9/11 Memory

Ten years ago today, I was in Washington, D.C., taking a course at the Foreign Service Institute; something I had done many times prior to, and subsequently since, that day.

But on that Tuesday morning, something very different occurred. One of the FSI instructors came into the classroom and announced that a plane had hit one of the World Trade Center towers.

Being a suspicious sort, and due to the nature of the specific course I was taking, I wondered whether this was some sort of training scenario that was being run on us. I kept this thought to myself.

Sometime later, an instructer came in to the classroom to announce that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center.

At the end of that particular class component, we were given a break. One of the things about working for the State Department is that your employer actively enables those of its employees who are news junkies. That enabling tendancy manifests itself, in this instance, by the phenomenon that there are televisions mounted in various public spaces within FSI where people congregate between classes or during lunch breaks.

So it quickly became clear that this was not a training scenario.

By training and inclination, I holds to the dictum that “once is accident or happenstance, twice is coincidence, but three times is enemy action.”

My professional history with State had, up to that fateful day, made me very familiar with the those who sought to attack U.S. diplomats overseas and how the Department works to made that more difficult. I’d studied the nature of our attackers, how they’d attacked us in the past, and what the gruesome consequences of those attacks had been. I knew, for instance, that while the single greatest cause of injury in explosive attacks on office buildings was due to flying glass, the greatest killer was catestrophic structural collapse. So it was with a sinking feeling that, as the towers collapsed upon themselves one after another and I looked around at my colleagues at FSI, I thought “Welcome to my world.”

While many lives were ended or altered that day, and the course of United States’ history changed, the world itself didn’t change, only the awareness of Americans themselves. And even that awareness has proven impermanent, as I feared it would nearly from the day of 9/11 itself.

Over a million U.S. service members have, in the decade since 9/11, deployed to combat zones around the world as part of the America’s response, the inelegantly named Global War on Terror. Thousands of them have died as a result of that combat and tens of thousands wounded. Barrels of ink and trainloads of paper have been expended in efforts to make sense of what often seems senseless. Whole academic and media careers have been launched and wrecked in a rolling series of intellectual fads that have their genesis in 9/11.

This past week, this past month, readers of national security media have seen many articles where some very good questions have been asked. Where were you on that day? Are you safer today? Who is winning this war?

While I’ve answered the first of those questions and I’d have to say that the second two questions remain open to debate. Osama Bin Laden is dead. Saddam Hussein no longer rules Iraq and its security services no longer provide support to terrorist organizations. The Taliban’s rule was overthrown and Al-Qaeda denied Afghanistan as a base of operations.

Other developments may prove to be harbingers of progress or setback. The “Arab Spring” threatens or has overthrown longterm dictatorships in Tunesia, Egypt, Libya, and Syria, while their successor regimes may prove to be even more problematic for civilization. South Sudan gained its independence from the vicious wannabe “Arab” Khartoum government, but the fate of non-Arabs in Darfur, Abyei, and Nubia remains in doubt. Iran’s carnival show of nuclear proliferation continues and Israel’s neighbors carry out a pantomime of peaceful intentions while enabling terrorist attacks on civilian targets.

So forgive me if I don’t think anything is over or won or lost. Not yet. The outcomes of all these trends and struggles remains very much in doubt, not least of which those which directly involve the United States.

The war on the United States is not yet over, but all we have to do is not lose. Really. It’s that simple. Our enemies lose if we don’t. And as others have said, the important thing is that we not lose our nerve. Don’t go wobbly. Keep focused on what’s important and what we’re about. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t be smart about how and where we spend our money. The arsenal of democracy’s shelves will become bare and empty awfully fast if those who beat plowshares into swords aren’t paid on time and in cash. Oh, and we still need plowshares.

So take today and remember our dead, from 9/11 and the battles ever since. Remember why they died and who killed them. Remember who celebrated those deaths and who still takes comfort and joy from our sorrow. Rededicate yourself to the battles not yet fought. Never forget. Never forgive.