Driving on the NJ Turnpike, exit 14C will take you to the Holland Tunnel, a gateway to the lower east side of Manhattan. While navigating the access road to the tunnel, One World Trade Center (WTC) stands majestically in front of you, so compelling a visual that continuous effort is required to keep you eyes focused on the road.
The reflective glass and the structure’s eight angular sides – which create a perfect octagon at the center – give One WTC a futuristic feel amid the boxy 20th century buildings that otherwise make up the Manhattan skyline. As the tallest building in the Western hemisphere, it dwarfs the structures around it, and it’s configuration evokes a strong sense of grounded power and sturdiness, and for Americans, perhaps a silent determination – They can’t knock this one down…
It is a very impressive piece of architecture.
Yet, for all its majesty, One WTC is also a reminder.
It is alone.
As I drove on that access road to the Holland Tunnel this past week, my eyes kept shifting to the left and right looking for the other building. Despite the beauty and elegance of One WTC, by itself it appears incomplete.
It is an apt metaphor for America as we remember the 15th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks.
A decade and a half later, why does 9-11 remain so raw for Americans? Why does our remembrance remain so intense?
While Americans have never forgotten the loss and heroism of citizens killed and wounded in the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, President Eisenhower did not have public ceremonies and moments of silence to commemorate the attack in 1956.
Was it that their war had been won and the enemy decisively defeated, the threat of the time, eliminated?
Today, 15 years after 9-11, the Al Qaeda that launched the attacks on America has been rendered impotent through relentless action, deprived of safe havens and hunted down like animals. America’s promise to bring Osama bin Laden to justice was fulfilled by the business end of an M4 rifle, shouldered by America’s most elite warriors, conducting one of the most daring military raids in American history. The American homeland has been hardened against attack. While there have been acts of extremist Islamic terrorism on American soil, no terrorist group has been able to replicate the mass casualty attacks of 2001.
But somehow, these accomplishments do not feel like enough.
It is true that the terrorist threats since 2001 have morphed into something more diverse, complex and lethal. Al Qaeda franchises in countries outside of Afghanistan and Pakistan thrive locally. From the vacuum created by the American withdrawal from Iraq, was born the Islamic State, which has upended the assumptions and balance of power in the Middle East, threatening our allies, regionally, and by proxy, in Europe and even here at home.
In November 2001, America was bombing Afghanistan. Today, America attacks terrorist cells from Afghanistan to Yemen, to Libya.
Is it this sense of perpetual threat, despite our successes, that are the root cause for our collective lack of closure on 9-11?
I considered these questions on my drive into Manhattan, and came to a different conclusion.
Maybe Pearl Harbor is the wrong analogy.
Maybe it is the Kennedy assassination that is the more apt comparison.
The murder of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963 has taken on a mythology far more potent than the tragedy itself. It wasn’t simply that an American president had been killed in his prime and at the height of his power, but the companion belief that the killing inexorably altered American history to come.
After Dallas came Johnson, Vietnam, political murders, race riots, Chicago and President Nixon. Had the assassination never occurred, the thinking goes, the proper timeline of American history would have played out; a gauzy combination of unity, prosperity, optimism and achievement, without the pitfalls that made up actual events.
But of course there is no possible way to know that. Indeed, Kennedy was a divisive political figure (for that age) and his visit to Dallas was necessary to shore up his support in still-Democrat Texas in advance of the 1964 elections. What Kennedy would have done had he won re-election can never, truly, be known.
But Kennedy’s murder deeply shocked the sensibilities of a nation that could not conceive that an American president could be struck down in such a random manner. In failing to protect Kennedy, we lost part of ourselves in the world that came after him.
And that theme rings true for 9-11.
On September 10th, war and terrorism were things that happened over there.
US armed forces overseas had to be on guard (USS Cole), but with two oceans and a lethal military force protecting us, our homeland was surely secure. Certainly no cave-dwelling extremists could outwit our own security to attack the symbols of American financial and military power from within. Certainly American civilians would never be targeted.
But they did, killing nearly 3,000 of our fellow citizens in the process, each with a story and life potential that would go unrealized.
That veneer of safety was the expensive indulgence of an unjustified hubris.
And our fellow citizens, in New York City, Arlington, VA and Shanksville, PA paid the price for it.
And like the Kennedy assassination, it seems that history was thrown off course by 9-11. Afghanistan, Iraq, Katrina, political polarization, financial collapse and an enduring recession – Clinton and Trump. If we had been just a little sharper that day, had a handful of people done something different, maybe 9-11 might have been only a failed terrorist attack, with the nation moving alone on its original, intended course.
Our (relative) youth as a nation, and what was once our innate optimism as a people, has animated countless writers with talk about a uniquely American topic; the loss of “innocence.” Other countries, with longer histories, don’t engage in this. But we do. The Civil War, Lincoln, Pearl Harbor, JFK, RFK, MLK, Watergate were all events which seemed to mark some variation of this meme of innocence squandered in tragedy.
9-11 joins the list.
But these events are not historical anomalies that intruded upon and then altered an idyllic American narrative. Profound political and moral issues lead to war. Political assassination is as old as man himself. Power corrupts, and not every leader is visionary. Even the best leaders make mistakes. History is not always kind. Security is constantly challenged by ingenuity. People of promise die unexpectedly and tragically.
There is no component of 9-11 that hasn’t happened – over centuries – in other lands. What is unique about 9-11 is that it happened to us.
I believe that our reverence for 9-11 – our collective connection to it – is due in part to the shocking change to our belief systems that 9-11 triggered – about our security and the world around us, forcing unfamiliar adaptation to the threats that have changed the way that we live. As we mourn those who passed so heroically and tragically, there is a part of us that yearns for the country that existed at 8:45am, on that most beautiful Tuesday morning. Perhaps if we had foiled the attack, we might still inhabit that place of confidence and security.
In that sense, One WTC is not so much incomplete, as it is a reflection of our time. It is strong, designed and built to withstand the threats of the 21st century. Rising from the ashes of a tragedy, it stands proud, a silent sentinel that will mark our as yet un-walked steps through this century.
The adjustment to this reality, however, remains the wound that has not healed.
