Perspective on 9/11

Where were you on 9/11? Nearly everyone who lived through it remembers that day. It marked us as a country, and it has affected those too young to personally remember (some of whom are now serving in Afghanistan). It changed life in American in several important ways. But, eighteen years out, it's possible to get a new perspective on 9/11.

Comparisons with Pearl Harbor
In some ways, as others have pointed out, it was another generation's Pearl Harbor. The Dec. 7, 1941 attack by the Japanese on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii cost 2,403 innocent lives. Each led the United States from peacetime into a costly war.

Both also led the nation into a periods of greater racism and xenophobia. 

Consider the widespread anti-Japanese racism (as well as Italian and German slurs and suspicion), and the Japanese internment camps of World War II.

Consider the development of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, the repudiation of Muslim refugees, and President Trump's efforts to initiate a "Muslim ban" and ramp up deportations while denying asylum seekers entry.

The aircraft carrier Arizona was sunk in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and was never raised. (National Archive)

The 9/11 attacks, almost exactly 60 years later in 2001 at the World Trade Center's twin towers in New York City, the Pentagon in Washington, DC, and a field near Shanksville, PA, killed a total of 2,996 people (plus more later, as first responders and others who had labored in the aftermath developed cancer and other health issues that slowly killed them).

Comparisons with Oklahoma City
However, to offer another perspective on 9/11, I invite you to consider a different terrorist attack, the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, OK, which killed 168 people and wounded more than 680. Until 9/11, it was the deadliest terrorist attack on record in the United States, and remains the most deadly domestic terror attack.

Here's a view of the Oklahoma City National Memorial at night. Each chair represents a person who died. (CNHI News Service/Kyle Phillips/Norman Transcript)

NOTE: This analysis appears not to include attacks on civilian non-combatants between Native Americans and European-descended US citizens from the beginning of the Republic (and before), such as the Ft. Mims Massacre in Alabama in 1813 (400-500 settlers killed), the Battle of Tallushatchee, also in 1813 in Tennessee (approx. 300 Creeks killed), and a depressingly long list of others. One of the last, the Massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890, with 130-250 Sioux men, women, and children killed, also exceeded the Oklahoma City death toll if you accept the higher end of the estimates.

My point in this post, however, is that 9/11 changed many things about how we live our lives, what freedoms and privacy we are required to give up, and increased suspicion of "outsider/others" in our country, as the Oklahoma City bombing did not. Yet we could argue there have been relatively free of foreign or foreign-inspired terrorism since 9/11.

Domestic terror is on the rise, however. The threat we must face now comes from within. Will we gain perspective on 9/11? Will we see this new landscape? Or will we continue to imagine we see Al Qaeda in the shadows, and ignore the terrorists among us?

IMAGE CREDITS: Many thanks to IBIE for posting the Adobe Stock image of the 9/11 Memorial spotlights at night; to Wikimedia Commons and the National Archive for providing a good file of the public domain U.S.S. Arizona photo from the Pearl Harbor attack; and to the Enid News & Eagle for the photo from CNHI News Service/Kyle Phillips/Norman Transcript, for the photo of the Oklahoma City National Memorial at night.

Forgetting is not an option

Remembering September 11, 2001

We saw the worst of humanity that day. But we also saw some of the best. I hope you'll enjoy this tribute, with actual footage from that day at Ground Zero.



You also might appreciate this short National Geographic production about United Flight 93. 

Unfortunately, many 9/11 heroes are still "layin' it all on the line." A variety of respiratory illnesses and cancers have been linked to the pollution encountered by both survivors and first responders. But the trauma experienced that day has left many with PTSD and other mental health effects, as well. Last year, on the 15th anniversary, CBS News ran this item:



Clearly, not all sacrifices are made in a blaze of glory that ends quickly. The lingering effects of our collective trauma from that day still haven't played out.

VIDEO: Many thanks to Allec Joshua Ibay on YouTube, for the "Everyday Heroes" musical tribute to the first responders at Ground Zero. The song that gives the video so much of its emotional power, please note, is by Dave Carroll, who is not credited on Ibay's video (however, Ibay's images are more focused on the events of 9/11/01 than the video Carroll posted). You can buy Carroll's single or album on Amazon. Thanks also to The CBS Evening News and YouTube, for the video about first responders' mental health.

Artdog Photos of Interest: Shanksville, 9/11

The ugly horror of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks will always remain a dark memory. But the heroism that rose up to counter that evil deserves our honor and admiration.

This is the ill-fated Flight 93 airplane itself, on Sept. 8, 2001 (MacMax, via Wikimedia Commons)

One of the first places where heroic spirits stood against terror was on United Airlines Flight 93. Passengers and crew, aware of what had happened to hijacked planes earlier that day, forced the terrorists to crash it near Shanksville, PA, rather than add to the catastrophes at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The smoking crater from that day (David Maxwell/AFP/Getty Images)

Yesterday, Sept. 10, 2015, The Flight 93 Memorial Center officially opened, 14 years after the passengers and crew made their last stand. I'm offering these photos of the new center as a grateful tribute to them.

Black granite marks the plane's path (AP/Keith Srakocic). 

Granite path and two sets of walls at the Flight 93 Memorial (AP/Gene L. Puskar)

IMAGES: Many thanks to Wikimedia Commons and contributor MacMax, for the image of the plane; to CBS New York for the image of the smoking crater; to New Jersey 101.5, for the first "granite path" image and to Capital Public Radio for the second image from the Memorial. 

Why Humans Need Art

The first time I had occasion to write the date and time this morning, I immediately thought, "Oh. By this time both of the Towers were down."

I suppose every American old enough to remember 9/11/2001 has a moment like that. "By this time the first plane had struck."  "By this time the North Tower was down."  "By this time the world had changed."

"9/11 at the World Trade Center," image from The History Channel website.

I watched a TV video of the second plane hitting the South Tower that day, not long after it happened, and it looked like movie special effects. This can't be happening was the first reaction for most of us, I think. Reading the sequence of that day's events still feels like reading the synopsis of a thriller novel--and a rather over-the-top one, at that.

However, no protagonist raced to overcome seemingly-insurmountable odds and defeated personal demons to save the day and stop those planes, as they most likely would have, if it really were a thriller novel.

Real is messy, often brutal, meaningless. Yet humans still grope for meaning. It's a gut instinct, a reflex, an involuntary response. We react, we grieve, we meditate on what happened. And then we begin to make art.

In large and small ways, consciously and unconsciously, we take our experiences and our understanding of life, and we do this human thing where we take often-meaningless events and within them, within ourselves, we find meaning.

Only a few of us take the extra step of using that meaning-making process to feed the creation of what we call "works of art." But without that universal human seedbed of meaning-making, no painting would ever be painted, no song written or sung, no story told. 

And no sense ever made of anything.

IMAGE CREDIT: Many thanks to The History Channel Website for the sequence of the plane hitting the South Tower on 9/11/2001.