I would like to wish a happy 18th birthday to anyone who was born on September 11, 2001. This now makes you eligible to serve in the war that was in effect started on this day. I pray that you will one day know a world at peace.
Anniversaries are occasions for reflections. On this day 18 years ago, we all were in a bit too much shock to have any kind of perspective as to what happened. Long before a year had passed, we had already achieved the greatest successes we were to achieve, save the killing of Osama Bin Laden in 2011. The Taliban had been taken out of power in no time and Al-Qaeda were on the run. But it seemed the success came too easy, it was all over before we felt properly avenged.
The first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks gave us no time for reflection. By that time we were already being emotionally stirred up in preparation for an invasion of Iraq. We had already taken our eye off the ball at this point. Had we truly wished to root out radical Islamic terrorists, we would have done something to curtail Saudi Arabia’s influence, as not only were Osama Bin Laden and 15 of the 19 terrorists from there, so was the extremist theology that helped shape Bin Laden’s mission.
The invasion of Iraq did nothing to fight Al-Qaeda, nor did it advance our reputation in the eyes of the world. When the Twin Towers were brought down, we had the sympathy and support of the entire planet. When we decided to invade Iraq—and let us not forget it was under false pretenses that were fairly obvious to the rest of the world—people all over the world were forced to confront the fact that they did not know us they way they thought they did. Until that time, I truly believed the world saw The United States as the city upon a hill, the country all other countries sought to emulate. Our position as moral leaders of the planet—earned or unearned—was lost.
On every anniversary since then, we have not really had the time to reflect upon what the September 11th terrorist attack meant to us. Remember, yes, but not really reflect. Instead, we were told by the media to remember the attack, the destruction and the loss of lives. And when they told us to remember, they supplied their own meaning as to what the anniversary of September 11 meant. To them it was a justification for anything we happened to be doing at that point. It justified supporting the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, and it justified attempting the same thing in Syria shortly thereafter. And somewhere amid this enthusiasm for overthrowing governments, we found Al-Qaeda and other groups sympathetic to their cause to be useful allies.
For 18 years now, we have avoided reflecting upon the events and importance of 9/11 and looking with fresh eyes at what it means to us as a nation and us as citizens of the world. Time makes us wiser, distancing ourselves from the trauma of the event allows us to look with our intellects rather than with our hearts.
No, the distance is not so great as it is with Pearl Harbor, but 18 years after Japan attacked us, we were able to view its importance in an entirely different manner. For one thing, Japan was no longer our enemy but an ally. 15 years after they attacked us, the dreaded enemy we could call all sorts of names and vent our anger at had joined us in the United Nations, an organization devoted to world peace.
Let’s compare this to Afghanistan. Whereas we were at war with Japan for 4 years, we have been at war in Afghanistan for 18. Whereas Japan’s air force surprised our Pacific fleet and inflicted crippling damage on it, Afghanistan never really had an air force to start with. And yet as late as this month, the United States government was engaging in peace talks with the Taliban, the very people we went to war to overthrow 18 years ago. Not only were we attempting to make peace with the Taliban, rather than demanding total surrender as we had in World War two, the Taliban felt themselves in such a position of strength that they engaged in suicide attacks that claimed the life of an American soldier as well as 11 others, forcing us to abandon our hopes for compromise.
How are we so incapable of bringing an end to the war against terrorism? And how is it that we have strengthened their grip in the Middle East despite our vastly increased presence there? How can it be that a member of Congress can feel compelled to sponsor a bill that makes it illegal to arm terrorists, and how is it possible that such a bill could gain no traction among our elected officials? I’m just trying to be objective about this, but why is it that most everything we’ve done in the last 18 years has only served to embroil us more deeply in a war that seems to have no end?
It’s easy to say the enemy are inhuman monsters that must be stamped out. This is what we said about the Germans and Japanese during the war, but within a short amount of time we were quite peacefully sharing a planet and trading goods with one another. The Soviet Union was invaded by Hitler’s Germany, and as a result lost over 20 million soldiers and civilians to the Nazi aggression. But on the day Germany surrendered, Traumerei was played across the Soviet Union. Think of it, a song composed by a German composer was played in the country that had 20 million people killed in order to show that the time for hatred was over and the time for reconciliation had begun.
When can we declare victory? Do we even know what that would look like? And when will the reconciliation begin, when will a new commitment to peace and co-existence once again seem like the only logical alternative to bloodshed, destruction and hatred? Let us never forget what happened on September 11, 2001, but let us reflect upon it as well, rather than allow our memories to be mere emotional responses that are manipulated by those who profit from a never-ending war. The only logical rationalization for war I have ever heard was that in the end it would lead to a greater peace. 18 years, later, I do not see it on the horizon, nor do I hear even the greatest advocates for war make such a claim.
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