9-11, 20 Years On

I’ve had the chance to write a yearly message about the attacks of September 11, 2001, for 3 different publications and my website for the past 10 years. I wrote my first 9-11 message as Managing Editor of Liberty Ink Journal in 2010. Not only that, but I’ve written about this event nearly every year since then for somewhere.

This year is poignant as America’s Longest War has finally come to an end and our troops have flown out of Afghanistan for the last time. This is a decision that no one was going to like. President Trump began the process by negotiating a deal with the Taliban, and President Biden is smart enough to follow through on it. There is no way that the evacuation from Afghanistan was going to be clean. The transition was always going to be messy. Unlike other transitions, this was not entirely on friendly terms. Anyone aware of the situation knew that the Taliban were going to seize power as fast as possible. Although it happened more quickly than anyone really thought, the American-backed government in Kabul wasn’t going to hold out for very long.

The shadow of the 9-11 attacks is as long as the shadows of the twin towers on a fall afternoon. These attacks changed our country forever. Although most people think of airport security when they think of the changes, there are numerous other changes in society. The principle of these is fear. Americans learned how to be afraid of outside attack in a way that was unfamiliar to us before. Regulations in all sorts of large public spaces began to change. Clear bags at stadiums became more common. Metal detectors popped up in more venues. Remember the color-coded threat levels from the Bush administration? We also lost privacy in a big way as government agencies used phone calls, emails, texts, and more to look for suspected terrorists. We also lost our moral high-ground as a nation. Between drone attacks, quiet wars in Yemen (and elsewhere) and the use of CIA black sites like Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to hold prisoners, the American government morphed into using the tactics of repressive regimes that it used to speak out against. We lived through prison torture scandals and found out how evil humans can get when they are afraid.

It’s 2021 now. Two generations of soldiers have lost blood, limbs, and their sanity in these wars that did very little to make this country more secure. A whole generation of young people have no idea about life before the 9-11 attacks, when someone could just casually hang out in an airport for fun. For them, post-9-11 America is all that they know. This makes it very difficult to even try to go back to life before then. Indeed, it is likely quite impossible.

I’ve written before about how I did not feel connected to the event at the time. I was 13 years old when the towers fell. My identification with the event would come years later when I directed a theatrical version of the Flight 93 film. It was a hard play to make, and many people in the Denver theater scene couldn’t bring themselves to do it. One audience cheered when the passengers seized the airplane. It was in 2011 when the day became significant for me at a personal level.

Every year when I write one of these messages, I always struggle with what I’m going to say or what I plan to impart to my readers. Sadly, I don’t have any sage words of wisdom for the reader this year. In the midst of these pandemic times, I can only be glad that in some small way by ending the war in Afghanistan we are finally able to move on.