Lessons from 911?

As I was becoming an adult in the turbulent sixties, several events had outside influences on our generation. Of course, major events were the Vietnam War, the anti-war movement, and the division in the country about this war. This decade saw the rise of the civil rights, women’s rights, and black power movements. It also saw the killings of many men who were important to this age. We saw the deaths of civil rights leader Medgar Evers, Muslim leader Malcolm X, President Kennedy, Dr. King, and Senator Robert Kennedy all in that brief period. Citizens later learned that our government spied on the anti-war movement and that Hoover’s FBI moved slowly to support civil rights demonstrations and wire-tapped Dr. King. Many believed their world was in turmoil.

This week we saw the twentieth anniversary of the 911 terrorist attacks. For those who saw the attacks on TV or were there in person, these memories will never fade and will remain sealed in their brains. It was the first time our nation was attacked on our soil since Pearl Harbor. The range of attacks in multiple places increased fear and disruption. Cell phones and other communications functioned poorly or not at all, so people trying to find loved ones were often unsuccessful. All airplanes were grounded, and no planes flew in or out of the country. At first, they thought that up to ten thousand people were killed there since over twenty thousand worked among the two buildings; later the numbers were found to be fewer than 3000. Sadly, that number included over 300 firefighters and police officers in New York City alone. Friends and relatives covered the areas around the devastation in Manhattan with photos of missing loved ones in a heartbreaking search for many who would never be found. Hospitals geared up for mass casualties which never appeared and blood banks collected blood for victims who would never be rescued as the remains were often pulverized. I cried when I saw the firefighters going into buildings from which they would never return.

Scenes at the Pentagon included many burned people as jet fuel spilled across the impact area, but construction had moved many offices at the time of the attack so that area was almost empty; this ultimately saved many. 184 people died there (including 59 people from the American Airlines plane) and many others were severely injured.

In Shanksville, PA, all 40 passengers, and 4 hijackers were killed when the crew and passengers of United Flight 93 overpowered the hijackers and flew the plane into the ground.

For today’s generation, these terrible events connected them to my era, where everyone knew where they were when they learned that President Kennedy or Dr. King were assassinated. I would venture to say that today all can tell you what they were doing when they saw the towers fall. Around Maryland, DC, and Virginia, offices closed, some people left their cars and took Metro home since traffic snarled. Many parents recounted their need to get home or to the school where their children were being sheltered, just to bring their families together. That evening, local streets were almost deserted. I remember trying all day to reach my college-age son in North Carolina, but calls were not going through. He, at the same time, was trying to reach me, as he had heard that bombs were going off across the city (they were not, but rumors reigned for a while) and he knew that I sometimes had clients downtown. Families wanted to connect and in this nation of people who move around a lot, it meant many people were trying to reach out.

Time seems to stop and events move almost in slow motion when sudden tragedy impacts our days. At first, the brain cannot process what is happening. Scenes from the World Trade Center, broadcast again this week, showed people running in confusion, losing shoes and purses along the way; pausing only to breathe, even as the air was full of toxic fumes.

For a short while, America and the world stood together against these acts of terror and condemned the terrorists, many of whom were from Saudi Arabia, and followed a millionaire Islamic terrorist called Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden apparently wanted Americans out of the Middle East, wanted them to stop supporting leaders he deemed insufficiently devout and wanted Russia out of Afghanistan. He wanted to establish more fundamental Islamic rulers in the Middle East. The US government also considered him responsible for the bombings of US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998, as well as the suicide bombing of the USS Cole in 2000. It seems amazing that he was not being tracked by our CIA, since he was in charge of Al Qaeda. Later, the 911 commission would bring out the important fact that much of our intelligence was siloed in separate entities, and vital information was not shared.

Americans united against this threat from outside our shores. Almost immediately, sadly, in this country, hate crimes against Muslims started happening; many Americans who were Muslim were arrested without cause or held on suspicion. Few Americans understood Muslim fundamentalists then, any more than now. Many asked why America was hated by the fundamentalist groups. Obviously, there were conflicts of cultures prominent here. Bin Laden was enormously rich; he was from a wealthy Saudi family and was one of 54 children from a father who had many wives. He also had several wives. His life could not be more different from most Americans. But, as he became radicalized, he disdained his wealth except as it could be used to buy arms and allow him to travel and find places to hide. America responded to these attacks by bombing and invading Afghanistan, as that was his most recent home and where the Taliban had sheltered him. Later he was found in Pakistan, which sheltered him, almost in the open, after he left Afghanistan. It was there, in 2011, that American Special Forces captured and killed him, thus ending a sad chapter.

Peter Bergen, writing for CNN, claims that Bin Laden has changed history and, in many ways, he has. America has spent trillions of dollars and used a generation of our military fighters to wage wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have both been deemed failures. Thousands of our young men and women were injured severely or were killed. We did not even tally the numbers of civilians killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it is said to be in the hundreds of thousands. Our daily lives here at home were changed by security measures at airports and rules about carrying liquids on airplanes and removing our shoes before boarding planes. The Patriot Act took away some of our rights. Our country, which certainly had divisions before 911, saw the period of unity as brief, then returned to widen the existing fissures. (Another author writing in the Times was Laila Lalami, who wrote from the perspective of a Muslim–I will review her comments next week.)

Heather Cox Richardson, writing her column “Letters from An American”, mentioned former President Bush’s words after he spoke at Shanksville yesterday and decried extremists from within, for which he has received praise. “There is little cultural overlap between violent extremists abroad and violent extremists at home, he said and added, both must be confronted.”

However, she found a direct connection from his actions, which divided the country when he was President, and a president who denied the election results, to the insurrectionists of January 6^th.

“The 9/11 attacks enabled Republicans to tar those who questioned the administration’s economic or foreign policies as un-American: either socialists or traitors making the nation vulnerable to terrorist attacks. Surely, such people should not have a voice at the polls. Republican gerrymandering and voter suppression began to shut Democratic voices out of our government, aided by a series of Supreme Court decisions. In 2010, the court opened the floodgates of corporate money into our elections to sway voters; in 2013, it gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act; in 2021, it said that election laws that affected different groups of voters unevenly were not unconstitutional.”

Dan Balz, writing in the Washington Post today, said that although the attacks of 911 united the country for a short time, by 2002 many of the divisions had returned. Although the war in Afghanistan was started immediately, the gear up to the War in Iraq was mired in lies and controversy. He quoted the late Senator McCain in 2006, who called the country more divided and partisan than he had ever seen it. According to Balz, Republicans, beginning with Reagan, started the efforts to limit votes by Democrats and started claiming fraud. Before the election in 2000, Republicans in Florida culled over 100,000 voters from the rolls; most were African Americans who frequently voted for Democrats. (Remember, Bush won Florida by only slightly over 500 contested votes and his brother was the Governor of Florida then.) So, what we are seeing in Texas and Georgia today are only different plays from the same playbooks. According to some Republicans, if the Democrats win an election, it must be fraudulent. Balz also faulted the government for lack of imagination by never expecting that we would be attacked on our shores, even though signs were seen from attacks across the globe.

Today also Spencer Ackerman, writing an op-ed for the New York Times, indicated that September 11^th gave us January 6^th. He wrote that 911 allowed Americans to think of themselves as counter-terrorists and excused the rise of local militias. He said many white extremists applauded the MAGA crowds who wanted the Muslim ban, cheered when President Obama was denounced as a Muslim, and supported white supremacy.

He concludes with this statement: “But the most durable terrorism in this country is white people’s terrorism. A war cannot defeat it. Persistent political struggle can. We need organized grass-roots action to unseat insurrectionist allies from office, to overturn the structural works of white supremacy like voter-suppression laws, and to abolish the institutional architecture of the war on terror before it threatens even more American lives and freedoms. That, not empty declarations of finality, is the only way to truly end the Sept. 11 era.”

So, what have we learned? Perhaps, as the cartoon character POGO once said: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” No one can destroy our democracy but we, ourselves, by letting measures pass which we know are anti-democratic. By following the liars who claim voter fraud in order to restrict legal voters, by allowing demagogues to be elected, we defeat ourselves and our democracy. 911 has allowed us to distrust our more honorable instincts and go with the flow of the liars and haters. We need to turn back and find, as is said, our better angels.

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Brief COVID news: President Biden announced sweeping mandates for federal employees and employers of over 100 persons in an attempt to quell the spread of the Delta virus. This was met with frenzied cries against mandates by many of the Republican governors who are part of the problem. More next week.

COVID stats NY Times: 9-12-21

US Totals: Total Cases: 41,025,335. New Cases: 145,724.

                   Total Deaths: 659,806.  New Deaths: 1,648.

Maryland totals continue to rise: 9-10-21

Total Cases: 508,017. New Cases: 1,553. Total Deaths: 10,139. New Deaths: 15.

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I will close with a quote from President Lincoln: “We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

‘Til next week – Peace!