9/11, WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED?

By Ruth A. Sheets

Twenty-two years ago today, the United States was attacked by terrorists from various nations, all trained and organized to pull off the attack over months, perhaps years.  As so often happens, disgruntled young men were recruited by an angry older guy to do his dirty work.  To make it palatable to the young men, the acts were tied to religion, in this case, Islam.  If certain people are told they would get a great reward in heaven if they did enormous damage to the richest most powerful country in the world, they would jump at the chance.  There may have been some drugs involved to sweeten the pot and make death seem acceptable.

 That morning was the first day of school of the 2001-02 school year for our district.  I don’t remember the reason for the delay, but my office was told we were moving upstairs to a new spot.  I was in the midst of carrying a box of resource materials down the hall when I heard one of the teachers say that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City.  It didn’t fully register at that moment so I kept moving (plus the box was heavy).  On my next trip, I stopped at the door of the teacher who had told us earlier.  She said it was on the news and was real, and that a second plane had hit the other tower. 

One of my colleagues’ father worked in a building near the towers and she began trying to reach him, an effort that would go on all day.  Just before we left for the day, she got through and found out he was OK.  The people in his building had gotten out in time. There was a collective sigh of relief from everyone, but it was also clear our lives would never be the same after that day.  We had no idea how much things would change, and we would learn quite a bit in a short time.

Two planes hit New York City.  The third hijacked plane hit the Pentagon and a fourth was taken down by passengers in Western Pennsylvania before it could hit a building in Washington, DC.  This was an attack against the United States on American soil and we needed a response.  Unfortunately, we didn’t have a president who had sufficient experience to handle the situation.  He learned that the attackers had been trained in Afghanistan, so the response should be, attack Afghanistan.  Most of us knew very little about that nation, except many considered it backward with little to recommend it.  So, for 21 years, we tried to do something in Afghanistan, but for the most part it was unclear just what the mission was.  A lot of people died for the mission, though, and it is pretty clear things there are not much better for the effort. 

Lesson 1, think carefully before attacking a whole nation you know nothing about. 

George W. Bush, as president and Rudy Giuliani as Mayor of New York City were suddenly heroes.  I still don’t understand what made them heroes.  Bush made a nice speech about people staying calm and not blaming people here for what was done by others, than did a lot of things to do just that.  Giuliani showed up at “Ground Zero” for photo ops, but what did they really do? 

Lesson 2:  Heroes are people who actually do something to help.  Take care who you have as heroes.  It would have been better to pass by Bush and Giuliani and go right to the fire-fighters and many others who helped in the rescue and clean-up and make sure they are not forgotten later when their health proved to have been compromised.  We already think of the passengers of flight 93 that crashed their plane where it would cause less loss of life as heroes. 

I remember early on that the Bush administration was blaming former President Clinton for what happened.  Bush had been in office for nearly 8 months, but somehow the attack was Clinton’s fault.  All flights were stopped, except maybe for certain Saudi family members, friends of the Bushes who just had to get out of the US. 

Lesson 3:  It is worth the time and effort to learn what actually happened before pointing the finger at someone hoping you won’t be accused of not doing your job.  The 9/11 Commission did get some answers but it is unclear how many of their recommendations were seriously considered and employed.

Any man with dark hair and a beard was looked at suspiciously and just happened to be the ones who got extra checks and pat-downs by the newly installed TSA folks at airports.  Muslims in general were targeted because we were reminded every day, every newscast that the hijackers were Muslims, implying to many, of course, that any Muslim would do the same thing if they got the chance.  Twenty-two years later and Muslims are still seen by many as threats and not really Americans even when they were born here. 

Lesson 4:  blaming people for things just because they are of the same religion, race, gender, etc. is cowardly and hurtful, and does nothing to make a situation any better, and is particularly egregious when it is the media or prominent persons doing the blaming.

President Bush was looking for a way to get the US involved in Iraq, probably from Inauguration Day.  He and his “team” began introducing the concept of Iraq as enemy in 2002.  Somehow, Iraq was subtly mentioned just before or after a story about 9/11.  Even though there was no connection whatever, people started believing there was.  Then came the word that Saddam Husein was producing “weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).”  A lot of people, including our intelligence community knew that was a lie, but as employees of our government, I guess, were not willing to say much publicly.  Bush even got our Secretary of State, Colin Powell to lie for him that the WMDs were a fact.  I read that Congress was given all kinds of special meetings to support what the administration was saying and too many members believed the administration.  Why would Bush, Powell, and the rest of their team lie about something so important?  We ended up at war in Iraq before Afghanistan was settled. 

Lesson 5:  Congress should never give carte blanche to any president when it comes to going to war if we have not been attacked, unless there is overwhelming proof from an independent source that an attack is imminent.  A lot of Americans and Iraqis died or were injured because of a lie.  More than 20 years later, Iraq is still suffering from our poorly planned and executed intervention, and so are we.

After 9/11 Americans were terrified that another attack could come at any time, and the Bush administration was perfectly happy to keep that fear going.  In “response,” they made a new department, Homeland Security (DHS) that was supposed to combine all the parts of the government that “keep this nation safe” into one broad entity that had enormous powers.  The Administration claimed it was poor communication among agencies that kept Bush et al from knowing the attack was coming.  (The truth seems to be they ignored the information given.)  The Patriot Act was approved by a Republican Congress and signed quickly by a Republican president that wanted the extra anti-privacy powers the Act permitted.  Then, there’s ICE (Immigration  and Customs Enforcement) which has committed appalling crimes against humanity since its inception, yet it still exists. 

Lesson 6:  Whenever a new department or agency is created in our federal government, there must be an evaluation period of say 10 or 12 years to see if the department has actually done the job it was set to do and if it improved the situation it was “designed” to correct.  If not, the department/agency should be dissolved.  Nearly 20 years later, it seems to me the jury is still out on DHS and any evaluations of its performance have been minor and easily dismissed.

What have we as a nation learned?  That is uncertain and probably depends on who is answering.  I would say the above are lessons we should or could have learned, but it is unclear that we have or even want to consider them. 

It will be interesting to see how 9/11 is commemorated this year, what kinds of ceremonies.  We must remember that anyone younger than 27 years or so will have little or no memory of the event.  How will they be included if at all? 

What will we, as a people, remember collectively about 9/11?  Will it be the actual event, where we were when we heard about it?  Previous to 9/11, only a rare person imagined someone would fly planes into buildings deliberately.  Now we know it could happen and that has changed our lives individually and as a nation.  Will we remember the ordinary people going about their jobs that morning or will they be just part of the falling towers?  Will we remember the fire-fighters who didn’t know what was about to happen when they started running up the stairs in the towers, hoping to stop the disaster when the collapse of buildings attacked in such a way was a given? 

We are likely to remember the passengers who forced the plane down in Pennsylvania instead of its intended destination.  Service members’ as well as civilian lives were lost at the Pentagon which will be remembered for at least a while.  Will the passengers and crews on the crashed planes be remembered?  The various memorials may help us remember, but did we learn these or other positive lessons we can take into the future?  I suppose only time will tell.