On 9/11

Sometime in the days after September 11, 2001, my history teach began to ponder the impact of the terrorist attacks in a historical sense. I remember how he analzyed it at the time, that it was not as big an event as the attacks on Pearl Harbor had been. But, he said, we would have to see just what the consequences of the attacks were.

Nine years later, I think he was right to some extent, but he may have undervalued the significance of the attacks. Nine years later we are still involved in the war on Afghanistan and the War on Terror. Nine years later people are still sore and hurting about a mosque being built in New York City. Nine years later the idea of a terrorist attack is more real to us than it ever was before the attack.

Pearl Harbor forced our hands - and it got us involved in a world wide war, and it ultimately resulted in the Allies winning the war. If the War on Terror ever careened to the proportions of World War II (I hope not World War III at all), then it would be comparable.

I also noticed the impact World War II had on those who lived in that time period, and also the impact of World War I. 20 years after World War I, Hitler began the second World War because he was still bitter about the outcome. 20 years after World War II C.S. Lewis was writing books about the war, using Nazis as his example of "bad guys." (Frankly, 65 years later World War II continues to have a lasting impact on us - even those who did not live in that time period. It literally changed the world!)

So we are not even halfway to the midpoint of 20 years to see if this was a defining moment. We are in the middle of a recession that, experts say, will define my generation's spending habits. And my generation is still involved in the Afghanistan war. But in 11 years will we all continue to think of September 11th with the same patriotism and fervor that we do now?

I don't know. And I don't know what answer I would like. I would like to say "yes" because it means we would remember those who died that day and what it means to be an American. On the other hand, to say "yes" would imply the terrorists had won - they had created an "incident" as great and terrible as the attack on Pearl Harbor had been.

But I supose it doesn't matter - in 20 years I will probably still know exactly what 9/11 means on my calendar. But hopefully 11 years from now the terrorists will finally understand what the Japanese learned - don't mess with the USA.

An afterthought: the other day I went downstairs to our cafeteria, and the news was playing. On it was a picture of black, billowing smoke. My immediate thougth was, "Oh no, what have they blown up this time?" The video turned out to be of the oil well explosion in the Gulf. However, it reminded me of the impact 9/11 had on me - an embedded uneasiness about certain things - behaviors of airplanes, clouds of smoke. I don't know when that unease will go away.