9/11 – A Decade Later

Despite the passage of time,  memories of 9-11 remain indelible.

The piercingly blue sky of the day, which seemed to be proof of God’s Providence.

The whine of aircraft engines and massive explosions. The growling roar of the WTC as floors collapsed upon each other. The ominous oily black cloud, improbably mixed with a silty, almost gentle light brown smoke, as it rose from the wreckage of the Pentagon. All proof of evil among men.

The grim foreboding when told that a fourth plane was headed to Washington.

The awe and bewilderment of fighter jets patrolling the skies over the capital.

Ten years later, images of the Twin Towers under attack never fail to affect.

No matter how many times I watch, my stomach will get tight as I see the planes hit the towers. I cannot watch the WTC fall without a lump in my throat.

It is the same with the recorded phone calls from doomed airliners that remain wrenching.

The initial shock and confusion of the hijacking, followed by the harrowing realization that passengers and crew were suddenly helpless bystanders in an improvised weapon of mass destruction.

The heartbreaking goodbyes, juxtaposed with the determination of passengers on Flight 93 not to go down without a fight.

Yet for all of their sweep and impact on our national consciousness, the events of 9-11 took only 102 minutes; from the initial attack on the North Tower to its collapse a little more than an hour and a half later.

As a nation we have been parsing the meaning of those 102 minutes each day since. The question remains – are we a better nation since 9-11? A better people?

A narrative of decline and decay is easy to conjure.

4,700 American soldiers have died in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq since 9-11. Nearly 33,000 more have been wounded. The cost of the conflicts to date stands at $1.3 trillion and growing. There is the stain of Abu Graib and the controversy of Guantanamo.

At home, the collapse of Enron in December 2001 served as a precursor to the much more serious financial crisis and economic collapse in 2008-09.

Our politics have become more partisan and divisive, where campaigning appears more important than governing. Where arguing over problems is more important than solving them.

Where events such as the responces to Hurricane Katrina, the Lehman bankruptcy or the Obama economic recovery program  make it easy to question whether any institution, public or private, is capable of competent action.

The loss of our AAA credit rating, our eye-popping debt that bleeds as far as the eye can see, the 30 million Americans looking for permenant work amid an amemic recovery, these are only the latest sign posts of national failure and enfeeblement after a decade of war.

But I disagree.

A decade after 9-11, the unmistakable word that describes America is resilience.

We saw it almost immediately on 9-11 proper, when average citizens became the first soldiers in a new war, storming the cockpit of Flight 93, and most likely saving White House or the Capitol building.

We have honored and buried our dead ,and tended to the task of rebuilding.

The Pentagon again looks seemeless and untouched. A new tower is rising like a phoenix from the destruction of Ground Zero.

A nation, oblivious to the threats of terror, has adapted. Intelligence and law enforcement agencies reformed and expanded. In no small part due to their efforts, there has not been another successful terrorist attack on American soil in ten years.

Our military, designed and trained to fight a major land campaign against a standing army, has become a marvel of improvisation and adaptability.

In Afghanistan,  Special Forces on horseback call in airstrikes in support of local militia. The Taliban were deposed in six weeks.

The dash to Baghdad  – 344 miles in 17 days – was the fastest advance of US forces in American history. Later, with sectarian violence in Iraq at its apogee, the US military fundementally transformed its operations into the most successful counter-insurgency strategy in recent history, saving Iraq from collapse, and dealing Al Qaeda in Iraq a body blow.

In the air, the US military created a fundementally new kind of warfare from whole cloth, with drone strikes that took the fight directly to the terrorists.  With vastly improved intelligence and coordination, the US began methodically dismantling Al Qaeda and Taliban leadership and troops where they lived.

Those combined efforts culminated  in the daring raid on the Abbotobad compound where Osama bin Laden was introduced to the business end of US Special Forces.

In the months since, American forces have redoubled their efforts to wreak havoc on Al Qeada and the Taliban to the point where former CIA Director (and current Secretary of Defense) Leon Panetta said that the US was within reach of defeating the Al Qaeda network.

And while our politics have been divisive, our governance on war issues has been unusually stable.

In 2009, one of America’s most conservative governments gave way to one of its most liberal. The change was yet another example of the confidence and dynamism of American democracy at a time of war.

Yet, despite striking policy differences in the campaign, the policies have remained the mostly the same. Indeed, troops were surged into Afghanistan, drone strikes increased in number and geography and Guantanamo remained open.

In foreign policy, President Obama’s concerted outreach to Muslim countries in 2009 was in many ways, the flip side of President Bush’s “freedom agenda,” outlined in his second inaugural, which foresaw the Arab Spring:

“America’s belief in human dignity will guide our policies, yet rights must be more than the grudging concessions of dictators; they are secured by free dissent and the participation of the governed. In the long run, there is no justice without freedom, and there can be no human rights without human liberty.”

Indeed, in a decade of conflict with radical Islam, it has been the radicals that have suffered the greatest loss with no appreciable achievements.

While we have yet to see the final structure of post-Arab Spring governments, there is little doubt that the wellsprings of those revolts were found not in mideaval fatwas of Islamic piety, but in the western tradition of freedom and liberty.

It is a promising, if unfinished start.

At home, we are emeshed in societal dispair rooted in economic uncertainty. The problems are real and the threats are great.

Yet, despite our currrent calamity, progress and innovation continue. New technologies to reach reach untapped energy sources are real. Giants such as Google Apple, Intel and Facebook push the boundaries for how we talk, share, learn and remember. Advances in medicine and science continue.

But things don’t make a nation, people do.

If a society’s health is measured by the conduct of its people, we are in good stead.

Consider the five million Americans who have served in the military this decade; three million of whom served after 9-11.  These are volunteers, citizens who stepped up at a time when American was at war.  Men and women who placed careers and education on hold, who left behind families and friends, to take up the task of serving our country.

And from the mountains of Afghanistan to the river valleys of Iraq, from the humanitarian operations to save mudslide victims in Pakistan, to our  efforts to provide aid to tsunami-struck Indonesia, from the drones piloted in obscurity, to to the commando raids that doll out justice in person, these soldiers have kept America safe, and should make every Americans proud.

9-11 changed America in real and tangible ways.

But in the decade since, it has been the confidence and character of the American people that has been our steady “true north” as we have navigated challenges and traumas of our time.

It is that resilience that I will honor on Sunday, as I mourn the dead and remember the day.

It is the anchor that ties a world before 9-11 to our lives today and beyond.

It is the generational inspiration that holds the hope for a better tomorrow.