We all remember where we were on 9/11. We didn’t know where we were going. What would happen next? How it would change us forever. In these days leading up to the twentieth anniversary, we are seeing all those indelible images again and hearing the stories of heroism, grief, determination, and anger. Some have compared the 9/11 attacks to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor was an attack by a foreign country on a naval base thousands of miles away that most Americans had never heard of before that terrible morning. It brought the country together. We knew who the enemy was. There was no debate about how we needed to respond. After four years, the enemy was defeated. We won and the world changed forever. There was that same rallying spirit right after 9/11. We were going to hunt down the people who did this and make them pay. This was worse than Pearl Harbor. This unknown enemy struck in the heart of our country killing innocent civilians as they showed up for work. That morning would change how we saw each other.
The disastrous war in Afghanistan was complicated by the one of the worst foreign policy decisions in our history, invading Iraq based on false intelligence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The wars dragged on. Americans started to looked at each other with suspicion. Every thing became political. We started to lose trust in our government. We were floundering. Let’s pull troops out. Let’s surge in more troops. When was this going to end? As years went on, the country became more divided. The rise of the internet and social media used to spread false information, the housing bubble and recession, thousands of people losing their homes and jobs, the election of the first African American president, demands for racial justice, police brutality. We couldn’t agree on anything. It was us against them. It was us against each other. The mistrust and decision reached its peak with the election of Trump. The worst president at one of the worse times in our history. Then the ultimate test where our divided country faced life or death, Covid.
It’s come to the point where we are afraid to talk politics and now vaccines with each other. The greater good is being challenged by personal freedom. You can’t tell me what to do. I don’t trust you. I don’t trust science. I don’t trust the government. Reason and common sense and even facts are challenged to the point of the ridiculous. We have the rest of the world wondering what the hell has happened to America? They looked to us for leadership and support. Now, they are not so sure.
The country has gone through divisive times before. Many of us remember the Vietnam War and how it tore the country apart. It left scars and planted the seeds of our mistrust in government and each other. I would argue the country has not been this divided and damaged since the Civil War. It took decades to heal the wounds. The slaves were freed, but it took another hundred years to pass civil rights legislation. We are only now pulling down statues of Confederate generals of fought to save slavery. As we remember 9/11 on this anniversary, and think about those families who suffered unimaginable loss, we should think about what it has done to all of us. In this American aftermath, we should remember what Lincoln said during those dark days of the Civil War, “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”
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