Can Good Still Come From the 9/11 Attacks?
Is there any good will left to wring out of the attacks on the World Trade Center towers?
The incident in New York City on September 11, 2001 marks a critical point in the history of modern America and continues to affect our nation a decade after the fact. In the days following the attacks, the United States possessed such a magnitude of good will from other nations of the world that sweeping constructive changes to global politics were within our grasp. Humanity shook its collective head at those responsible, almost as if saying “it’s 2001, that’s not how we do things anymore.” The choice made for us to engage in preemptive war and restrictive domestic policies squandered that good will in rather rapid fashion, and those choices hurt the United States in a far more insidious way than the destruction of three buildings and thousands of lives lost.
I have the greatest sympathy for those who lost someone. Roughly 3000 men and women killed, reasonably projected out to an additional 6000 more lives irrevocably altered by the loss of someone important. I also have tremendous sympathy for the casualties created by the ripple effects of the terrorist attack.
Imagine I’ve drawn a pyramid on a chalkboard to illustrate the cost in human lives. It’s a strange, unbalanced, and awkward-looking pyramid. If you assign responsibility for the attacks appropriately to Osama bin Laden, Ramzi Yousef, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and the 19 hijackers, you have 22 people in a small chalk triangle at the top. At the next level, you have roughly 3000 killed between the towers and their immediate surroundings, the Pentagon, and the planes. I’m adding another 6000 “virtual” casualties to account for children, parents, friends, girlfriends, boyfriends, wives, and husbands who forever lost an immeasurable part of themselves. I’m also going to boost the number by accounting for illness and eventual death caused by the environmental pollutants of the falling buildings, so the number on our pyramid’s second level is 10,000 – a huge jump from the 22 above it. But the third and bottom layer of our pyramid is ridiculously out of proportion. Roughly 1,500,000 casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. The overwhelming majority of the casualties are, in fact, Iraqis, with much smaller numbers of coalition soldiers, contract employees, and journalists. But 1,510,000 people have paid the price for the actions of 22 men. 1,510,000 people who had absolutely no part in flying planes into buildings. There is nothing good or right about that.
Despite the sympathy I feel for those affected, I’ve never had a personal emotional investment in September 11, 2001. I knew no one who lost their life in the attack, nor anyone who died in the wars since. I had no friends or family in New York at the time, no relatives travelling on that day to cause me worry, and no fear that what I saw on the news was likely to be duplicated in my home town of San Antonio. I think this detachment is part of the reason I can look at the events following that day and be critical, and why I can look at the way people now treat the day as some kind of reverent catharsis of tragedy and feel like maybe we’re not being hard enough on ourselves.
All that post 9-11 rhetoric about “we need to do X or the terrorists win?” They sort of did. A study just released by the Brookings Institute and the Public Religion Research Institute finds Americans a decade after the terrorist attacks feel slightly safer but less free, that we don’t trust people different from ourselves, that we’re sharply divided as a nation, and that we recognize other countries look unfavorably upon us. That’s not winning. Remember all that goodwill I mentioned? We blew it, and we know it.
What can we do now? Ten years after the attack, is there any way to re-harness the brotherhood of that time into more than remembrances and memorials? I think so.
Cease fire immediately and bring soldiers home. The argument has always been that our withdrawl would create instability or a power vacuum that would be filled with undesirable elements. But let’s accept that we’ve done our work and its time for the kids to stand on their own. We have things to take care of at home.
Scale back the defense budget. Let’s find a few billion dollars in the Pentagon’s allowance to use constructively instead of destructively. Let’s put people to work with improvements to our own infrastructure, paid for with dollars that would no longer have to pay for decade-long military action.
Make public service workers like firemen, police, and EMTs first class citizens. Make their wages respectable and desirable to young career-seekers. If they say they’re sick, ensure their wellness is a top priority.
Show the force of good will. The root of the attack in 2001 was bin Laden’s perception of both the U.S.’s aid to Israel in Arab/Israeli conflicts and fears of America’s imperial designs on the middle east. The United States – our country, not our corporations – could effectively counter a lot of terrorist activity through acts of constructive foreign aid and peacekeeping. The U.S. must be an active but impartial moderator in the region, and be willing to hold Israel equally accountable for violent or hostile acts as it holds other nations.
The fall of the twin towers will not, and should never, be forgotten. Ten years later, though, I believe it is certainly time to move on. The United States spent the last decade in a retaliatory and reactionary phase. Let us now use our reflection upon September 11, 2001 to find a way forward that is peaceful, prosperous, and proactive. It’s the real American thing to do.
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Jake Negovan drives Red Brown and Blue to be an outlet for progressive political opinion that leads to the betterment of life for the real, multicultural population of the U.S. and the rest of the world. His columns address the issues faced by our country as we continue growing toward a society of equality. More about Jake can be found on the web at jakejots.com or on Twitter@jakenegovan.
