Ten years after the day that changed everything, we might have the perspective to realize it didn’t change as much as we thought.
The airport, at the borders, at federal installations. There, change is obvious.
And for anyone who serves in the military, or supports someone who does, daily lives have been dramatically altered.
The rest of us feel less secure, but it seems normal now. We have more suspicions and less privacy. And we’re less free, having acquiesced to the safety-for-civil-rights trade.
But the aftereffects of airborne suicide bombings in New York and Washington, D.C., are less than we thought they would be, less perhaps than they should be.
Chalk it up to human resiliency. We soften bad memories and highlight happier ones. We persevere.
But it’s also because we weren’t asked to do very much in the wake of 9/11. Our parents and grandparents faced a military draft, tax increases, shortages of consumer goods, personal relationships with those serving and those dying in World War II.
We fought the post-9/11 wars with brave volunteers and citizen soldiers, while the rest of us received tax cuts. Even in a military community like this one, many of us don’t know personally a single casualty of Afghanistan or Iraq.
We didn’t wait for orders, though. We came together, we tempered our partisanship, we stood up to those who would target neighbors because of their religion or ethnicity, we gave blood and money to victims.
Yet, as eager as we were, little was asked of us by political leaders who thought we either weren’t able or weren’t willing to sacrifice.
We were told to shop to help boost the economy, so 950 wealthy Oregonians chartered “The Flight For Freedom” to New York to stay in expensive hotels and drop some cash at the stores. We were relegated to being patriotic consumers.
Our response was too often superficial because we weren’t asked to do anything substantive.
As such, it didn’t take long to move on.
Less than a month after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, TV news executives thought we wouldn’t be interested in too much coverage of the cruise missile attacks on Kabul that signaled the start of the Afghan war.
While all but KIRO-TV interrupted regular programming that Oct. 7 Sunday, most went back to games and talk shows within a few hours.
“We’re waiting for pictures,” lamented a CBS executive to explain the limited coverage as though it was all just another reality show.
A week after the attacks, I thought the effects – practical and psychological – would be with us for a long, long time.
“How can we not be changed permanently? How long will it be before we can get on an airplane without a quickened pulse, without a flood of adrenaline? Can you imagine sleeping on a flight again?”
By the second-year anniversary, the answers were clear. It didn’t take long at all.
The lessons of 9/11 with the shortest life span were the need to stand together and the desire to soften the rhetoric. It lasted only until our politicians realized they wouldn’t be sanctioned for politicizing tragedy.
Within 18 months, the Iraq War that flowed from 9/11 – whether there was an actual connection or not – became just another flashpoint for polarized politics as usual. We gathered – gladly or glumly – on either side of the freedom fries/french fries dividing line.
It took much too little time to return to the days of 9/10 that were marked by short fuses and even shorter attention spans; 9/11 has become a historic date to be commemorated because most of us don’t really live it anymore.
If I had to choose one place around here that best symbolizes 9/11 and our response to it, I prefer Thea’s Park on the Foss Waterway to the so-called “Freedom Bridge” over I-5.
The bridge is too often used to wage ideological battle, to wave flags and hang ribbons, not to unite but to score political points.
The park, however, with its towering flagpole, massive globe and multilingual Peace Pole relies on different symbolism.
We’re part of the world, we welcome visitors and we’re confident enough to state that while we’re willing to wage wars, we much prefer peace.
Peter Callaghan: 253-597-8657
peter.callaghan@thenewstribune.com
blog.thenewstribune.com/politics
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