Sept. 11: It is a date that lives in so much infamy, we use it in place of the actual event. This Sunday marks the 10th anniversary of those horrific attacks and the infamous date on which they occurred. A decade has passed since all of America watched in astonishment as a previously unthinkable atrocity brought New York’s twin towers to the ground. Children born that day are now starting the fifth grade, the same grade most college juniors were in when the attacks occurred. For those children and their peers, there has never been a world not feeling the effects of that tragic day. The post-9/11 generation has no concept of what it was like before the dark cloud of terrorism hovered ominously over our everyday lives.
We, however, remember what it used to be like, but not by much. Our generation can recollect bits and pieces of the ’90s, but the majority of our formative years have been dominated by the fallout of those attacks. Unlike our younger brothers and sisters, we have the ability to see the attacks in context. Unlike our parents’ generation, we incorporate the attacks into our own vision of the future based on our experiences growing up in the 9/11 aftermath. We are uniquely situated to reflect on the reality of how things have changed and how they may continue to change.
The problem is that the fates of the younger generations are shaped by the actions of their elders. Sometimes their decisions come from aged wisdom, realized only from experience. Sometimes, though, the decisions made are based on habit. The old way of doing things dies hard. The paradigms rest on the antiquated ideas of people who won’t have to live in the future their decisions create.
Those of the older generation who still live may never forget hearing about the Pearl Harbor attacks of Dec. 7, 1941, the original “date that will live in infamy.” A potentially more important date is Aug. 6, 1945. The course of events that had started at Pearl Harbor ended at Hiroshima, the atomic bombing of which, combined with the bombing of Nagasaki three days later, killed approximately 246,000 Japanese civilians in atomic explosions and subsequent firestorms. This demonstrates the historical habit of payback as foreign policy. But whereas Japan was a country, capable of surrender, trying to “defeat” terrorism is like trying to nail Jell-O to a wall.
Retaliation against senseless attacks with supposedly retributive offensives is not an effective way of ending the cycle of violence. In the wake of 9/11, what started as a national resolve to stand united against those who would intimidate us, quickly morphed into a $1.2 trillion, decade-long campaign of vengeance. The stories of the bravery of the first responders and rescue workers who ran selflessly into danger were soon replaced by stories of our disastrous invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
On Sept. 11, 2,977 innocent people were killed. Since that date, according to the Lancet surveys, more than 650,000 Iraqi civilians and, according to the U.N., almost 9,000 Afghan civilians have been killed. In addition, we have lost 6,234 of our own servicemen and women, with more than 35,000 sustaining injuries. On a personal note, more than 150 journalists have been killed covering the wars.
We don’t hear about this too much anymore. While our collective attention seems to have moved on, the faulty thinking remains. Just because it isn’t talked about it doesn’t mean it’s not there. Those numbers are the cold, hard reality of the last 10 years and how trying to fight a “war” on an abstract noun doesn’t accomplish much. Each of those 665,000 people had a face, a name, a life to live and families who loved them.
Those people are the legacy of our reaction. We paid back evil for evil, and lost more of our own people, as well as the moral high ground in the process. Whatever your view of the justifications of war, or lack thereof, minimizing the deaths of innocents, in any nation, is ultimately of the utmost concern. When a course of action designed to solve a problem only aggravates it, a new strategy is needed.
Make no mistake; terrorism is a real threat, whose exit will not be as swift and sudden as its entrance. As our generation looks to the future that will one day be ours, we need to know that this is the reality that we live with. However, we also need to know that the way we react is paramount to creating a better future.
We will have tough decisions to make, but we must cease to react in a fashion that will lead to more bloodshed. We must make the choice to look beyond blind hatred of our “enemies” and see all the other people who will suffer the consequences of our decisions. The choice is ours; let’s make the right one.
