I was ten years old in 2001.
I asked my Mom why she had come to pick me up from school early; her response was the first time I ever heard the word “terrorist.”
Of the kids in my neighborhood, most of our Dads worked in D.C. in or around the Pentagon. Cell phones were pretty clunky and slow back in the day, so the networks were badly clogged on 9/11.
My best friend Will’s dad flew F-16s and had been activated to defend Capitol airspace in case there were more planes. My dad worked for the federal government in a headquarters building directly across the highway and had watched the entire tragedy unfold. Our neighbors were all either feds or military, so kids and moms milled about outside trying to make sense of what was happening, unsure of when our dads would be home. We didn’t see them for what felt like weeks, but I think it was maybe 12-18 hours. They all came home in the middle of the night.
I vividly remember our neighbors covering every square inch of nearby street signs and message boards with American flags, and writing the names of first responders and heroic bystanders on posterboard taped to stop signs and garage doors. The world felt different from that point on.
I’ve spent enough time on social media to know that there will always be the guys who make any tragedy, and remembrance of that tragedy, about their own message they want to promote, from 9/11 insider-ism, to the foolishness of the GWOT thereafter, to the ensuing “temporary” suspension of civil liberties/implementation of ”emergency measures” in the interest of national security that would, to no one’s surprise, become permanent. My goal here is not to argue that those things are unfounded. Sadly, it seems that their veracity increases with time.
But what we can’t always feel in the Reddit threads or the IG comment sections about dancing Israelis and missing Pentagon budgets is the lingering emptiness in thousands of American families still felt today. In becoming a generation, and a nation, of activists, we feel obligated to live by an activist ideology. Simply remembering, even for five minutes, without getting a cheap shot at our political opponent seems like a wasted interaction.
The truth is, me joining the online chorus of people screaming for transparency and truthfulness regarding 9/11 to a couple thousand subscribers isn’t likely to do anything in this moment. So, instead, I want to remember all those we lost as a result, in the hopes that their memory might make us rethink these endless wars, and try to encourage anyone struggling to make sense of their post-9/11 service in the light of modern narratives. I also just think some groups of people are worth remembering independent of any motive or agenda.
Let’s start by acknowledging what for many of us is the elephant in the room: was the GWOT even worth it? Decades of death, destruction, missed birthdays, anniversaries, dead fathers, sons, brothers, husbands, daughters, wives, and all for what? The Middle East is still a complete shit-show, with Afghanistan back in the hands of the Taliban.
If you feel this way, you’re not alone. And it’s true that in large part, we were, at best, misled.
But in the moment, I think you acted for the right reasons. You truly believed that we were attacked by our ideological enemies. In hindsight, it’s very easy to scoff at this notion, but at that time, it was a nearly universal feeling. Just look at the sense of unity that followed 9/11. The President’s approval ratings skyrocketed to over 85%. The attacks were called our generation’s Pearl Harbor; you were not crazy for wanting revenge. And despite whatever inconvenient facts still remain hidden, the reality is that real, red-blooded Americans were murdered on that day. Don’t let modern contrarians gaslight you into thinking you were in cahoots with Dick Cheney because you wanted to hit back. You were probably just normal.
Growing up in America, we learn that true patriots serve and sacrifice for their country. This is what young men full of testosterone do; they join, they train, and then they go kill, to defend those they love. Just as our parents and grandparents had their wars, this would be ours.
I think our generation, though, thanks to social media, was probably the quickest to realize that our sense of patriotism had been exploited not simply to defend small-town America, but in large part to bolster the stock portfolios of an elite, ruling class of defense investors and Congressional war-hawks. And while many of these terrorists unarguably deserved to die for the atrocities they committed, eventually one couldn’t help but wonder how another decade of war could possibly be in our own country’s best interest. It can be a hard pill to swallow when you begin to think about all of the lies and saber-rattling that led to years of violence, some of it still ongoing today, even as our country continues to show many signs of crisis within.
None of these decisions, however, fall within the purview of 99% of the military. Sure, plenty of military officers are to blame for their unwillingness to speak up and hold their political and uniformed leaders accountable for grave failures throughout the war that led to tragedy and death, and I continue to harbor a deep and abiding resentment toward many of these “leaders” who always manage to find increasingly prominent positions of “national security” leadership within the Beltway. But most of us never reached that level; we simply served to the best of our ability in our small little corners of the force because it felt like the right thing to do in the wake of our national battering.
Put another way, we did our best with what we had, and what we knew, at the time.
In remembering those we’ve lost since 9/11, we must not return to the emotionally manipulative rhetoric that led to endless war in the first place, but we should also resist the urge to simply dismiss the past 23 years and in so doing, forget the men and women who in large part represent the best of our country, who simply did their best with what they had, and what they knew, at the time.
Considering what we know now, two decades later, let us say their names and care for their families in every way possible, including speaking boldly against those reckless warmongers who wish to commit us to future conflicts and consign our sons and daughters to the same fate. Let us be the first generation in far too long to truly honor our fallen by saying, “no, my children will not die on foreign shores.”
Many of our leaders are sold out, corrupt, and driven by financial gain and political ambition; this is undeniably true. I don’t blame anyone who goes down that rabbit hole in search of the truth.
But I hope and pray that on this 9/11, you will pause and join me in asking God for His blessing on our country, peace for all of the families that lost loved ones in the attacks and/or the conflicts that followed, forgiveness for the times we as Americans acted unjustly in our response, and restoration for all of the innocent bystanders caught in between.
Our kids should grow up learning that America, regardless of what it looks like today, was once a place where real people charged up the stairwells of crumbling buildings to save strangers. And in many ways, far from legacy media reporters and Reddit threads, it still is.
May God Bless the U.S.A. by granting us a full-scale return to Him, and may all of our fallen sons and daughters rest in His eternal peace.
LC
Thanks for writing this.
My Dad was in bootcamp that day. He would lose his best friend to an IED in Iraq two years later, when he was my age.
He and all of them did the absolute best with what they knew. I’m saddened that our leaders squandered such unbelievable goodwill and potential.
Amen