9/11 Ten Years Later

Today marks the tenth anniversary of the September 11 2001 attack by al Qaeda. It is difficult to fathom that we have now been at war with Islamofascism longer than were we against Nazism or Japanese Imperialism. It has gnawed at me that because of the differences between the present war, which is largely composed of covert moves, freezing of assets, and skirmishes, and War world Ii, which held massive shows of force that could be readily visualized by the public, Americans are losing their resolve. This isn’t a real conflict, they may say, or who cares what goes on in another part of the world? I hope this day is a reminder that we are at war.

People, the Middle East is the bad neighborhood of the world. Many of the countries there still operate on a medieval level. We’ve made them oil rich, given them the ability to manipulate the major powers with their petroleum production, yet made no efforts to bring them into the modern world. There is a large underclass of Muslims who despise the very concept of modernity, of freedom for all, and of democratic ideals. Their ranks have been allowed to grow and fester with no relief. When that happens in a bad neighborhood, it spills over into good neighborhoods. That’s what happened on September 11, 2001.

Now is not the time to lose our resolve. There are big conflicts ahead. We can kill or capture individual terrorists every minute of the day, but it is just like trying to kill an insect infestation in your home. You have to destroy the nest before you can get rid of them. We’ve reshaped Afghanistan and are doing the same in Iraq. Despite the criticism, these are good things. Two nests have been attacked; one destroyed. We have to keep it up, so we don’t have another anniversary like this one to remember and mourn.

I had just started law school about three weeks before 9/11. Just by the nature of the first year of law school, my classmates still didn’t really know each other at that point. Because of the time spent studying, you knew two people--your roommate and whoever you sat beside at orientation. It was something of a surreal experience to go through something like this with people you barely know, yet it was a bonding experience because of the nature of the setting we were all in. I’ll explain that in a minute.

That morning, my roomie and I were going through our usual routine. We used to get up around 7:30 for a 9:15 class. I brought a TV from home, but because of our workloads, I never bothered to have cable hooked up. There was no way we could have known what was about to happen. I had a car, so we drive to school together even though we had different classes. We always left at about 8:45. Through subsequent conversations, we’ve agreed that the first plane probably hit the World trade center judt as we were leaving.

When we got to school, I was almost bowled over by a classmate named Chris. He flung the door open to the outside with his cellphone glued to his ear. He looked agitated, but as I really didn’t know him, I didn’t pay it much attention. Chris was from New York, and his father was a scheduler for Eastern Airlines. In those first few minutes, no one knew what airline the planes had come from. There we a few classmates talking excitedly amonst themselves in the atrium. One of them told me a plane had just hit the World Trade Center. In my mind, I pictured a Cessna accidenty crashing into it.

It wasn’t until we all sat down in class that we all found out what was really going on. My torts professor came in and told us that another plane has crashed into the WTC, the Pentagon had been attacked, and a bomb had gone off at the State Department. The last turned out to not be true, but the situation was enough for the dean to cancel classes for the day. Everyone was stunned. Fortress America had been breached. We had no idea the scope of it.

There was an auditorium in the middle of the school. At the front of it was a moot courtroom, but the place was often used for larger classes and gatherings. Therefore, it had a screen projector for making overhead slides and showing films. The administration had connected to network news so any student without a TV could see what was going on. Once my class was cancelled, I went in to watch. Every seat was full, so I leaned up against the back wall. The first time I paid attention to the screen is the moment the South Tower fell.

I didn’t know that an evacuation had been underway for a while now, as far as I or mot anyone else there knew, we had just seen 50,000 people die and responded accordingly. The girl next to me literally slid down the wall to the floor, too quickly for me or the guy standing on the other side to ease her down.

You know, it doesn’t surprise me that people think there is a connection between Iraq and 9/11. Speculation among must of us was the Iraqis at first. It began to trickle out that this was actually Osama bin laden and al Qaeda. We all had the same reaction to: wasn’t he just reduced to relatively minor attacks in Third World countries? We lived in a more naïve world on September 10th.

I watched for a while until I couldn’t stand it anymore. Everything was incredibly tense. Hampton Roads is a Navy dominated area. Within a short time, the entire Atlantic fleet headed out to sea to guard the coastline. That was a breathtaking thing to experience. All air travel was banned, but every now and then you’d hear a Navy jet flyover. Everyone in a crowd would freeze. I don’t know what we were anticipating, or if we were just recognizing our military was mobilizing, but I will never forget the hair standing up on my neck at hearing those engines rumbling.

For months afterwards, American flags flew everywhere. Businesses had banners proclaiming ”God Bless America,” and first the first and only time, the people of Virginia beach were friendly and courteous. We knew we were all in this together, and it was going to be a long, protracted battle in which we were as much targets as any military entity. This was the early days, when it was speculated there would be a multipronged US response in Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq, Iran, wherever. When US and British forces began attacking Kabul, we knew we were committed to a fight an enemy in the shadows, however long that might take.

Hopefully, as we pause and remember today the lives lost, that we will strengthen our reslove to never let it happen again. It’s difficult to visualize having to further commit to a necessary conflict in light of the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, but we must. Americans have always been gutsy survivors. The times try our souls to the very core, but I want us all to rise to the challenge. We will endure. We will win. We will thrive.