toppling of George W. Bush by Barack Obama in 2008.  So many chains of events and circumstances came as a result of 9/11 tragedy. 

America changed deeply, for better and worse.  Nothing seemed to make sense anymore...or maybe it just made too much sense.  The 21st century USA lost its innocence during that brutal attack, but also became better in many ways, and worse in others.We were all changed by 9/11, and the years of its aftermath.  The people we once were was gone forever and were never returning, under any circumstance.  But we had examples, vestiges and full-blown aspects of the previous world, with celebrity scandals, silly paparazzi and the such.  At the very least, it wasn't a world war, like the aftermath of Pearl Habor.  However, that aspect remained hauntingly real, and in many ways parallel to the December 7, 1941 attack.  The global economy collapsed ion 2008, much like the Great Depression that preceeded WW II.  Were things in the 21st century just happening in different sequences?